HypnoSummit Highlights

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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Fable Goodman, AKA Lawrie Shaw, wasn't a live session but an edited video that included a full, real-client demonstration of Hypnopictography. This was fascinating and just plain cool. The client, in trance, draws a picture with pencil and paper, then interprets it meaning and message. It continues with in-trance discovery of the connection and source, and in-trance release of the emotion and issue onto paper with another drawing. The sequence is so nicely structured that there is really no chance of failure. It doesn't matter if the client can draw or not! And, what great session take-away anchors and reminders: the pictures they drew.

Bonus: automatic writing and two other techniques. This was a great session, well edited and with good audio levels.

Content: 5 of 5
Structure: 5 of 5
Presentation and style: 4 of 5
Audio quality: 5 of 5
Video quality: 4 of 5
Handouts & Downloadables: none

NOTE: This session is currently hard to find in the Library Archives because it somehow ended up with a blank title. Click on the blank line between "Breathing Techniques as Hypnotic Inductions" and "Love, Medicine and Miracle, Part 2" to see Lawrie's Hypnopictography session.

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Patricia Scott gave a live session on a method that really caught my imagination: "Introduction to Dr. Preston's Library Technique." This metaphorical environment and process is fabulous training for hypnotherapists who want to get good at metaphor, and it is a powerful technique that Dr. Preston used with very high success. As she explained all the various details of the method, and she gives a nicely complete overview, it became clear to me that Dr. Preston had mastered some top-notch NLP techniques back before NLP was invented.

The Library is a place inside the client's imagination that is architected by the hypnotherapist, and can be used for simple age regression, issue clarification, issue dissolution, emotional discharge, solution mapping and appreciation, future pacing and a host of simple boosters for confidence, clarity, self-love and more. A very versatile method that can literally do-it-all in the hands of a creative hypnotherapist. It is a complete "platform" for transformational hypnotherapy, and it is very quick and easy for the client to re-enter in subsequent sessions.

She also talked about how Dr. Preston used very specific language techniques, employing and building expectation and repetition to best effectiveness, for example.

Dr. Preston's book, "Hypnosis: Medicine of the Mind: Hypnosis: Medicine of the Mind," which includes the Library technique, has gone into reprint and is available at Amazon.

Content: 5 of 5
Structure: 3 of 5
Presentation and style: 2 of 5 (this was her first live video session)
Audio quality: 4 of 5
Video quality: 3 of 5
Handouts & Downloadables: forthcoming, request by email.

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Sean Michael Andrews did a live session, including full demonstration on a subject, of "Using the Elman Induction in Your Practice." Sean has great energy and presence and was great about interacting with audience questions. Sean knows the Elman family, as I understand it, and so has wonderful stories about the famous Elman and his history and development of rapid-induction hypnosis.

Sean also went through the induction technique a second time, step-by-step, and gave tips and recovery methods for any step that fails with a client. This is really savvy and smooth calibrating with the client, and his methods will really help you be smooth and clean with the Elman induction. His success rate with this method is very high - he says 90% (even for beginners) first-pass success into deep hypnosis, and once you have practiced it, "it is very rare that a subject doesn't go into hypnosis." I can see why!

The first half of the session is the Elman stories and history, which are not only good stories, they are almost required (certainly expected to be known) history for hypnotherapists. The second half is the method and demonstrations.

A great session and I was glad to see it at HypnoSummit this year.

Content: 5 of 5
Structure: 5 of 5
Presentation and style: 5 of 5
Audio quality: 4 of 5
Video quality: 3 of 5 (some lighting issues, but you can see everything)
Handouts & Downloadables: none.

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There were other great sessions (more highlights to come in the next post), and a few sessions that were just canned video from web sites or "book appearances" with no real information of method. To be expected at any conference, really. Live sessions with demonstrations are the king of the hill, no doubt about it.

All in all, a great weekend and my mind is buzzing with new information, new techniques to try, great business ideas, and new books and courses to put on my professional learning list for the next six months.