The May session took place during a Bank Holiday weekend and was, consequently, lightly attended. (I have looked up all the 2009 Bank Holidays and put them in my Outlook so that won't happen again!)

We had a look at how to treat Fibromyalgia and, the fact is, there is now way to treat fibromyalgia just as there is no way to treat nail-biting or depression or eating control or nicotine addiction. Doctors treat diseases. Therapists treat people. Whether you treat this person (who happens to have fibromyalgia) using direct suggestion, or an analytical protocol, or guided visualization, or take a behavioural approach depends on who your patient is and what they need to get them to their chosen outcome.

It is a BIG mistake to think that in order to treat the more exotic disorders your patients bring you, you have to have some precious and closely guarded recipe in the form of a magic script. You don't. You need to be able to hypnotise your patient. If you can do that, there are myriad ways in which you can deliver the desired result.

Along the way, an interesting point came up. One attendee is having trouble with a patient who was making progress but has slipped right back where they were at the beginning. They said they couldn't get IMRS so I asked how they knew their patient was hypnotised. They knew because of the things that HAD worked. 

There are lots of therapies and lots of ways to get positive results. Just because you have a positive result does not mean it was hypnotism. It seems daft to have to say it but plenty of people have done successful therapy without hypnotising anyone, ever.

People are always interested in rapid inductions and usually oblige with a demonstration. My first volunteer was a chap, Terry, I had not met previously and did not know. I still don't know how he heard of me. He was a great hypnotee. I went for a wrist-lift and knew immediately that he was going to be a great hypnotee. And he was. After the first induction I woke him up. He said he'd thought he could open his eyes and had tried but found that he couldn't. Then I got a sans-hypno arm levitation just by pointing at his hand and lifting my point.

Then at the break I tried something I had never done before. I told Terry that when I clapped my hands he'd get up and open the door (30 feet away) but that I wanted him to use all his will-power, all his conscious determination to defy me and stay in his seat. (He wasn't hypnotised, and I hadn't given him any suggestions about responding to post-hypnosis commands.)

I wanted to try this experiment because so many hypnotherapists have FAQs on their websites which say that hypnosis is a state of relaxation akin to being engrossed in a book, in which there is no loss of control and you cannot be made to do anything against your will. I know that is not true, and thought I'd have a go at proving it.

I clapped my hands and waited. Eventually Terry said he felt he ought to get up and open the door, and then did so. And the next time I clapped my hands, he did it again.

Hypnosis is NOT a natural state we drift in and out of several times a day. It's a state where the patient's reality is whatever the hypnotist says it is. 

We also had a look at why all the clinical research based on the Stanford Hypnotic Sensitivity Scale (SHSS) is probably flawed (because the SHSS demands social compliance).

The November '07 session was filmed and a DVD is available.

You can read feedback from previous participants, here.

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