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

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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

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…

“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!

One of the many thing I love about these buildings are their staircases: massive and expansive main staircases made of ancient oak that has been beautifully polished over decades of occupants and visitors alike treading the stairs one step at a time, running their hands up and down the rails and before that the years of servants polishing and caring for all that wood until it is all but black. The feeling of all the ‘life’ that they have experienced only adds to the feeling of majesty that they generate and even the creak of each uneven board and that wonderful ‘old house’ smell in my nose helps complete the experience.

The grand staircase at Longleat house

There are even a couple of truly magnificent servants’ staircases that I can think of and one in particular that we found on a trip to Normandy, France last year that is made of pink brick (although originally it would have been plastered) which spirals down some four floors with the bricks so beautifully spiralling and arching over the head of the visitor as it traverses each floor of the châteaux that it’s quite breath-taking (see the photo I took of it below):

Some staircases are truly magnificent!

I think that it is because of my love of old houses and their staircases that my preferred deepener for hypnosis is the use of the classic ‘staircase’ deepener and I draw heavily on my personal library of magnificent staircases in order to help my hypnotic subjects create a suitably comfortable and feature-rich imagining which can lead on to whatever is required next.

Why don’t you take a moment now to go inside your memory and find a staircase that you remember well. Spend a minute or two to remember what it looks like looking down the stairs… Why not remember walking down it and the feelings you experienced as you took each step… What was the flooring like to walk on? Is there an echo in the space or just the gentle sound of your clothing rustling? What’s on the walls? Is it paint, wallpaper or are there even pictures? Can you remember running your hand down the hand rail as you descend?

As the hypnotist, I take the trip down the stairs with my subject every time and every time I find I’m in a relaxed and clear headed state of mind ready to guide my subject on the next part of their hypnotic journey. I even use it myself on those nights when I’m struggling to get to sleep.

If you’re a fan of stairs, why not checkout the dubiously titled (although perfectly “safe”) www.stairporn.org. I’s not known about it before this post (I was looking for suitable staircase pictures), but it does seem that there are others out there like me who enjoy a good staircase.