Rick Collingwood
Hypnosis has now been diffused into many sub modalities such as NLP, which profess to be hypnosis but are not hypnosis at all. By trying to put hypnosis into an explainable framework, or treating it as an academic procedure, the art has been largely destroyed. Any hypnotist who knows the truth of the modality will tell you that genuine hypnosis is indeed just as much an art as what it is a learned process. Of course there is the academic aspect, but academia by necessity is evidence based, and much of what happens during, or results from, hypnosis cannot be measured by academic means, so over the years I’ve heard a lot of nonsense such as it is just the power of the imagination. Try getting a person suffering the agony of bone cancer to imagine it away. It’s also often said that we can’t make anybody do anything in hypnosis that they wouldn’t normally do, to me this means the believer hasn’t been trained properly, or hasn’t bothered to build upon what they have learned.
No matter what the academics say, or what the philosophy or the curriculum of any teaching institution may be, a good hypnotist is like a good driver, the basics are learned from books, observation, and attending training. However the skills come from passion and the skill necessary confidence comes from practice. Then there is the born factor, how much you have it in you or how much you don’t.
Rick Collingwood – Australia’s Premiere Hypnotist and Hypnosis Trainer.
