The NYSEPH Training program is designed to provide a systematic yet flexible educational experience for practitioners interested in developing a thorough grounding in Ericksonian hypnosis. It is conducted in five 20-hour sections. Each section offers weekly two-hour classes. The emphasis is on sequential practice, so that from week to week, students can come to fully integrate Ericksonian techniques into their own therapeutic work.

The program is limited to professionals in healthcare related fields with graduate degrees from accredited institutions. The program is also open to graduate students in accredited programs also in the healthcare fields who supply a letter from their department chairperson certifying their student status.

Fee: $700 per 20-hour section
Deposit: $700, non-refundable
ASCH Credits--60 hours
Courses are taught in the offices of the individual faculty members.

I. INTRODUCTION:

This section is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to Ericksonian principles and techniques of hypnosis. It includes a brief history of the development of hypnosis from Mesmerism to Milton Ericksonian's unique contributions to the development of hypnosis as we know it today. There will be discussions of the myths and misconceptions around the use of hypnosis. In this section, there will be demonstrations of direct and indirect approaches and an introduction to various hypnotic techniques. While didactic instruction is provided, the primary emphasis is on supervised practice exercises and inductions. The material covered in this course includes, but is not limited to: the pre-induction interview; hypnotic phenomena and methods, including pacing and leading; checking for a lead; utilization of voice quality and response language; utilization of resistance and hypnotic responses; metaphors, conscious/unconscious dissociation; ideomotor signaling; hand catalepsy; direct and indirect suggestion; interspersal technique, Post Hypnotic Suggestions.

II. INTERMEDIATE:

The second section is designed to provide continued practice and consolidation of introductory skills as students integrate Ericksonian approaches into their own unique styles. It includes the use of language patterning; body awareness; metaphor; deepening techniques; and other forms of indirect suggestion. The use of these techniques will be developed within treatment issues, such as pain control, habit control, ego strengthening, memory recall, and general utilization of trance phenomena for therapeutic purposes, including more elegant uses of dissociation.

III. ADVANCED INTERMEDIATE:

This section continues the work of integrating all the basic skills. Students begin to focus on developing their own unique styles and on asserting therapeutic use of themselves as "being in control of the patient being in control." Emphasis is on the practice of complete inductions, utilization of "deeper " trance (such as fractionation, open-eyed trance, construction of age regression, and progression imagery) and confusion techniques. In addition, students will work with pain control, sexual abuse, and post-traumatic disorders. Students develop a variety of hypnotic approaches to a wide spectrum of clinical conditions, including conversational inductions. Work on the Advanced Intermediate level focuses on refinement of students' unique styles and may utilize their own clinical materials.

IV. ADVANCED:

This section focuses on enabling students to utilize the widest possible array of hypnotic interventions, even with subjects who might otherwise have been considered "unhypnotizable". Specific approaches include: preparation for surgery, working with cancer patients; hypnoprojectives; accessing ego states; automatic writing; "The February Man" approach; therapeutic uses of time distortion; hypnotic control of physiological and medical processes such as bleeding and intestinal movements; treating phobias, pain, sexual problems, and other clinical conditions.

V. CLINICAL SUPERVISION SEMINAR:

This section specifically provides hypnotherapists with ongoing clinical case supervision in a group context in which students present material from their own practice. The emphasis of the course is on developing and enhancing flexibility in treatment approaches. Each student is encouraged to develop and refine his or her own individual hypnotherapeutic styles. The goal of this section is to expand the repertoire of hypnotherapeutic techniques, while working with utilization in specific cases, in a wide variety of diagnostic categories.