Facts and Information about the Profession of Hypnotherapy

What you are about to read will help you gain a better understanding of hypnotism services and a clearer way of thinking about using them. Our purpose is to provide you with the necessary information and understanding to properly evaluate hypnotism services for your particular use.

Benefits of Hypnosis

A wonderful quality of hypnosis is that you can be taught to use it alone, at will, and without complicated procedures. This fact makes many benefits readily available throughout your lifetime.

Hypnosis can be used to further any human endeavor.
With hypnosis you can:

• Develop and express awareness and intuition.
• Feel worthwhile, self-confident, zestful.
• Gain a happier home life; become a better husband, wife, parent, or friend.
• Acquire the ability to relax completely in any situation.
• Make better decisions.
• Improve concentration.
• Overcome procrastination.
• Increase the quality of your emotional expression.
• Reduce conflict and stress.
• Promote health and well-being.
• Regain your natural ability to sleep easily.
• Sell yourself, your ideas, and your services with confidence and enthusiasm.
• Increase your income.
• Attract and maintain worthwhile friendships.
• Discover your negative mental patterns and how they affect you.
• Free yourself from hostility, resentment, fear of rejection.
• Select your goals in life; chart your course for their realization.
• Program your mind with positive mental concepts and success attitudes.
• Develop the ability to construct mental images easily.

Purposes

Hypnotic services are available in four major forms and eight application areas.
The four major forms are:

1. individual consultations
2. small group setting such as weight-loss and stop smoking programs
3. self-hypnosis classes
4. books and recordings

The eight areas of application are:

1. mental and emotional health
2. physical health
3. psychic and spiritual development
4. creative and educational endeavors
5. athletics and sports motivation
6. business interests
7. legal concerns
8. use of imagery to achieve personal goals

Hypnotherapists offering private sessions usually provide recommendations for the purchase of books and recordings. Some hypnotherapists provide both group and private sessions.

Providers

Those providing hypnotic services specifically in the eight application areas are:

1. Mental and emotional health: psychotherapists; hypnotherapists; marriage, family, and child counselors; clinical social workers; rehabilitation, alcoholism, and career counselors; and an array of Human Potential specialists
2. Physical health: physicians, natural childbirth coaches, chiropractors, nutrition consultants, dentists, holistic health practitioners, massage practitioners and body workers, acupuncturists, etc.
3. Spiritual development: hypnotherapists who incorporate a spiritual philosophy and a belief in a higher power into their therapeutic framework, and who may have religious affiliations such as priest, minister, rabbi, pastoral counselor
4. Creative and educational endeavors: music, art, writing, speed reading, foreign language, and public speaking teachers; and presenters of general self-improvement programs
5. Athletics and sports motivation: athletic coaches and trainers; and sports instructors for enthusiasts in golf, tennis, marksmanship, bowling, etc.
6. Business interests: Sales and management consultants focus upon increasing sales motivation and improving interpersonal relationships with hypnosis

Hypnotherapists assist clients in using imagery to:

(a) gain insight
(b) find new solutions
(c) restructure old, restrictive, limiting ideas
(d) intensify positive feelings
(e) eliminate negative feelings
(f) strengthen a sense of self-control
(g) develop new, healthy habits
(h) reduce or eliminate a symptom
(i) discover initial causes of problems
(j) re-educate and reprogram the sub-conscious mind
(k) rediscover their “Divine Nature.”

Education and Training of Hypnotherapists

Throughout the United States, hypnosis career training programs must be approved or licensed by the appropriate agency of that state. For example, the latest major update in the law in California was Assembly Bill 48 that went into effect in California in 2010, required that training schools for hypnotists in nondegree programs be licensed by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE). One intent of this legislation is to protect the integrity of diplomas conferred by privately-supported educational institutions. Hypnotherapy schools in California are required to be licensed by this agency unless they qualify for an exemption.

To gain BPPE approval, the schools must meet specific standards for their classes, instructors and informational materials, and they must follow prescribed standards for rules, facilities, record keeping, and insurance.

The primary organization that has been responsible for the recognition and regulation of hypnotherapy training in the USA is the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners (ACHE). This organization is a non-profit state-chartered, non-profit professional corporation that has established standards for specialized education and maintains standards of practice and a code of ethics. In addition, A.C.H.E. provides examination for hypnotherapists who have met the qualifications for specialized education, training, and experience. Successful completion of the examination leads to certification as a hypnotherapist.

For examination and certification by ACHE, a Hypnotherapist must be trained in a school approved by the ACHE The ACHE only approves schools that have programs of at least 200 hours of classroom training in hypnotherapy.

Certification as a Clinical Hypnotherapist requires not less than 300 hours of classroom training and is the highest level of certification awarded.

In 1976, the Hypnotism Training Institute of Los Angeles, in Glendale, Calif., became the first state-licensed Hypnotherapy Institute in the USA, offering up to 250 hours of resident training.

Graduates of approved schools receive diplomas in hypnotherapy and, if they provide hypnotherapy services to the general public, are considered to be professional hypnotherapists. Hypnotherapists may practice hypnotherapy throughout the USA and are restricted by the Medical Practices Act and the Psychology Licensing Act of the states in which they practice.

Many healing arts and counseling professionals receive their hypnotherapy training at the ACHE-approved schools.

Selecting the Best Services for You

Your selection of services will depend on your interests and/or needs.

If you are interested in a new career, or wish to use hypnotherapy to enrich your current career. Click here to access a list of ACHE-approved hypnotherapy schools. Individual schools will send you their literature on request. After a thoughtful appraisal of school catalogs, you will be better equipped to make a decision as an informed consumer.

If you are interested in having a skill that you can use to facilitate your endeavors for the rest of your life, learn to hypnotize yourself. We recommend that you also learn how to assist others, and how to have others assist you into self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis gives you much more flexibility in the variety of beneficial uses to which you can put the hypnotic state. These skills can best be learned in seminar settings or by individual instruction.

The use of hypnosis under many guises is growing rapidly. The more skill you have in self-hypnosis, the more you can be aware of negative self-suggestions as well as the negative input from others, and the better you can make use of its positive benefits. Your mind is your own; you can take full charge of it through developing hypnotic skills.

Recommended Books

• Transforming Therapy™ by Gil Boyne. Hardbound, 416 pages, includes motivational audio cassette for hypnotherapists
• Hypnotherapy by Dave Elman. Hardbound, 336 pages
• Analytical Hypnotherapy by E. Barnett, MD. Hardbound, 495 pages
• Regression Hypnotherapy by Randal Churchill. Hardbound, 427 pages
• Miracle of Mind Power by Dan Custer.
• Hypnosis and Accelerated Learning by Pierre Clement, 135 pages
• Become the Dream™ by Randal Churchill. Hardbound, 280 pages
• Self-Hypnosis and Other Mind Expanding Techniques by Charles Tebbetts, 139 pages
• Hypno-Vision by Lisette Scholl, 240 pages
• Hypnotism and Mysticism of India by Ormond McGill. Hardbound, 203 pages
• Healing Power of Faith by Will Oursler, 366 pages