Hypnotherapy
Training in London and Sheffield
0800 4587813 or 0114 2351985
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Hypnotherapy
Training in London and Sheffield
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Hypnotherapy training - frequently asked questions and general informationWe have noted here some of the more common concerns that prospective hypnotherapy and NLP students have. If you want to know more about what hypnotherapy is please see our hypnotherapy FAQs. Please contact us if you want to know more. Contents What
does 'accreditation' mean?
A
course that is accredited has been examined by a professional body to
see if it meets their minimum standards. Variously, training will be assessed
in terms of content, whether it meets National Occupational Standards,
learning outcomes, the qualifications and experience of the trainers,
commitment to supervision and continuing professional development of the
students and trainers, clear communication of fees and refund policy,
whether the trainers permit the accrediting body to inspect their training,
whether the training meets a minimum number of contact and homework hours,
and whether the trainers abide by a code of ethics. top Qualifications and experience of the trainers... At minimum, trainers should, of course, be qualified hypnotherapists. Some trainers have higher level academic qualifications. We taught psychology to BSc Psychology and BA Nursing students for 3 years before training hypnotherapists. If you think psychology and understanding the human mind is important when working with clients you will be in good hands! Both Paul and Karen hold Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diplomas, and Paul has EMDR training, Master Practitioner NLP, and a Certificate in Hypnotherapeutic Supervision. Feedback... Do the course tutors ask for and respond to feedback? We ask for feedback after every weekend module - we genuinely care about our course quality and our student's experience. Customer service...Can you speak directly with the person who will be training you? No one other than the tutors will answer the phone here. And no one other than the person answering the phone would be training you. We are a small, friendly and approachable training school. Does the course leader or admissions tutor criticise other training schools to compete with them? This is against our accrediting body's ethical guidelines. After you have called a training school do they harass you for your custom or leave you in peace to make your decision? As you might expect from a psychologist and hypnotherapist, we don't hassle people, pressurise or hard sell. If someone has expressed an interest in applying we might email them to make sure an application hasn't been lost in the post if we don't hear from them. We sometimes email those who expressed an interest as an application deadline approaches. But we don't pressurise. We are confident in our course and we want a happy group of students who all genuinely want to be on our training. The venue... This needs to be reasonably easy to get to and comfortable. Some courses only provide morning refreshments and, of course, some provide none at all. Our venues are on major transport routes and we provide morning and afternoon refreshments to keep you energised! Some hypnotherapy training is held in university or hospital meeting rooms. Such rooms can be good venues but it does not mean the university runs, accredits or recommends the course; anyone can hire such a room! Seeing the tutors in action... You can ask to visit a training day to see us in action for an hour or so. You'll get a warm welcome from us and from our students. Speak with previous hypnotherapy students... We have a number of past students who have approached us voluntarily at the end of their course to offer to speak to people interested in applying. We never ask our graduates if they will do this - it is totally voluntary and we are very grateful to them for offering. top Empower yourself - avoiding the pitfalls Pitfall 1 - numerous locations offered in bad faith Here, an unethical trainer claims to train around the country knowing full well that they do not intend to train in some locations. They call the student (who has by now committed to training) before the course commences, saying they are 'very sorry' but 'due to insufficient numbers they are cancelling'. They then offer the student a place in a location that they did intend to run all along, thus bumping up their numbers on this course and creating more profit. This is not to be confused with training schools genuinely intending to run a course in a new city in good faith. It's not easy to decipher intentions here - trust your instinct and ask lots of questions about the trainers in your preferred location. Ask where else the trainers teach. If the course runs only on weekends, logically, they are limited to a maximum of 4 courses at any one time. Pitfall 2 - Acquiescence The trainer claims to be able to meet your every wish and desire. If a trainer seems to be bending to your every need, would you trust them? A student once told us about a trainer who offered to train on different days to suit his needs even though it was a group training! Either this trainer has a very giving nature or would let the person down later once they had committed! See also Pitfall 3. Pitfall 3 - Price Buying on price is everyone's perogative but you may wish to ask whether something will have to give if the price is low. Training is hard work and few people have the knowledge, confidence and skills to deliver effective training. Devising a manual and a teaching schedule takes hundreds of hours of writing and organisation. You also need a trainer who will be there for you in times of crisis. A trainer has to be insured and pay for venues, travel and accomodation. Hypnotherapy is quite lucrative, so it has to be worth it to leave your practice for a number of days rather than seeing lots of clients! Would you trust a trainer who offers discounts on the phone that were not mentioned on the website in order to compete with another school? And should different students pay different prices if the trainer is making it up as they go along? It
is every training schools right to not publish prices. Indeed we do not
publish prices on our therapy website because clients buy by comparing
prices rather than looking at our qualifications, experience, specialisms,
etc. We trust that prospective students will have paid more attention
to these aspects! We therefore have
a totally transparent pricing policy for our training. top A
small group will ensure more individual attention, including more opportunities
to ask questions and have group discussions. We have 2 trainers and a
maximum of 12 students in a class. Some schools have a lead trainer who
is highly qualified and/or experienced and a second person for support
who may not be as experienced or qualified. We have two highly qualified
and experienced trainers. top This depends whether you want to know about hypnotherapy and NLP or be able to actually do hypnotherapy and NLP. All attended (as opposed to distance learning) hypnotherapy courses will have a mixture of theoretical work and practical work but they vary widely in terms of where they place the emphasis. At the Academy of Advanced Changework we wanted the course to be very practical as we were concerned about the numbers of hypnotherapy graduates on other courses around the UK who feel they are not prepared and confident enough to practice upon graduation. Yet the principal trainers, Paul Peace and Karen Bartle come from academic psychology backgrounds and recognise the value of knowing why hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners do what they do. It can really enrich your learning and practice to know the theory behind your practice. So we decided to use contact time in class for lots of practical work and we needed a way to deliver theory without it being all-consuming. We decided to create home learning materials that can be viewed outside of class time. We teach essential theory on the course and always try to relate it to practice. Learning materials also include video demonstrations. Our
course is therefore one of the most comprehensive around and neither compromises
on theory or practice. top A very common accredited hypnotherapy course structure is a 20 day course run over 10 weekends. This has the benefits of providing ample time to learn, read, practice and complete homework between modules. The main disadvantage is it being a long, drawn out course for just 20 days total learning. Many students are eager to start practising because they want to change career, supplement their income or quickly recover their hypnotherapy course training costs. Some schools offer week-long modules delivered in three installments. These offer rapid progress on each installment but the course as a whole still needs to be held over a period of time to allow students chance to absorb what they have learned, and to practice, read and complete homework between modules. This format has the disadvantage for employed students of requiring a commitment of large blocks of annual leave off work. For some students it means staying in hotels for long periods at a time and being away from home and family. Uniquely, we offer a structure that offers a rapid advancement, while still leaving ample time for reading, homework, practice, work and family, and yet requiring minimal time off work for those students who continue in employment. To balance all of these factors, our course is a total of 20 days in length and runs just over 6 months. Each month you will attend for 3 days over a weekend (Sat, Sun and Mon). The final month is run on a Sat and Sun. You would need to be able to free up 6 Mondays in total if you want to attend all units (some could fall on Bank Holidays, reducing the need for time off work). Experience
shows that our students need to invest 7-11 hours per week
on private study. Students who are speedier readers or more academically-minded
invest less. Perfectionists might spend more! This is a fast track course
for motivated and enthusiastic people wanting to get a part or full time
career off the ground and do something they love doing as soon as possible,
without overwhelming themselves, and leaving ample time for homework,
employment and general lifestyle needs. top Clearly, any good 20 day accredited hypnotherapy course will teach you how to induce, deepen and terminate a trance and to develop competence in a number of techniques e.g. suggestibility tests, depth of trance testing, association and dissociation, double binds, regression, ideomotor response, etc. You should also graduate being able to confidently explain to clients and interested members of the public what hypnotherapy is. The course should meet National Occupational Standards. If hypnotherapy becomes regulated you don't want to have to study again. A high quality course and professional membership is essential and the best insurance against this. Any good NLP course, or combined hypnotherapy and NLP course, aimed at therapists really must include the essential NLP techniques: anchoring, fast phobia, swish, reframing and timeline techniques. Some schools will teach you only using scripts. Others will force you to make up your own trance inductions and suggestions in real time. The main disadvantages of hypnotherapy scripts are 1. they are generic - made to apply to almost anyone with a particular presenting issue. People are complex and it can be better to work with their individual needs. 2. You could look unprofessional if a client opens their eyes and sees you reading and you might 'sound like you are reading' rather than investing in your client. 3. If you are looking at a script you are potentially missing your client's body language and emotional responses. We will provide lots of scripts for you to learn from, yet, without pressurising anyone, we encourage you to break away from them more and more as you become more proficient. You must be taught how to handle abreactions (emotional outbursts) sensitively, safely and effectively, and how to adopt a professional, caring and empathic approach that recognises personal and professional boundaries. A good hypnotherapy course must also cover ethics, professional standards and codes of conduct, how to build rapport and communicate effectively with clients, and to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses and recognise the importance of continuing professional development. The course must teach you when to not take on a client, and build your confidence in hypnotherapy planning. In addition to these essential topics, we believe it is important that a hypnotherapy course shows you how hypnotherapy fits in amongst the other therapies and healthcare available. We believe it is important that hypnotherapists respect difference and see people as 'people' rather than 'labels', and that hypnotherapists understand power relations in the therapy room and society at large. We also think it helps therapists enormously if they are able to make full use of sensory awareness and utilise this e.g. noticing changes in a client's skin colour, breathing, pulse, posture, etc. We believe that because hypnotherapy deals routinely with the mind, it is important to have knowledge of psychology, such as the un/conscious mind, psychodynamic theory, behaviourism, cognitive psychology, humanistic psychology and social constructionism, and therapeutic approaches, such as humanistic, psychodynamic, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), EFT (emotional freedom techniques), CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), Gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, coaching and SFBT (Solution Focused Brief Therapy). Although you could not learn these in depth on a hypnotherapy course, enough detail should be provided on a course so that you can confidently refer to an appropriate therapist and possibly choose approaches that you might like to take more training in. You can also use techniques from these approaches that dovetail with hypnotherapy. We also believe in providing all students who want to set up a part- or full-time therapy practice with the necessary business skills to do this confidently and to avoid the pitfalls. We run a very successful private practice and we know what marketing works and what does not. As well as covering the essential hypnotherapy theory and techniques, some courses offer additional specialist certificates in particular presenting issues e.g. weight loss, smoking or stress. Although such certificates certainly have their merit for therapists wanting to specialise, we are not convinced that this is the best approach for a new student of hypnotherapy for a number of reasons: 1. Although
they are useful for therapists, sadly, in our experience and that of many
of our peers, the public show no interest in these extra qualifications.
They rarely have 'market value' when trying to attract private clients.
Again, in the corporate world, expertise, showing what you can do for
an organisation, and word-of-mouth reputation is more valuable. You are
therefore better studying areas that are useful to you in aiding
your work as a therapist rather than assuming the public are interested
in specialist certificates. For these
reasons, we have decided to provide an extra certificate in a topic that
is useful, not as a marketing tool, but rather, with ANY client's problem/issue.
Discursive Empowerment™ is an exciting and unique approach that
has been developed by the trainers, Paul Peace, Ph.D, Chartered Psychologist,
and Karen Bartle, Health Psychologist in training. The training in Discursive
Empowerment will provide you with a practical tool box of techniques that
can be used whether you are seeing a client for weight loss, smoking,
stress, anxiety, depression or any other issue because it centres on language
use - and every therapist and every client has to communicate!
top Teaching is done very differently on different courses. Like any training, one hypnotherapy training school will provide engaging learning, another will make you want to nod off. Some courses will have lots of interactivity, exercises and discussions, others will be led from the front while everyone sits and listens like empty vessels being filled with knowledge. Some hypnotherapy training courses are furnished with lots of practical work, other courses are more theoretical. Some will be mystical and magical others will be down to earth and practical. Some training schools are formal, stuffy, or elitist. Others are informal, relaxed and open access to any suitable applicant. Some schools take on anybody who applies and are money-oriented rather than quality-oriented. Others are very careful in their selection process to ensure a healthy group of enthusiastic, caring, motivated people. Most hypnotherapy courses will involve some class-based learning and some homework, including reading, practice and answering set questions. Course materials may include a paper or electronic manual, and, more rarely, include video footage of techniques. Content and learning is most important but the personality of trainers can be important when you spend so much time together, especially in an intimate subject. At very least, in our opinion, hypnotherapy trainers should be approachable, relaxed, sensitive yet in control of the group, student-oriented rather than boasting their prowess, calm under pressure, confident and not defensive when asked challenging questions, positively seek feedback and suggestions and respond to this where possible, open communicators, welcoming, treat students equally whilst nurturing their strengths and helping them overcome weaknesses, honest, punctual and reliable. Within reason, they should be willing to invest time on the phone (possibly at an agreed time if they are busy) when you have questions or troubles without sounding like they want to cut the call short. The Academy of Advanced Changework provides relaxed, down to earth, practical, engaging hypnotherapy tuition. We teach theory as it relates to hypnotherapy practice and we do lots of interesting practical demonstrations and have lots of fun. Additionally, we give you home learning materials for use in your own time. This supplements and extends the course as well as acting as a library of information and demonstrations that can be referred to long after qualification. Our
course is straightforward in structure, offering you everything you need
to start in practice. We will also prepare you for the business aspects
of setting up a hypnotherapy practice if that is your desire. We speak
to all our applicants on the phone or in person to ensure they are motivated,
enthusiastic and commited. You would be studying with a happy group of
like-minded people. top 'Clinical
hypnosis' is a term most often used to put distance between hypnosis used
in therapy (probably best called 'hypnotherapy') and that used for entertainment
('stage hypnosis'). 'Medical hypnosis', similarly, distances itself from
entertainment/stage hypnosis and focuses on medical issues, such as weight,
irritable bowel syndrome and pain. A course labelled 'clinical hypnosis'
or 'medical hypnosis' would not necessarily have any different content
to one simply labelled as 'hypnosis' or 'hypnotherapy'. Most courses cover
a mixture of psychological, medical and emotional issues. Course content,
structure, quality and accreditation is what really matters rather than
course titles. There are
no nationally agreed course titles and qualifications in hypnotherapy.
There are 'Certificates', 'Diplomas' and 'Advanced Diplomas', for example.
Yet 'Diplomas' are frequently more advanced than 'Advanced Diplomas'.
Unfortunately, marketing pressures tempt schools into using titles that
look more attractive to their prosepctive customers. The important thing
to look for is course content and the qualifications and experience of
tutors. We provide a 20 day diploma which fully qualifies you to obtain
professional membership and work with the public. We also provide an 'Advanced
Diploma' for those interested in obtaining extra skills and knowledge,
and learning about hypnotherapy research and advanced ethical issues. We
hope to have answered some of your questions here. Please call
Paul or Karen if you require more information on our hypnotherapy training
in Sheffield or London: |
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©
2007-2010 Paul Peace and Karen Bartle, Academy of Advanced Changework
Ltd - Hypnotherapy Training Provider |
