The incredibly popular and successful hypnotism conference “Change Phenomena” is happening once again this year on the 19th May in London, UK.

I haven’t been before and it occurred to me, having largely stopped hypnotising people these days, that I may not be the only one’s trying to find an excuse to go but having thoughts and doubts about how I can justify the cost. [NOTE: The awesome guys running the conference have actually kept the early bird discount going, so if you're quick you can save 10% on the full ticket price!]

In the end I decided to write out some of the main questions that I thought people might be thinking about and then talk to Anthony Jacquin about them. Rather conveniently, there are five:

• Is it aimed at street/stage hypnotists or hypnotherapists?
• Is it for beginners?
• Is it for those with experience?
• Is it just another opportunity for them to sell me their next product or course?
• Is there anything new for those who’ve been before?

Before I dive into the questions, Anthony and I had a really great chat about Change Phenomena conferences past and present and I hope to be following up this post with another discussing some of the items that Anthony and I covered about the guys speaking and demonstrating this year that isn’t already on the Change Phenomena event details page. A kind of exclusive for me I guess! Exciting!

Is it aimed at street/stage hypnotists or hypnotherapists?

If you’ve seen my YouTube channel, you’ll be in no doubt that I (used to) do a fair amount of street hypnosis and while I’ve never done entertainment hypnosis for money, I have cured the odd phobia, overcome smoking addiction and with one particularly pleased client: overcome alcohol abuse through a combination of hypnotherapy and Integral Eye Movement Therapy.

Is Change Phenomena going to help me with my interest in the street/entertainment side of hypnosis or is it going to be more focussed for those in the therapy profession?

Anthony:  The initial idea for Change Phenomena was that the vast majority of hypnotherapists do not use or exploit hypnotic phenomena. Now because I am a hypnotherapist that does, I know just how powerful an ideomotor movement can be in a therapy session. So the aim of Change Phenomena is that a) to give therapists an insight into the phenomena of hypnosis and how to use them and b) for people who got an interest – via performance or just intrigue or perhaps done some hypnosis training – Eventually, they get tired of sticking people’s hands to the table and they want to answer the question: “Can you help me with this?” with “Yes!”

So we wanted to pitch the conference right down the middle so that both parties can learn from each other. So, the weight of it leans ever so slightly towards therapeutic applications but we always have a performers slot and personally I would expect everyone to benefit from all of talks. I have no doubt that the therapists in the first year [Change Phenomena 2010] that the therapists benefitted from James Brown‘s talk even though he had the performers slot. Equally, I would expect that the performers like Mike Stoner or whoever’s got into it via impromptu hypnosis to benefit from listening to Jørgen Rasmussen because his thinking is just so original and out of the box.

This year, it’s kind of the same thing: Kev’s talk and Marcus’ talk is not about performance, it’s about hypnosis and how it works and what the experience is like, so I expect everyone to be able to benefit. Adam Eason’s talk is about personal application: self-hypnosis. So it could be that people take away some of his self-hypnosis tips and work on themselves, it could be that they can better communicate those ideas and techniques to their clients. 

Here’s Jorgen Rasmussen in the DVD trainer from the 2010 event :

I’ve been hypnotising for years, so is it going to teach me something new?

I wouldn’t call myself a master by any means (I actually believe that “master” is a label that only other people – one’s peers in particular – can bestow upon you) and I know that there is both heaps to learn and even more experience to develop. Coupled with that, the technology (and I don’t mean IT) of hypnosis is constantly developing and evolving (e.g. Head Hacking’s “AI” model or James Tripp’s “Hypnosis Without Trance”), so there is undeniably a great deal for me to learn. That said, I don’t consider myself a beginner so I don’t really want to be spending lots of time and money going over old stuff (though from time to time a review of the basics is most beneficial).

And what about all those professional hypnotherapists out there, keen to learn something new to bring to their clients? Surely Change Phenomena isn’t going to provide them with these new therapy tools, is it?

Anthony: One of the things we ask the speakers to do is to talk about their contemporary ideas and applications. So I’m expecting everyone to demonstrate some of their techniques and do that in such a way that the audience can take away those techniques and use them. We specifically ask people to speak who we think are doing something in their own field that is kind of at the cutting edge in terms of application. There are not many hypnotherapists that work in the way that Barry Thain does. Very very few who use hypnotic phenomena in that fashion. Yes there are sports psychologists and hypnotherapists within sport, there are not many people using it in the way that Gary [Turner] does with post-hypnotic suggestions that are going to be triggered during fights. 

So is it going to teach you something new? Yes. Because, you simply won’t have heard this material before for start.

Is it for experienced hypnotists and hypnotherapists or can anybody benefit?

In contrast to those who have been learning and practicing hypnosis for years, it is equally important to acknowledge and include those who are just starting out on the voyage of discovery that is the human mind. Those studying psychology, or those looking to become hypnotherapists and change workers or even those looking to make a career as a stage or show hypnotist. Or perhaps those, like myself, who have an interest in it and want to find out a bit more.

Is Change Phenomena 2012 going to be too advanced for them?

Anthony: [Change Phenomena] doesn’t presume you have a huge amount of knowledge. People who are less experienced: I think it will give them a good starting point into the realities of being a practitioner of hypnosis. So they’re less likely follow some of the false leads and paths that perhaps don’t have that much utility when you actually come to practicing this stuff. I’m expecting everything to be  easily understood and of practical value.

It’s not about “advanced” hypnosis. I’m not a big believer in “basic” or “advanced” when it comes to hypnosis. I’ve been on this journey myself and performance stuff has helped me in a sense that communicating in clear language that a child could understand is more effective than some of the more complex language and technique we use. So even if someone was a beginner, I would still expect them to benefit from this conference.

On a personal note, having discussed the line up and expectations of the day with Anthony, I would strongly recommend anyone who has some basic learning and hypnotised a couple of people to come. If you’re just starting out on the hypnosis journey and you’re looking for some training and education to get you started then of course you’ll get value and learn stuff, but it might make more sense to you once you’ve had some training and a bit of experience of being a/the hypnotist.

Is it just another opportunity to sell me on the latest course/product/coaching?

This is born of the fact that there are so many “me-to” people out there and hearing horror stories of horribly expensive (relatively speaking) seminars with all sorts of “special” or “celebrity” speakers where they take your money and then proceed to spend the next two days (or two hours or however long the seminar is) trying to sell you onto their even more expensive “mentoring” course or getting you to buy their £5000 “guaranteed success” hypnosis product…

Call me suspicious, burnt or just cheap, I have no interest in, or respect for, people who go about making a living that way, so just how much selling is going to be happening at Change Phenomena?

Anthony: No. Because selling from the stage is banned at Change Phenomena.

The speakers will have a stand, they can sell their products during the breaks or at lunch at discounted prices, but there is no effort [to be] made to sell from the stage.

So there you go. No selling from the stage and if you’ve been toying with the idea of investing some of their products, this event might be the perfect opportunity to meet them in person AND get their stuff at a discount!

I’ve been before so is there going to be anything I’ve not heard before?

Quite a straight forward question: It’s an annual event and this is the third years Change Phenomena has run in London.

I’ve been before (well actually I haven’t because it’s clashed with other stuff, but I would have if I could have), so has the content changed? Is there going to be new and interesting learning worth £100? [BTW, if you're quick, they're still running the 10% discount even though it's past the "early bird" discount period]

Anthony:  Yes. We’ve got five new speakers speaking on  topics that have never been covered before from across the spectrum of practical applications. So it will definitely be worth returning.

Barry is the only “clinical” hypnotist in the country Adam has the best selling self-hypnosis products in the country, Gary is a 13 times world champion who uses this by himself and others and Harry is a very successful performer!

Seems like a whole lot of interesting people and perspectives and I’d be very interested to see what they all have to say and demonstrate!

So, am I going to Change Phenomena 2012?

So after all that: Yes, I’m certainly going.

Despite having given up hypnosis, I’m still interested in how and why it works and I actually think that this event is precisely what I want: It’ll give me new ideas and insights into hypnosis and how our minds work in and around hypnosis and it’ll be interesting to see some of the hypnosis world’s masters talking about and demonstrating their techniques. It’ll also give me a good opportunity to catch up with some old friends and make new connections with some of the leading hypnotists in the UK!

If I’m honest, it seems that a year off hypnosis (has it really been a year!?) is a long time in the industry these days and there have been loads of major advances and idea progression in the industry. Maybe I’ll have to start sticking stuff on my Hypnosis YouTube channel again…

When is Change Phenomena Happening?

Change Phenomena is happening on the 19th May 2012

Where is Change Phenomena Happening?

Lecture Theatre 1,
New Hunts House
King’s College
Guy’s Hospital
St Thomas Street
London
SE1 9RT

Please note the lecture theatre has changed to Lecture Theatre 1 rather than Theatre 2.

Doors open at 9am. The welcome begins at 9.30am sharp. The event finishes at 6.45pm. Refreshments and a finger buffet lunch are provided throughout the day.

I am told to expect to head to a nearby pub afterwards with the speakers for a bit of refreshments and fun.

Book you place now and please remember to let them know that you heard about Change Phenomena here at benwhite.me because then I know that you actually find this stuff interesting and useful and I’ll keep doing it. I don’t get paid for this you know!

…was a tough challenge to set myself for my daughter’s 5th Birthday party.

I hunted for a recipe or in fact recipes around the internet and they all either lead to spam sites or overly complex and just-plain-weird sites.

But I did it in the end.

I should point out (in case it wasn’t obvious from the photo) that I’m not a professional cake maker; I’m just a regular dad.

In case you fancied a go at making one too, I brought together several recipes for the different elements for you here on this page (original recipes referenced as well).

Main elements in the princess cake

There are several key elements to this cake and while each is easy, the combination can appear quite daunting and time consuming:

• 3 x Madeira sponge cakes ( 2 normal, 1 in a bowl – see equipment)
• 1 x Butter Cream Icing for filling.
• 1 x White Glaze “Skirts” icing.
• 1 x Pink “Dress” Icing.

Equipment

Surprisingly, there’s not actually a huge amount of equipment needed:

• 8″ cake tin (I only had 1, but you could speed things up by having 2 and cooking 2 cakes at the same time)
• Mixing bowl (oven proof – One of those Pyrex ones will do fine)
• Scales
• Wooden spoon
• Spatula
• Long sharp knife (for taking the domes off the top of the cakes
• Skewer (for checking that the cakes are cooked)
• A small (2-3″) cookie cutter (for cutting the holes)
• Cake base
• Baking parchment (grease proof paper)
• Clingfilm (to wrap the princess. See photo further down)

Ingredients for the Princess cake

This is a large cake. You will need to buy a lot of ingredients.

Here’s the complete list, but that only for your shopping. The amounts and ingredients are listed in the instructions for each element below.

• 1 x princess (As she’s “in” the cake, I guess that makes her an ingredient rather than equipment? Oh and make sure you can take her clothes off and remember that you cake has to be as high as her waist).
• 1077g (38oz) of unsalted butter at room temperature.
• 510g (18oz) of caster sugar (not granulated – caster has finer grains and mixes better).
• 9 x eggs
• 765g (27oz) of self-raising flour (trust me, you don’t want to be faffing with bicarb and baking powder when you’re making 3 of these bad boys).
• 6-9 tbsp milk (I used semi-skinned).
• Zest of 3 Lemons/Oranges OR 3 tsp Vanilla Essence (I made one cake of each flavour, so only 1 lemon + 1 orange + 1 tsp of Vanilla).
• 1077g (38oz) icing sugar – sieved
• 15ml water

Constructing the Princess Cake

Here is a preparation list for the overall cake. Making the individual pieces is listed below.

• Make the Madeira sponge cakes.
• Once cooled, use the long sharp knife to take their dome’s off so they have flat tops and bottoms (obviously only cut the top off the cake cooked in the bowl).
• Use the cookie cutter to put a hole in the middle of each cake (hold onto these cake holes as you may need them later). This is where the princess is going to stand in her dress.

• Make the butter cream filling icing.
• Stack cakes with the filling between each layer
• Place in the fridge for 45 mins to allow the icing to stiffen.
• Make the “skirts” icing from plane white glaze icing.
• Place strips of baking paper/parchment around the edge of the cake. This will keep the cake base clean (see the image with the glaze “skirts”icing).
• Ice the “skirts” onto the cake. There are two purposes to this:
• To put an under-coat of icing to seal in the crumbs and make applying the outer icing more easily
• To add a touch of class to the princess’ dress by showing a different under skirt to the main pink ball dress (see photo of finished cake)

• Stick back in the fridge for 45 mins to allow the glaze icing to stiffen.
• Make the butter cream “dress” icing.
• Give the princess doll a quick clean, dry and wrap her legs in clingfilm to minimise the amount of cleaning she’ll need later (make sure it’s tight around her waist).

• Stand the doll in the cake. Now at this point, I discovered that even though the cake was massive, the princess’ waist was still a bit taller than the top of the cake. So I used one of the cake holes and cut it to go around her and raise the top of the cake a bit. I was worried about whether it’d look like she has a big bum, but it’s actually ok!
• Spread on the pink butter cream icing in thick swirls being careful to leave the white under-skirt showing a little around the bottom. I was worried that this would be difficult, but it was actually pretty easy.
• Now make an icing piping bag from baking parchment (checkout the linked YouTube video – it’s really easy).
• Pipe on the top of the princess cake’s dress and any additional decoration you want. I added some pretty strings hanging down from the bottom of the pink dress onto the white underskirt to highlight the different layers (see the final picture)
• Decorate with additional bits at required (I used candy stars and mini edible gold stars).
• Run a knife around the very bottom of the cake to cut off any overspill of icing and pull out the strips of baking parchment.

Finished Princess Birthday Cake made from scratch

Making the individual elements of a Princess Cake

So you know roughly how it all works together, but how do you make the individual bits? Read on for full recipes.

Making the Madeira cakes

I chose Madeira over plain sponge because they’re heavier and more robust and generally better for sculpting in my opinion. Of course you’re welcome to try another type of sponge recipe and please let me know how you get on!

Remember you are going to be making 3 cakes here. The first two will be normal cakes baked in the cake tin, the third will be baked in the mixing bowl (which is why it needs to be oven proof).

Ingredients  (per cake)

• 175g (6oz) of unsalted butter at room temperature (from the fridge just won’t work. Give it 15 secs in a microwave).
• 175g (6oz) of caster sugar (not granulated – caster has finer grains and mixes better).
• 3 x eggs
• 250g (9oz) of self-raising flour (trust me, you don’t want to be faffing with bicarb and baking powder when you’re making 3 of these bad boys).
• 2-3 tbsp milk (I used semi-skinned).
• Zest of 1 Lemon/Orange OR 1 tsp Vanilla Essence (I made one cake of each. The lemon is the best though imo).

Preparation

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. (I have a fan oven and 180C was fine).
• Cream the butter and sugar in the mixing bowl (“cream” means light and fluffy. Be prepared to spend some time on this getting achy forearms).
• Sift in the flour and fold together with the creamed butter and sugar.
• Beat in the first 2 eggs one at a time ensuring that the mixture remains light and fluffy.
• Beat in the last egg with a tbsp of the flour to stop the mixture curdling.
• Add small amounts of milk and mix in until the mixture falls gently from the spoon.
• Fold in the Lemon/Orange or vanilla.
• Grease your cake tin.
• Dolop the mixture into the middle and gently flatten the top.
• Cook for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
• Let stand in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire mesh to cool

At this point, I would like to note that in my fan oven, both normal cakes took 40 minutes but the one in the bowl took 55 because it was deeper. Greasing the bowl with butter also worked fine and the cake came out no problems!

Making the layer “filling” icing

So next up is the filling icing that is going to sit between the layers in the cake. I chose to make a standard butter cream filling.

Ingredients

• 140g (5oz) unsalted butter at room temperature.
• 280g (10oz) icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• few drops food colouring (I used about 2 cap fulls of red to get to a pinky colour, but do it a little at a time until you get the colour you want)

Preparation

• Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.
• Add the remaining icing sugar and one tablespoon of the milk and beat the mixture until creamy and smooth. Beat in the milk, if necessary, to loosen the mixture.
• Stir in the food colouring until well combined.

Making the princess cake “dress” icing

This is actually the same recipe and preparation as for the filling layer, however I doubled the quantities. I had a little left over at the end and it is on very thickly, but single quantities would be too little imo.

Making the white glaze “skirts” icing

The icing I used for the skirting is the super-simple standard glaze icing. I’m sure you could get all complicated with royal icing etc, but this is quick and easy.

Ingredients

• 200 (8oz) icing sugar – sieved
• 15ml spoon (1tbsp) water

I have used double the amounts listed in the original (see references) recipe as it’s a very big princess cake!

Preparation

• Mix sieved icing sugar with water in a bowl.
• Beat until smooth (which is easier said than done – this is strange material when mixed. It doesn’t respond to rapid movement, but is relatively fluid if treated very slowly).
• Consistency needs to be thick enough to coat the back of the spoon.

References

This princess cake recipe isn’t “my” recipe, it’s cobbled together various recipes from various places. Here are the links to those original recipes.

• Madeira cake recipe on the bbc website.
• Making Butter Cream Icing. I used the same recipe for both the filing icing and the outer “dress” icing. Obviously I also added red food dye to make it pink.
• The white glaze icing recipe.
• Making a parchment paper piping bag.

Your eyes always twinkle and shine like star light,

Your smile makes me giggle and laugh with delight.

Your hugs and affection are second to none,

and I hear you are even good to your mum.

-

I can’t help but smile just hearing your name,

and seeing you sleeping does just the same.

And whether you’re here of we’re far apart,

you’ll always be part of me…

Love Dad xxx

I should point out that there is a little bit of back story to why I wrote this and that original post for this valentines poem is at kidmunication.com

A really interesting little story to illustrate how our tax system works here in the UK posted on facebook by a friend of mine:

—

Suppose that once a month, ten men go out for beer (or ten women go shopping if you prefer) and the bill for all of them comes to £100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes and claim State benefits, it would go something like this:

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
• The fifth would pay £1.
• The sixth would pay £3.
• The seventh would pay £7.
• The eighth would pay £12.
• The ninth would pay £18.
• And the tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every month and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until, one day, the owner caused them a little problem.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your weekly beer by £20.”

Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free but what about the other six men; the paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33 but if they subtracted that from everybody’s share then not only would the first four men still be drinking for free but the fifth and sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So the bar owner suggested a different system:

• The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing. (100% improvement)
• The sixth man paid £2 instead of £3 (33% better off)
• The seventh paid £5 instead of £7. (29% better off)
• The eighth paid £9 instead of £12. (25% better off)
• The ninth paid £14 instead of £18. (23% better off)
• And the tenth man now paid £49 instead of £59. (17% better off)

Each of the last six was better off than before with the first four continuing to drink for free.

But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got £1 out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got £10!”

“Yes, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.

“I only saved a £1 too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man.

“Why should he get £10 back, when I only got £2? The rich get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

So, the nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

Funnily enough, the next month the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him.

But when it came to pay for their drinks, they discovered something important – they didn’t have enough money between all of them to pay for even half the bill.

That’s how the UK tax system works (Other tax systems are available – see foot of blog post).

The people who already pay the highest taxes do tend to get the most benefit from tax reliefs and reductions.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy and they just might not show up anymore.

—

Interesting stats and figures on who contributes what to GDP

Check out the top 100 FTSE organisations in the UK and how much they contribute in tax to the country:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/interactive/2009/feb/02/tax-database

Read the following article on which earning brackets contribute what to the Gross Domestic Product in the UK (in 2009)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8417205.stm (I also recommend checking out the BBC’s selection of comments at the bottom for some thought provoking points)

—

Other Tax Systems are Available

(although there are only 2 really workable/used ones)

• The tax system that the UK (and most of the Western world) uses is the Progressive Tax System where you are taxed depending on what you earn. The more you earn, the more you’re taxed.
• Russia and much of Eastern Europe (Greece is considering it and there is a growing movement in the US to implement a variation on it) have a Flat Tax System where everyone gets taxed the same amount regardless of how much they earn.

—

I hate scaremongering, and I’m not an economist (nor, thank god, a trade unionist) so I’m not going to point you at any more stuff that might make you feel uncomfortable.

I do however like a fair argument and it seems to me that much of the country has far too high an opinion of itself as to how much it contributes (or does not) to the country’s economic status and what the country “owes” them as a result.

I have decommissioned the practitioneroftrance.com website, updated this site’s meta and title to be less hypnosis based and even changed my twitter name to @B_E_N_White rather than @ProffTrance

That’s not to say that I am going to remove all my previous stuff! It just means that I’m de-focussing: Acknowledging all my hypnosis and therapy interests and now integrating that knowledge and experience into my life going forward into new and interesting hobbies and experiences.

I will be keeping this site and updating it with thoughts and ideas and sharing any great or useful advice and learnings along the way.

If you want to check out my current project: kidmunication.com where I’m talking about communicating with children, it’d be great to see you there.

To my delight, he’s also included a whole load of free audio, video and PDF resources to go with it, including his “Hypnosis Without Trance” audio book. Now, I’ve been dying to get my hands on this for some time, so, with a couple of longish train journey coming up, I was relishing the thought of plugging in and getting to grips with hypnotic loops, the hypnotic partnership and the whole HWT thing.

I’m writing this on one of the said train journey’s (thanks to WordPress for iOS) and I have paused the book after only a few chapters.

Why? Because a throw away comment has completely changed my thought and frame of hypnosis and I am brimming with excitement at what this new understanding might mean!

James says that with the idea of traditional hypnosis comes the requirement to have a trance state that you must “deepen” and that this idea limits what hypnotic phenomena you can achieve because certain phenomena require a certain “depth”.

I think that any hypnotist who has actually hypnotised anyone will agree with me that some people don’t need as much depth to achieve things like hallucination while others can’t achieve the relatively simple phenomena of arm levitation despite great depth of trance.

The thing that has got me all excited is the idea that maybe the trance itself is a hypnotic phenomena.

Let that sink in for a moment…

When I consider that as a possibility all sorts of doors that I didn’t know were even there open up!

If trance is a phenomenon, then when we achieve other phenomena, we are actually stacking them together? What if some people can’t stack like that?

What if achieving trance is a convincer for the subject that they’re hypnotised? Or how about the other way round: that because they’re not feeling “tranced” that it’s not working…

If we dispense with the idea of trance as being a required milestone on the way to hypnosis, then engaging in what James calls the “Hypnotic Partnership” with the subject (although clearly I’m going to have to find another word to describe them now) becomes so much easier!

I bet that if budding hypnotists started with this as the frame around which to learn hypnosis, they’d find learning, practicing and engaging people in hypnosis sooo much easier!

I really can’t wait for the course and might have to start practicing this stuff before the date!

Right, I’m nearly back at Gravesend and I still haven’t gotten past chapter 2!

“So What.” you might ask.

Well…

As a change worker (it’s not entirely clear whether I can call myself a “therapist” under the new regulations), I need to make sure that my web based marketing material is accurate and truthful and does not mislead anybody who may read it. There are several pieces of guidance that may make you raise your eyebrow.

On Smoking Cessation Hypnotherapy

Holy smoke! So we can’t actually claim that someone has given up smoking even if they’ve told us that that they have. Seems like they don’t even want to believe the customers they’re so desperately trying to protect!

On Hypnotherapy

I have to say that this part I agree with and I’ve always maintained and included in my pre-talk on every hypnosis session that regardless of what we do in hypnosis, you will still need to make the conscious decision not to smoke. I don’t believe that hypnosis can help with the chemical side effects (cravings/withdrawals), it will help you deal with them when they occur, but it is not an effort free process on the part of the client.

On Weight loss through Hypnotherapy

And as an added extra, they immediately follow that with:

Interesting stuff. I wonder what that means for EFT and tapping…

If you want to read the full text on Hypnotherapy on the CopyAdvice (part of the ASA) website, then head to the CopyAdvice website though you’ll need to sign up (it’s free) to read it.

As I read this on the train from Gravesend to Durham the other day, I had to   re-read this sentence several times. Was it saying that the character was beset by dust and as a result considered it his enemy or was it that his enemy had been destroyed and was now dust and that he didn’t need to worry about them any more?

Putting aside the fact that there could well be some poor punctuation in the sentence, much like the classic description of a Panda “Panda: Eats, shoots and leaves”, it got me thinking about the importance of emphasis on our words and how that emphasis can   completely change the meaning of what we’re communicating.

In hypnosis and NLP, this is called “marking” where we deliberately embed suggestions in what we say and write by using things like pauses, punctuation and putting emphasis on specific words of phrases within an otherwise normal piece of speach or text.

In IEMT (see the glossary), one of the sentences I use regularly to help a client elicit a certain feeling is “When is the first time you can remember that feeling?” What I do is “mark” some of the words with emphasis in order to embed a command and what I actually end up saying looks more like “When is the first time you can remember that feeling?”.

Can you   see the difference? In asking a question, I am actually delivering a suggestion or embedded command that the client’s unconscious mind will pick up and act on (in order to make it truly effective I combine this with other subtle communications but that’s the art and science of psychology and one of the reasons I love it).

Returning to my example at the start of the post: “his enemy was dust.”

Now say the sentence out loud with the emphasis on each word in turn:
- HIS enemy was dust
- His ENEMY was dust
- His enemy WAS dust
- His enemy was DUST

Doesn’t the emphasis on the different words completely change the meaning of the sentence!

How much does the emphasis, be it pronunciation, punctuation, tempo, pitch, spelling, font etc. make on the interpretation of YOUR communication? Next time you’re in a public place and you can overhear people talking, why not listen out for those markers and see how you could have changed the meaning of the communication simply by stressing the same words in a different way or in a different place.

Andrew T Austin (with whom I studied Integral Eye Movement Therapy) is running a very exciting training course in London this month specifically on the metaphors of movement and how we represent stuck states and other problems or barriers in our personal and professional lives through the use of metaphors. As a therapist and business consultant I listen out for these metaphors and use my client’s own metaphors to help them make progress (metaphor of movement intended).

The videos here are by Andy and really got me excited about the course which is running in London on the 29th and 30th this month.

I believe there are a few spaces left, so if you are interested, drop me an email.

Now of course it’s easy for me, as an outside observer, to help my friend discover the problem and allow him to come up with a solution (phone them up and ask!), but I know we all have things in our lives that we want to do but don’t purely because we don’t know what’s involved.

“Hypnosis in Gravesend”

I’d always wanted to learn hypnosis but had never done anything about it because I’d no idea what was involved. One day I just happened to be in the right frame of mind and I casually Googled hypnosis training in Gravesend and guess what: There was a course running not far away and at a price and time I could afford. It didn’t take much thinking to sign up after that.

Fear holds us back from so many things, but so seldom do we realize that the “fear” is not in the doing or becoming whatever it is: it is the fear of the unknown process of getting there!

Think of something that you really want to do but haven’t. Get a new job? Go on a trans-European holiday? Learn a new language?

Now ask yourself what is it that is holding you back from that and what you would like to have happen.

Could it be that you don’t know what is available, how to organize it, where to go that is the problem? In other words; could be the mystery, the lack of knowledge, which is what you’re afraid of? It’s not the holiday or the job or the language that is scary is it, so it must be the organising of the holiday, the “finding” of the job and the fact that you don’t even know if there is somewhere nearby that even teaches languages.

Diminish the power of the unknown with knowledge

This year, why not choose one of those things that you always promise yourself you’d do and rather than promise yourself that you’ll do it, simply find out what is involved. Choose a starting point and go from there. I bet you’ll find it’s not as difficult as you imagine.