Hypnotherapy Accreditation In The USA?

In America, hypnosis is an unregulated profession and there is no accreditation.

I read an article by a hypnotherapy school that said, “You don’t need a license, you just need to meet certain criteria.” There is NO criteria!

Only three States require registration, but anybody can do that as long as you pay the fee.

Similar in the UK, there are many “accredited” schools, and also an abundance of minefields to go through to find a course that meets your needs. If you can pay, you can take a course!

Your best alternative is to go through a professional organization. 

Here are three I would suggest:

1. Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis www.sceh.us

2. American Society of Clinical Hypnosis www.asch.net

3. American Board of Medical Hypnosis

Also, look into: Hypnosis/Dental Hypnosis/Psychological Hypnosis and Social Work Hypnosis/Nursing 

If you want to learn hypnosis, find like-minded minded people. Facebook has an abundance of forums you can join. Get involved with Skype/Zoom practical sessions and read! The only way to become good at hypnosis is by doing it. Once you become proficient, then decide if a course is worth the investment. So many are padded with irrelevant information and redundant techniques. KIS (Keep It Simple).

Past Life Regression: My Experiences

This post is to share a subjective account of what I observed in two experiences that could be called Past Life Regression.

I do not claim that these are past life regressions. I am describing these to expand awareness of unanticipated levels of consciousness that can occur under hypnosis.

In the first, I was presenting a keynote address in San Diego on reprogramming the mind for cognitive performance. As I always do during these presentations, I have my audience experience hypnosis. During this group hypnosis, one of the audience members stood up and started to speak in a foreign language. If anybody else in the group was experiencing hypnosis, his vocalizations snapped them out! His face was expressionless, and his speech was constant without any inflection. This went on for about a minute and then he just sat down and closed his eyes. As you can imagine I was somewhat surprised and caught off guard! 

I quickly made a light joke of it by saying, "everybody will have their own experience," and moved on with the presentation.

At the end of the presentation, a few people gathered around the gentleman. One of the individuals talking to him was an older Asian man who understood parts of what the first said during his hypnotic state but could not understand the context of what was said. The Asian gentleman stated the language spoken was a Chinese dialect not much used currently. He also stated that the sentences were broken and the thoughts without cohesive relevance. When asked, the subject as mystified as all of us, saying that he never learned a second language, and had never been to Asia. He also had no awareness of any Asian heritage. And, most interesting of all, he also had no idea what had happened.

My second experience happened with a gentleman that was already an acquaintance of mine. He was in his mid-70s, an extraordinarily successful businessman, and had always felt as though he had experienced something significant in his past. 

To be honest, his request was somewhat surprising as I had never imagined that he would be open to this type of concept.

In explicit detail, he experienced a dog fight with a triplane from what I presumed was from the first world war. He was in the middle of aerial combat and although he was seated for the session, his body was twisting and turning as though he was being thrown around. Then he said he had been shot in the leg, just before or simultaneous to snapping out of whatever was happening to him. His wife was there during the session, appearing as transfixed as I was. The only thing remotely connected to the experience was a lifelong leg pain the origin of which had never been diagnosed. At no stage during the session did I interact with him other than to guide him into hypnosis. The last I spoke to this man, years later, he maintained that the leg pain left that day and never returned.

Reincarnation? Dr. Ian Stevenson MD

“My aim has never been to prove reincarnation, but only to find and report whatever evidence there is to make it seem possible.” Dr. Ian Stevenson.

Ian Stevenson 1918-2007 University of Virginia School of Medicine, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry 1957-1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001 and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002-2007.

According to Stevenson, “actual life memories may need a vehicle in order to emerge into the conscious mind, and the mind with its enormous range of powers creates a fictitious previous life to enable the delivery of real memories. Such a procedure may to some extent be correlated with a dream process. A few items of memory from a real previous life may become separated in some way and attracted to a fictitious previous life that is created by the mind. The outcome is the narration of an apparently coherent previous life”.

Rather than outline Dr. Stevenson’s work, I feel it is more important to view what others in the academic community have said about him.

In all his works, Stevenson adhered to the strictest standards of scientific exploration, including the collection and interpretation of data.

On reviewing his book, the Cases of the Reincarnation Type (1975), The Journal of the American Medical Association states: a "painstaking and unemotional" collection of cases that were "difficult to explain on any assumption other than reincarnation.”

In the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, September 1977, psychiatrist Harold Lief described Stevenson as a methodical investigator and added, "Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known (I have said as much to him) as 'the Galileo of the 20th century.”

Doris Kuhlman-Wilsdorf, Medal for Excellence in Research of the American Society of Engineering Education (1965 and 1966), Heyn Medal of the German Society of Materials Science 1988, University of Virginia professor of Physics and Materials Science…
Kuhlman-Wilsdorf surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that “the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that, cumulatively, the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.”

Robert F. Almeder, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University…
In the following video, Dr. Almeder examines the logic of believing, or not believing, evidence for reincarnation, like that provided by Dr. Stevenson. His discussion suggests contemplation, without automatically accepting or dismissing the evidence.

A video review of the book “Twenty cases Suggestive of Reincarnation” is found at:

Below is a summation of this video:

Almeder states that there is a force to the case studies that is enticing, enthralling! He says “it must be wrong” but that, the more he read, the more he realized the importance.

He states this is good empirical research -it rendered a scientific question- and he could not think of any other alternative or plausible explanation for the data that some people reincarnate. If the data is acceptable, it shows our way of explaining human behaviour has to break out of the existing paradigm.

Dr. Ian Stevenson MD

Is Past Life Regression Ethical

Is Past Life Regression Ethical (Part 1-4)

Above, is the title of an article written by Gabriel Andrade from the Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine.
Gabriel Andrade’s argument is two-fold.
First, she states that past life regression is not evidence-based.
Second, she states, “past life regression therapy has the great risk of implanting false memories in patients, and thus, causing significant harm. This is a violation of the principle of non-malfeasance, which is surely the most important principle in medical ethics.”

I am going to be the devil's advocate on this one and ask some questions. 
First, let us consider the following:
Reincarnation is a central belief of many religions

• Hinduism 1.2 billion

• Buddhism 535 million

• Jainism 6 million

• Sikhs 25 million

• Kabbalah Judaism?

• Americans and Europeans ( estimates from various countries range from 12% to 44% )
  If you do the numbers, this adds up to approximately 2 billion out of a world population of 7.8 billion. 

As reincarnation and past life regression are closely related, I would hypothesize that both concepts also include unique, distinct, belief systems. It is also not within the scope of this review to discuss how each religion views reincarnation.

The article, to me, reads that since there is no scientific proof of reincarnation, then past life regression does not exist. 
My first question: As religion is not evidence-based, is it unethical?
If we look at her second reason, i.e. “it implants false memories,” then I would ask the question -  does the process of past life regression therapy require you to implant false memories?

This is such an interesting subject, so I have decided to divide it up into four parts. The last part will be my personal experiences of facilitating PLR and my theory of what is happening during such sessions.

In Part 2, we will look at some history of PLR and look at the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson MD and Dr. Brian Weiss MD. These two respected scientists are the leading authorities on PLR.

Hypnosis Accreditation And Hypnotherapy Certification

Where is the best hypnotherapy school? Can you do hypnotherapy training online?
Which hypnotherapy course is close to me? Do you need to be certified in hypnosis?
Hypnosis Accreditation in the UK! Is there any?

Hypnotherapy is currently UNREGULATED in the UK and there is no national or international organization that is solely responsible for hypnotherapy accreditation. In reality, anybody can self-accredit, and they do!
So, how do you navigate through the minefield of accredited hypnotherapist schools?Find a professional organization that has academic standards.
I could only find two… 

One: The British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis (BSCAH)
In addition to the basic training, BSCAH also offers a Diploma/BSc taught in conjunction with the University of Birmingham. Applications are invited from those registered with the GMC, GDC, NMC, HCPC, Clinical Psychologists, and University-based Academics.

Two: The National College of Hypnosis and Psychotherapy
The National College of Hypnosis and Psychotherapy delineates itself from other hypnotherapy organizations, stating, “It is our policy that we will only align ourselves with organizations which have meaningful and verifiable means of accreditation. The profession has many organizations that will give you a certificate for a fee. We, as one of the oldest schools of professional hypnosis and psychotherapy, believe that we should take a leadership position with this and not support bodies which have only been created to give out meaningless credentials and to turn a profit for its owners.”
The National College has a direct arrangement with Bath Spa University.

The practice of hypnotherapy has always lacked a standard of educational requirements. In fact, you can take an online course on Udemy and become a Certified clinical hypnotherapist for £9.95. If that is out of your price range ( Joke!!!! ) then just print yourself a Certificate and open your own office. 
The bottom line is the quality of education being presented.

If you seek a genuine education that provides evidence-based curriculum, based on the most recent peer-reviewed research, and which includes clinical practice/experience, look into the educators’ professional affiliations, experience, and clinical background.

For my online course you can go to my webpage.

Hypnosis Induction, Fastest Progressive Technique

How many types of induction should you learn? I can only give you a subjective answer based on my experience. To me, the Spiegel Eye Roll technique (which I adapted) is the panacea of progressive inductions, and I see no reason to use anything else.

Notice that I use the term progressive, but in reality the way I use it quite often only takes a few seconds.

Adapted hypnosis eye roll technique

One of my favorite books is Malcom Caldwell’s book, Outliers, in which he looked at the Story of Success and what criteria one must meet to be an expert. He and others surmised that the number of hours for any master in a field of endeavor is at least 10,000. Because of Caldwell’s book, I’ve worked out my own hours in the field of hypnosis: in 35+ years, I hypnotized well over 100,000 people. As a result, I have become acutely aware of the subtleties and nuances for successful outcomes in hypnotized subjects.

Adapted Eye Roll Induction by Barry Jones. For more about clinical hypnotherapy education go to www.barryjones.com