Phoning the nearest garage resulted in me having to deal with a grumpy and reluctant mechanic who clearly didn’t really want my business or know anything about customer service. honestly, it amazes me that they can get away with the sort of surly and unpleasant demeanour and still be in business!

So widening the search slightly, I selected a company called Auto22 who had their company logo and web site address on their Google maps presence (always a good sign in my book). Despite being after closing, they took my call and were very helpful and understanding about the situation I found myself in and arranged for someone to come out first thing to collect the offending vehicle.

All fixed, they came and collected me and en-route to their garage I got chatting to the service advisor (Mark) who explained that they are actually a social enterprise, able to invest all their profits in supporting young people in gaining work experience opportunities, work placements, apprenticeships and eventually getting their first job.

Catch22: a charity for young people

The parent charity is: Catch22 and their website says:

“Catch22 is a national charity that works with young people who find themselves in difficult situations. Whatever the reason for their situation, we help them out. We work with their families and their communities wherever and whenever young people need us most; in schools, on the streets, in the home, at community centres, shopping centres, in police stations, and in custody”

Auto22: a social enterprise

It turns out that Auto22 is one of the mechanisms that the charity use to enable young people to gain education (they have a classroom in the next door Catch22 building where they are taught maths, English and more practical things) and provide hands on mechanics training with the aim of placing their graduates into apprenticeships and actual work placements.

I could not have been happier to be handing over money for the work on my car and the whole experience was easy and honest and I feel good that I’ve been able to contribute to a charity that directly benefits the local Gravesend community. Plus I’ve got a working car to get to my sister’s wedding AND a reliable garage to get the car serviced and MOT’d later in the year so I am more than happy to recommend their services here, plus its such an unusual and yet fantastic idea that its worth reading about anyway.

Doing something to support Catch22 and Auto22

I’m jumping out of a plane on the 28th of August, so please read my post about it and then contribute a little something to help. Thanks:

http://www.benwhite.me/2010/07/going-crazy-for-what-you-believe-in/

Recommended: happy, smart, efficient and good for the community

Auto22 offers: servicing and repair on all makes of cars and light vans, MOTs, and tyre and exhaust replacements.   All work is carried out by professionally qualified and experienced technicians using the latest diagnostic equipment, and they offer a free customer drop off and pick up service within a three mile radius.

Website: www.Auto22.co.uk

Call them: 01474 362 413

Hypnotist Ben White demonstrating the power of imagination

With a background in business analysis and customer relationship management, one could say I’ve been helping businesses get to grips and install better ways of thinking for a long time. Throw into the mix hypnosis, NLP, IEMT and Provocative Change Works and you find yourself reading about someone who achieves change with people individually and as an organisation. On this site, you’ll discover the personal side of Ben and if you continue reading, you see he’s pretty dedicated to finding the best way to enable you to tap into the inherent ability to change within all of us.

After my first hypnosis course I headed straight for my local post office and posted a note in the window: “Trainee hypnotist requires volunteers...” Needless to say I was literally inundated with three requests to help all of whom I worked with successfully. What a great start!

Hypnotically, I have trained with Freddy and Anthony Jacquin of the UK Hypnotherapy Training Collage on rapid hypnosis techniques as well as using hypnotic and NLP techniques with your children. This excellent series of techniques that will work with any aged child (really! I’ve used this stuff on my daughter since she was 1) to gently help in many areas from Attention Deficit Disorder to exam nerves and even simply family relations (Freddy’s branded the techniques: Potensharu).

I have studied body language and the now extremely popular Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and in 2009, I certified as a practitioner for an amazing technique called Integral Eye Movement Therapy created by Andrew T Austin. IEMT combines various NLP techniques with a structured interview approach to achieve some of the most incredible change work that simple counselling would take many many sessions to achieve.

I have trained with Norman D Vaughton (who studied with Ernest Rossi for many years) in Ideodynamic hypnosis. Norman’s approach also utilises one of my favourite techniques: Clean Language and is used to avoid polluting or influencing your processes with the my own expectations or presuppositions. The technique is therefore extremely respectful and gentle and yet very powerful in gaining you both conscious and unconscious insight and in generating lasting and sometimes dramatic change!

As you can see I’ve done quite a lot of learning!

What I am passionate about is that the power to change is within all of us and if you want to change: you can

.

Simples.

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Look me up using the Find Me Online section on the right, or simply drop me an email direct.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Ben

Whenever we learn or are taught something new, we often try it out and indeed most any form of training will have you do exercises to practice the new skill. What I find interesting is that, as someone who does a lot of self-learning, I am often testing out things I learn or theories I concoct in real life and I have to be extremely careful when I consider something a success or something a failure.

Most of us, at one time or another, have tried something new and we’ve fallen at the first hurdle, thrown our hands in the air and scoffed at the so-called experts who were clearly wrong as it demonstrably doesn’t work! I watch my daughter do this regularly and it is both challenging to encourage her to have another go and delightful to watch her eventially achieve it (normally after walking off and only coming back when she thinks I’m not watching). 

As adults while we are aware of the concept of perseverance and not judging a book by its cover, I still regularly see both clients and myself making these same mistakes. What is also fascinating is that we also do this in reverse:

We give something a go and when it works first time: pronounce it incredible success and champion whatever it is to any and all who will listen.

So when we fail at something, we have learnt by now that we should give it a few more goes before writing it off, but do we do the same when we succeed?

I wonder how many times we have succeeded the first time we tried something new, pronounced success and then had a series of failures and rather than criticise the new thing, we assume that we are doing something else wrong and embark upon some detailed analysis of everything except the new thing? After all: you clearly demonstrated that it works… didn’t you?

Food for thought and it certainly made my conversation companion go “hmmmm” yesterday.

Now as you read that previous sentence you may or may not have noticed that it seemed to have a rhythm and flow in the words and statements because I was employing the use of the words of power which means that after a while of listening or reading these words, the conscious mind starts to just allow the words to flow through from one side to the other without getting the full scruitiny enjoyed by a normal sentence which doesn’t employ these words in this way because the natural and continuous flow of the language and words in this way is much easier to allow the unconscious mind to process them because  our short term memories which is of course a function of the conscious mind can be commanded by your unconscious mind to change and as the words continue to flow from conscious to unconsious because your unconscious is capapble of processing an amazing amount of information without needing the imput of the conscious mind and I wonder if your conscious mind is starting to wonder which words in this text are the power words and perhaps what happened to all the punctuation.

The hmuan brian is aslo albe to udsenrtnda colmpex pasasges of txet lkie tihs.

And because we are able to process this kind of language where the letters are not necessarily in the right place it means that we are also capable of understanding and processing the meanings and understandings from entire paragraphs and literature where words are missing and in the wrong order and the wonderful thing about your unconscious is that you’re able to process both the surface meaning and the subsurface or unconscious meaning and whether you choose to consciously or unconsciously allow that flow from conscious to unconsious can happen because we are programmed this way to benefit the most from being able to do things consciously and unconsciously.

Now we’ve all heard of the four stages of learning from unconsciously incompetent, to unconsciously competent which means that if we are able to learn new things and make changes on an unconscious level because we evolved this incredible ability I wonder just how limitless our power really is.

Just a few conscious and unconscious thoughts. Enjoy.

Ben

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There is a kind of standard statistic in hypnosis that (whether through suggestion or genuine experience) most hypnotists will agree on:

About 20% of the population is highly susceptible

About 60% of the population can be hypnotised

About 20% of the population cannot be hypnotised

Of course the actual numbers change by 5% or so depending on who you ask and which text book you’re quoting, but there is definitely agreement that some people are highly hypnotisable and some people are simply not worth the hours and hours it would take to create hypnosis making them, to all intents and purposes: un-hypnotisable (one of my early hypnosis subjects took 10 sessions before he was able to exhibit trance phenomena!).

This new research by Peter Naish of the Open University in Milton Keynes suggests that those people who are highly susceptible to hypnosis have a tendency to use the right side of their brains more than their left. The right side of the brain is the side that is typically associated with creativity, imagery and and the left with analysis and logical thinking. If you’re interested in what this might mean in other parts of your life, try a quick Google. I found this article which is very interesting (albeit somewhat student orientated), about how we should learn to study using the right (sorry) correct methods to match our hemisphere weighting…

This would agree with my experience that creative people tend to better at hypnosis than those who are more analytical and logical in the way they think and act. I have learnt that someone who comes to me for help (or while I’m doing street hypnosis) with colourful clothes or hair, an interesting clothing style or generally seem like they are happy to see where the wind takes them that they’re going to be great at hypnosis

My friend Parkey is an excellent example of someone who struggles with hypnosis because of his “analytical” brain and you can read the highs and lows of his journey to achieve hypnosis on his blog here. There is some good news for analytical people though: Find yourself someone able to do some transcranial magnetic stimulation on your left hemisphere which (temporarily) reduces left hemisphere brain activity. Apparently you’re much more likely to experience hypnosis.

One thing that amuses me about this is that scientists by their very nature, tend to be analytical people and this may explain why hypnosis research is not as frequent as it might be. After all, why research something that you can’t experience? Or at least not in the way that some of the highly susceptible people can…

I have added a page with my YouTube channel embedded in it so you can now watch the videos that I’ve recorded. You will see the page link at the top of the site next to the link to www.PractitionerOfTrance.com

If you want to find me directly in YouTube, search for “nedbloggs” and you’ll find my videos.

Have a good one.

Ben

Being a cold December evening, the place was not quite as busy as it was at the last meet, but it soon filled up once the evening kicked off. As with last time, there were a good mix of magicians and hypnotists and one chap who specialised in balloons and arrived carrying a balloon man which instantly got the attention of all the people in the place! (tip: balloon man = people come to you)

I arrived a little early and wasted no time in getting chatting to the chaps running a little BBQ stand in the corner and lo-and-behold I had my first subject. Sadly though the English – Italian language barrier was I think, just a little too much to get any good phenomena out of him, but he said he felt wonderfully relaxed. Scratch one and on to the next.

Of course, no hypnosis course is complete without at least one somnambulist and this one had two! needless to say they had been thoroughly enjoying being on the receiving end of heaps of suggestions and fun all day and moving from the hotel to the bar was no excuse to stop. Soon there were guitar heroes and X Factor finalists in our midst as well as some fantastically crafty “magic” tricks.

As all the visitors to this bar had to walk past us where we were in the garden, we were able to open every group of people coming in and let them know that we were here if they wanted to go and get drinks and come back for some hypnosis experiences all completely free, safe and fun. Once we started doing this; like a conveyor belt, more and more people were coming outside to experience a little hypnosis and I think at one point I counted five separate inductions happening at once!

It was great to meet a few new hypnotists and see some cool stuff in action and I was even able to have a go at James Tripp’s “Hypnosis Without Trance” stuff also known as “waking hypnosis”.

Sadly, I had to head off before it got too late as it takes me an hour and a half to get home from the bar, so I left the team in full-swing with more and more people coming forward for an incredible experience. Next time I shall have to book myself a hotel so that I can properly enjoy it as reports afterwards say that it only got better after I left! I hope that’s not a reflection on my presence at the place

“STOP LISTENING TO THIS CON-MAN AND OPEN YOUR EYES OR I’LL F@#&ING HIT YOU!”

This (along with several other choice sentiments) were aimed, not at me, but at my excellent subject and his friends by another friend of theirs while he was thoroughly enjoying a great hypnosis experience that I’ve already written about (here). I should point out that this person was not hypnotised at any point during the evening.

This is an abreaction.

Many in the hypnosis community won’t agree with this statement believing that, as is taught by most hypnotherapy courses and books, an abreaction has to happen while IN a state of hypnosis.

“A physical movement or an emotional outburst as a reaction to a suggestion while in the state of hypnosis.” www.hypnosis.edu

During my hypnosis training I was taught all about hypnotic abreactions – occasions where the hypnotised client spontaneously experiences an incredibly intense negative emotional state. This might be caused by a sudden regression to a past event or simply an overwhelming negative emotion. Either is easily dispelled by following carefully practiced and delivered suggestions easing the client away from or out of the horror they are experiencing/re-living.

Since my IEMT training with Andrew T Austin (the technique’s creator) I have had to revise both my definition and my approach to abreactions. Andrew taught all of us on the course about the three stage abreaction which is detailed below and since I also practice IEMT as a treatment it became important that I learned how to deal with kind of non-hypnosis abreaction.

3 Stage abreaction

In a therapy setting (not necessarily using hypnosis) the three stage abreaction is generally experienced as an escalation of emotion by the client following (roughly) the stages below:

1. Verbal warning – “I don’t like what you’re doing“
2. Emotional threat – “You’re making me upset!“
3. Physical escalation – [pokes you in the face] “OI! I SAID F@*&ING STOP IT!”

These abreactions can and should be used and those who support the provocative therapy approach actively seek to create these situations. From my IEMT point of view, I love this as you can immediately launch in to a “so on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being really bad, just how strong is this feeling you are experiencing now?” and then quickly help them overcome it and expose whatever it is that is causing the problem underneath. Dealing with it when you’re in the middle of a bar with loads of people watching on and enjoying seeing someone being (and also enjoying) hypnotised is quite a different matter and I have to say that in the end, closing time and generally leaving the bar was the only way to sort out the situation.

It was certainly very interesting to experience an abreaction (albeit unpleasant and slightly embarassing) so strong in a public place, and I hope that the person involved felt better about it the next day. For those hypnotists who read my blog, I hope that you will realise that abreactions do not just happen when your subject is directly in hypnosis in front of you and that it can take many forms and manifest in many different ways. The rote 9 word abreaction fix is not going to cut the mustard in all cases and indeed in some, it is to be actively managed in order to HELP the therapy!

http://www.benwhite.me/glossary/

Its by no means a full list, but it should get you started.