"Intensive" hypnotherapy training

[longvines]

I have been thinking about undergoing training to become a hypnotherapist. All the courses in my area seem to be of the 'intensive' kind taking place over a few long weekends.

I am a little suspicious of these kind of courses, and am concerned that this approach is not optimal for learning and is more geared towards the trainers being able to cram in as many students as possible. Then again, I can be a cynical bugger when I want to be!

If anyone has any experiences of intensive hypnotherapy courses I would be glad to hear about them

[Bannick]

I was also suspicious of them originally but then trained in a fairly intensive modular format and have since trained others in this format. I preferred the level of momentum, there is so much crossover between different techniques I found it easier.

You do need to watch out for schools and courses that don't have much practical and those that have large class sizes. I used to rent a training room to a hypnotherapy school that had 20 per class and the course took 12 months to complete. The amount of wasted time on the course was phenomenal - starting late, long lunches, chatting etc. From what I saw of it, the course could easily have been condensed down to half the time.

I also had a client who said she was one year into a two year course at a University. When I asked her of her experience of being hypnotised she replied" it's hard to say, I've only done one group relaxation in a class of 30 students". When I asked her what induction/deepener the lecturer used, she asked what inductions and deepeners are! Needless to say, I was horrified to find out that she had wasted 12 months on the history and theory of hypnosis but hadn't a clue what a session consisted of.

Also, watch the after course support that you get from any school. The intensive schools will expect you to complete a further 450 hours of client hours, further reading and CPD and will help with any questions you have during that time (and often beyond), which is the standard within hypnotherapy.

However, I've had a lot of enquiries from hypnotherapists (and life coaches) from a mixture of schools who have been left to it after the course and have struggled to complete the supervision hours. I find this disgraceful, it seemed to be a case that the school had taken the money, delivered the course and then ignored the students after that. Obviously I told them I couldn't help them as a) I felt they were being really cheeky expecting me to do this for free when they didn't train with me and b) I obviously have a responsibility to the students who have trained at the school I teach with and was hardly going to jeopardise this by putting an extra strain on my time for someone who was trained elsewhere.

[New Age London]

I have studied it in a year's diploma. To be honest, the quality of training was very poor. And I was lucky to have found two great supervisors after the course who brought my skills up to standard. If I were to do it again, I would do the one-week intensive courses. They tend to be run by better-quality presenters.

[CharisNLP]

The very first hypnosis training I did (22 years ago -elk!!) was over a year. I was half way through it before I put anyone into trance and the trainer didn't do a single demo. I lot ( not all) long course are in terms of hours, no longer than an intensive. Mine was a day a month over 10 months and it felt like it never got any momentum. I did an 8 day intensive immediately after and that was what gave me the confidence to practice. Intensive courses tend in my experience to be highly hands on and practical with the expectation that a lit of the theory will be learned outside of the classroom.