It was great to be back in Italy a couple of weeks ago and helping out as a Teaching Assistant on the Verzieri Sanctum’s Transpersonal Hypnotherapy Course. There’s always a positive energy within the Park, the Group and the surrounding hills.
While I was there, we were using and practising a Transpersonal approach to hypnotherapy and healing. And as we were working together, it made me reflect how far hypnotherapy has progressed from its origins, and how it can be a very different experience from how the public still imagines it to be.
Transpersonal Vs Directive: Why Should The Client Care?
Well, clients still carry assumptions about what hypnotherapy is – picked up from the media and films – based on approaches that are quite old now. In the past, hypnotherapy was far more Directive. Which is to say that there was an expectation on the part of the Hypnotherapist and the client that (a) the Hypnotherapist somehow had all the answers and (b) the Hypnotherapist was capable of “reprogramming” the client’s brain and over-riding their free will.
In Directive therapy, the therapist whispers a helpful instruction to the client such as: “You are changing negative eating patterns into new and positive patterns. The change takes place easily and effortlessly.” And – in theory – the client, in a suggestible state absorbs the instructions into their subconscious and starts demonstrating the desired behavioural change.
And this sometimes works very well.
But what if a part of the client’s conscious mind is screaming: “easily and effortlessly? I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word you’re saying!”
Or they don’t like being told what to do by anyone. It’s also not unheard of for a client to fear the process: “What if the hypnotherapist implants a secret suggestion in my brain?” The absence of any apparent free will in this approach can be a very frightening idea. And these concerns are valid.
But as I say, things have moved on, and hypnotherapists today have more tools in their toolbox.
Transpersonal Is A Different Animal
So what is “Transpersonal” Hypnotherapy? At its most basic, it is a type of hypnotherapy that prioritises the client’s inner knowing. Transpersonal assumes that the client already has powerful answers to their questions sitting inside them, which just need to be excavated. And the Hypnotherapist has a more humble role in proceedings. They are there to guide the client into a trance state and then give them the space to find the answers they need from within themselves. Transpersonal Hypnotherapists suggest and react to what is unfolding rather than seek to implant. And if they anchor a suggestion, it is one that has arisen out of the client’s mind in the first place.
Does Transpersonal Hypnotherapy also connect the client with their Superconscious mind, Archetypal behavioural patterns and Source (God)? Well, I believe so. To my way of thinking, the Superconscious is accessible and is where we get some of our most profound answers from.
But frankly who cares what I believe? For some therapists and clients, “spirituality” is a massive turn off. And in fact, Transpersonal Hypnotherapy as it was developed by Charles Tebbetts and Roy Hunter just meant connecting to, and awakening to, (very human) Sub-Personalities within our mind which we can’t normally reach.
Ultimately, what counts are the results. And I’ve found that the more empowered the client feels, the more likely they are to relax into the experience and really discover what certain parts of their mind are desperate to communicate to them. And as I was yet again reminded of in Italy, the mind (however we define it and map it) can offer our conscious selves some very powerful realisations if we just give it the space to breath, and to communicate.
So transpersonal hypnotherapy is special, and it is empowering.
Maybe the answers that have been eluding you up to now are actually sitting within you, waiting to be unlocked?
If you are interested in a free chat to find out more out Transpersonal Hypnotherapy, Past Life Regression or even Astrological Natal Chart readings, email me at: [email protected]