First, the authors would like to express appreciation to all hypnosis professionals and serious students of hypnotherapy who have chosen to read this book. Life is a series of learning experiences, and our objective has been to provide some important tools to help you learn additional effective ways of empowering your clients with hypnotic regression therapy.
We are all each other’s teachers and students in life, and we can learn much from our clients as well as fellow professionals in the practice of professional hypnotherapy. We encourage you to keep that in mind when facilitating professional hypnosis, regardless of what techniques you employ. We have learned much from clients over the years, and we always endeavor to fine-tune our skills as a result of being aware of client successes as well as the “learning experiences” resulting from our mistakes.
This book is backed directly with over a half-century of combined experience from the two of us who wrote it; but indirectly it contains the wisdom and experience of several centuries of professional hypnotherapy when we consider the work of other professionals quoted and/or referenced within these pages.
Yet in spite of all the above, there does not seem to be any perfect protocol for employing hypnotic regression therapy in a manner that will work for all clients all the time; otherwise someone most certainly would have discovered it by now. This is why we choose to consider HRT as an art rather than a science, and this is also why this book presents a variety of techniques.
If you are a hypnosis practitioner, we suggest that you use the techniques that fit both your style and the needs of your client—but always be willing to use another technique when one that you like does not bring the desired results. In other words, fit the technique to the client rather than vice versa. This is both wise and client centered, but it requires width and depth of training in the art of hypnotherapy. Also note that HRT is not a panacea for all problems, nor is it appropriate for every client requiring hypnotherapy. That is why we have included information on ideomotor response questioning as well as the seven psychodynamics of symptoms. The fact that some hypnosis professionals try to use HRT with all or most of their clients provides ammunition to the critics of regression therapy, lending some justifiable credibility to their complaints.
If you are a hypnotherapy instructor wishing to include hypnotic regression therapy in your training program, we trust that you will find this book to be a useful text. To enhance the learning experiences of your students, you may wish to facilitate role play exercises in your class. Pretend to be a client with a presenting problem requiring hypnotic regression therapy, and then ask your students to go through the various phases of HRT. If a student asks a leading question, makes an unwise choice and/or skips an important step, you can stop the role play and ask the class to suggest what could have been done for better results. I (Hunter) have found from experience that teaching regression in this manner helps students learn faster than simply having them watch demonstrations. While most students do not like being in the “hot seat” during these role play exercises, everyone learns—and I go around the room so that everyone has the opportunity to take the role of facilitator in the practice sessions.
If you are someone who has been skeptical of hypnotic regression therapy, we sincerely hope you have learned enough from this book to realize that client centered hypnotic regression has a place in hypnotherapy. Some HRT critics have gone so far as to claim that regression is like a dinosaur, outdated and obsolete. Our response to that claim is: If client centered regression still helps clients resolve problems, why should we even consider discarding it? While regression might result in problems if misapplied (such as inappropriate leading creating false memories, or sudden awakening during abreactions leaving the problem at the surface), we should not even consider throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Practitioners must have proper training so that they can appropriately integrate HRT into their case formulations and treatment plans, and so that they know how to manage abreactions and use them therapeutically.
Many clients over the years have experienced lasting success as a result of competent HRT, and our hope is that practitioners of hypnotic regression therapy will continue to improve their skills so that HRT continues to be used through the 21st century and beyond.
We agree that regression is not appropriate for all clients all the time, but client centered hypnotic regression therapy is the best technique available for some of the clients some of the time.
Upon request, and as time permits, we are available for workshops and/or mentoring.
Contact Bruce Eimer at: www.bruceeimer.com Contact Roy Hunter at: www.royhunter.com
Or, if you prefer, you may go through Crown House Publishing.