After a study of the results of Indiana's regulatory board created in 1997, the state legislature recently passed a new law the repeals the 1997 restrictions on using hypnosis, NLP, and guided imagery.

Watch this video of Bruce Bonnet, the President of the Hypnotherapists' Union Local 472 announcing the news.

Mr. Bonnet points out that while this Indiana law change doesn't directly affect hypnotherapists in other states, it sets a good example for other states considering restrictive licensing of hypnotherapy.

AAPH encourages professional hypnotherapists to join the union if they can; Local 472 continues to be an excellent source of legal information and support for the industry as well as the most powerful arm of lobbying for support of our profession.

I became a healing coach after experiencing undiagnosed chronic pain for six years. With or without a diagnosis, I realized that the medical profession had only one cure for my pain—PAIN PILLS. I made the choice to find my own cure! Eighty to Ninety thousand dollars later, I decided to start my own business helping people to heal, and with faster and less expensive methods for changing their health.

So, what is a Healing Coach?

A healing coach is an educational-resource-person who helps clients explore their health holistically and to design a “life plan” aimed at eliminating disease, chronic pain, depression, migraines, weight issues, and much more. A healing coach will help you examine your health and teach you about the physical, mental-emotional, and spiritual aspects of yourself that can, and do, aid in your healing.

A hypnotherapy session always begins with a client sharing their concerns, problems, or issues at hand, just as one would do to begin a regular talk-therapy session. The hypnotherapist listens and takes careful notes to insure that key words or phrases spoken by the client be used during the trance-state portion of the session. By attending to the exact verbiage, it takes the client deeper into their emotions where their real work begins.

An induction into a state of hypnosis can involve many different techniques, however, the goal is to bring the client into deeper and deeper states of relaxation. It’s common for a client to feel like they are not hypnotized, as the conscious mind remains active throughout the entire session. The more a client allows themselves to let go into deeper states of relaxation, the more beneficial the session. The ironic thing is, though, most clients don’t call a hypnotherapist unless they are ready to do the deep work of their soul. So relax and enjoy!

The number one thing you need to be successful in your own business as a hypnotherapist is confidence. When you are talking to people about hypnosis and yourself, confidence is the magic element that will engage their curiosity.

This downloadable article covers eight important factors for building your confidence as a hypnotherapist, and then using that confidence to grow your business.

Just click here to download your copy!

Scott Sandland is the founder of Hypnothoughts.com and the co-founder of the HypnoSummit conferences. He's also a hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy instructor. He's making great contributions to the industry - Thanks, Scott! - and we found his new YouTube channel.

It's a new channel, so it isn't loaded with content yet, but he's got a great start and a fascinating video on Covert Pain in Hypnotherapy that gives you a great sense of Scott's style and the great wealth of background knowledge and ongoing study he brings to students, clients and the industry.

The 21st century is all about lifelong learning, and YouTube channels are becoming an excellent resource for continuing education and learning. As an example of the "video encyclopedia" power of YouTube, check out the impressive related videos list (right-side column) when viewing Scott's video on covert pain hypnotherapy in the native (non-channel) YouTube interface. This is a significant improvement over just a year ago.

A little more about YouTube

Epoch Times has this nice, short article on the history and notables of using hypnotherapy to research past lives.

Approaches to Reincarnation Research

I liked it for its concise content and giving a number of researcher names and books that make threads to follow to learn more (Google those!)

The spring 2010 Hypnosummit was this past weekend, and once again, it was another very worthwhile event. I'll highlight some of the sessions I enjoyed the most. Those of you who attended with a Gold pass, you can go to the Library Archives area and view recordings of any of the sessions for the next three weeks.

I mostly concentrated on the live sessions this year, so I could interact with the speakers and ask questions. The technology is slowly improving, and in his Key Note, Scott Sandland, founder and key organizer of the Hypnosummit, promised many more improvements before the fall summit. I was a bit disappointed that the software hadn't evolved more, and there were some annoying audio-dropout problems. Such is the lot with new technology, however.

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Science News brings us an article from October 2009 by Susan Gaidos titled, THE MESMERIZED MIND.

The article does a nice job of dismissing some of the common Hollywood myths about hypnosis while also talking about how labs and studies are now using hypnosis as a tool to study the brain. There is a great image comparing the brain activity of a hypnotized person vs. the same task and responses from a non-hypnotized brain.

You know the good old "stuck hand" routine? They've mapped it to neural activity and paths in the brain in real-time. From the article:

By rerouting motor signals to the precuneus, hypnosis appeared to decouple the typical relationship between brain areas that generate the signals for hand movement and the areas that carry out such movements. Subjects who were not hypnotized and were asked to fake paralysis showed no such disconnect between these regions.

A fascinating read, and well worth adding to your bibliographic references for clients researching hypnosis, or perhaps as a link on your web site under the "About Hypnosis" page.

Most professional hypnotherapists are small business people, and small business skills are just as important to a successful hypnotherapy business as trance skills and people skills.

However, while we've trained in the trance skills at school with teachers, the classes probably didn't include many hours of business skills. Business skills are simultaneously simple ("just do it") and complex (do what, when and why, and how much?)

There is a fabulous web site now available that will help any small business person figure out the big-picture plan with powerful strength of direction and specificity. It's called "Good Little Biz", at http://goodlittlebiz.com.

There you will find videos of Marsha Shenk, the site's creator and owner, explaining how to work though seven worksheets of questions to answer for yourself.

Whenever a person wants to look into the future, even if only for a year, a number of approaches come to light. What source do we activate to conduct such endeavors? Tea leaves, a crystal ball, tarot cards, throwing bones, psychic readers, remote viewing and clairvoyant numerology are all possibilities that have left humanity with proven results.

Past and present cultures rely on predicting the future. Most noted are indigenous tribes of the Hopi, Maya, Chinese, Hindu, African and Australian Aborigines.

One thing we do know for sure is that ‘we are the sum total of our entire past”. Present futurists such as David Icke, Jim Marrs, and Jesse Ventura glitter the future of conspiracy theories while in the past we have the predictions of Edgar Cayce and Nostradamus. Even the ‘70s popular past life hypnotist Dick Sutphen conducts present weekly interviews on his Sirius Radio show “Dick Sutphen’s Metaphysical World”. (Recently I concluded my fourth one-hour show with him, looking to more.)