Originally Published on the Marknosis & Society of Applied Hypnosis Listservs
Let me define my own “beginning”-ness. I have never been hypnotized by a person directly. I have never hypnotized a person directly. I have however had many years of meditation experience which already leans me on an inward slant. I think this slant helped me slide right into the groove of hypnotizing and being hypnotized.
Who taught the class?
Mark Cunningham
What was he like?
Upfront and honest. Wicked sense of humor. Kick ass attitude. No-bush-beating. Brash ( 😉 ) and manages to keep it right on the line. I got the sense of a man who makes himself what he wants every morning. His eyes tell of a serious wisdom gained that makes everyone want to strive for (and can).
While I was planning on typing just about everything we learned I realized I was writing the course and I doubt that is what Mark would want me to do hehe. I’ll just boilerplate a lot of the experiences with a few highlights I found exceptional.
What did I learn?
Everything relating to what hypnosis is and isn’t for the beginner to intermediate (and some advanced ideas). We all smelled that there was a depth that was not covered and that is motivation enough to continue to down the path. What we did learn in the first two tiers of hypnosis was technique, a handful of constructs, and the ability to work through it. Before this class I thought of hypnotists with more mystique. “To make people collapse on stage or in session there must be something magical.” was always in my thoughts. Now I realize that hypnosis is so very very simple.
Empowered intent coupled with a subject who accepts a command structure rolled together with a construct. Which is nothing more than a woven story packed with powerful imagery and suggestions while working in deepeners, convincers/suggestibility testing equates into an induced, tranced, hypnotized subject that should accept and integrate your suggested ideas.
No magic. Nothing up my sleeves. My voice becomes your voice. Now to do that we learned of needing rapport, chemistry, and using single suggestibility and convincers outside of a session to build a subject that wants to work further and farther for their own cause, but really, this shit is simple isn’t it?
During the first few days I explained how I had many social-fears being so new at all of this and having failed my homework we were given, to approach people and do suggestibility testing, as well as some mild-timidity that was keeping my monkeybrain on high-chatter. Then I had a wonderful experience working with Tom Suit who having done a bit of material before really cleaned up my mind, doused excess neg thoughts and primed my mental slate for the oncoming week running through many exercises we had not even had explained to us yet (exponential looping/trials/successes, single-time-learner, etc). While this may have been a bit much for the time (to comprehend) the Friday that we left I had the profound notion of how much he affected me. After that session and more and more each day after I gained a new inner hum which is with me now. Which although I have told Tom thanks for helping me get tuned, I just can’t express how much it has meant.
As we progressed the practice sessions needed to be expedited and we crossed into rapid and instant inductions which helped us migrate from the elman induction which took a bit of warm up to get a subject into trance. With the arm-drop and keyword in place all of us were happy puddles of suggestible material.
Going deeper we learned to tie our session structure together and gave full on practice sessions dealing with memory, how to remove negativity and stress from both memory and self by building self-generating autonomic functions to help keep negativity and stress from returning as well as cleaning up past memories into lessons to be learned and not fears to be had. Excellent constructs that combined so many aspects of the senses and subconscious integration.
As the week crossed half-way it became apparent that we were not going to finish the materials in time. While some people think one more day would have cut it I think another week could have been happily saturated. Like many have said, you can learn how to hypnotize in a day, but talking to the subconscious takes a lifetime. Word choice and framing of ideas is very artistic. So as we learned that the course materials would not be completed we began to skip around to make sure bases were covered.
One such base was energy. We worked through two exercises dealing with energy, an energy conversion, and quantum fusion. Conversion dealt with bringing out an unwanted belief/thoughts and having them take the form of a ball of energy in your hand, then through several cycles “cleaning” the energy was cleaned by the subject, and then by the hypnotist, enhanced and then reintegrated within the subject. I experienced profound synesthesia upon integrating the new clean energy which readily surprised me. We then worked on quantum fusion which was to basically take an idea that is being held back and to piggy back it to time-tested strengths within us, fuse them together, reintegrate, and do a little future pacing to show us the way. Again, I had an impressive set of rippling tingles/gooseflesh that overtook me upon integration and was witnessed by my partner.
Many topics became blurred as we went over getting a single desired outcome tieing together with future self/pacing & time-lines. Moving imagery closer and farther away, stepping into our new roles, etc. Powerful stuff to get a real diagnostic on where you think you are and how to help you move towards your goals quicker than ever.
The last course bound exercise we did was to terminate self-sabotage through a regression. Again it would seem a set of lines was blurred to accommodate handling so much material so if anyone knows other self-sabotage removal methods, I’d be game to hear them. In our exercise however we built a strong emotional feeling of when we were our own saboteur then let the emotion send us back to the ISE (Initial Sensitizing Event) to look at it first hand (beware the abreaction), then bring the subject back to present disassociate the memory to a picture screen/movie, and have the older self tell the younger self wisdom to get past the situation. Gestalt of listening to people around the rooms was that of critical years 3-9 having something emotionally anchor itself and having great influence over individuals today. Once we worked with the subject to clean their memory with positive reinforcement we evoked a sense of time penetration as the idea spread from the past to the present through the future. Even though we had some mild abreactions I think the majority of class had a positive experience in the end for doing this.
Lastly Mark taught us his Cottage of Memories which I will leave up to Mark at this time if he wants to discuss his method. I’ll just say that it was a wonderful evocative construct that has so many purposes and utilization’s that it or some near idea will become a part of your hypno-deck of change.
The last half of the day was spent working on building your own practice, the pros, cons, caveats. Quite helpful for those of us not opening a practice at the moment to see an insiders view, and it looked to be well received by those with struggling practices of their own.
The class was a real mixed bag of the uninitiated, the experienced, the practitioners, and experienced practitioners. With every new idea came each level of questions as people worked towards filling their mental-maps with data for technique or understanding further verbal constructs for the underlying methodologies. This was both a pro and a con since it showed a serious depth of thinking, but at the same time over thinking, or over questioning a topic. Let’s be real, we’re all a bit data-obsessed, aren’t we? With a classroom buzzing with 62 eager minds, you’d expect a storm of questions. And Mark? Despite wrestling with a pesky sinus infection, he navigated through it all like a champ.
Suggestions I would make?
Do some fear removal and faster learning patterning on day one, prime everyone for success.
Know that people are limited by their lexicon and will want to know your patterns, so either provide the patterns and teach people adaptations, or be ready to repeat the constructs a few more times than deem necessary. By providing patterns I don’t mean you have to have the whole thing written out, but have a deeper bullet list to use as a flowing framework.
Lengthen the practice sessions for a review with professional/instructor. If the class could handle it, having pro’s do quick debrief’s and interjecting of ideas and changes might both help for one more practice exchange and/or shorten the question session post exercise.
Providing a list of recommended books to bone up on post seminar would be great as well. There is a sea of material on line and in print, but not all of it is worth or right to be reading. Having an authority on next reads would expedite post-seminar method growth.
It was pleasure to work and meet with Mark, John, Ron, Cassi and the rest of student body that was in attendance. This seminar was truly mind-blowing. I have brought back with me a new sense of self (and reality) that really wants to kick ass and take names. In the end how can you go wrong if you work at it? We were given the tools, and even tools for tracking progress because progress is the only allowed momentum to make. You either find yourself standing still or moving forward, and who wants to stand still?!
With our heart, mind, and subconscious, we thank you.
Andy & Robin