Influences on Hypnosis Without Trance

I have recently received an email asking me about the influences on HWT…

“Could you… would you, please, make available the names of the books, and or people, who have influence your thoughts on the topic. I have already read Influence, by R. Cialdini, and I’m in the process of reading Changing for Good (both are titles you have mentioned).”

…and thought it might be more useful to share my answer here on the HWT blog!

The first thing to say is that the influences are many! I have read literally hundreds of books on Hypnosis, NLP, Influence, Communication,Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Therapy, Coaching, Personal Development, Magic, Mentalism and much more. And I have taken dozens of trainings! So what I am about to share is a hugely incomplete reference.

Leaving changework, coaching and personal influence aside for the moment, the four primary influences on HWT are:

• NLP, the Milton Model and Post Ericksonian Hypnosis
• David Grove’s Clean Language
• ‘Old School’ Direct Hypnosis
• Magic and Mentalism

So lets look at each of these in turn:

NLP, the Milton Model and Post Ericksonian Hypnosis

The Milton Model was John Grinder and Richard Bandler’s ‘coding’ of the language use of the legendary hypnotherapist Milton H. Erickson. You can learn the Milton Model from almost any introduction to NLP book. The trick is, however, to learn it! When I originally learned this I was teaching martial arts, so I sat down every day (for I don’t know how long) and wrote out Milton Model language patterns in every category, using martial art teaching as my context – e.g. “and notice what it is like to just relax the body and roll with the push”.

I originally learnt from Rex Sikes NLP home study course, then went on to do a lot of NLP training over the years. I also ought to mention the influence of Richard Bandler and Paul McKenna here, who I watched closely and personally ‘modelled’ their manner, language use and overall approach to hypnosis and NLP.

The biggest Post Ericksonian influence on me for HWT was David Calof via his Hypnotic Techniques audios, but sadly, these are no longer available to buy (UPDATE – yes they are! http://bit.ly/SCNIMW ). A close second to Calof comes Stephen Heller with his book Monsters and Magical Sticks, which I thoroughly recommend! I should also nod Stephen Wolinsky’s Trances People Live for it’s forward thinking attitude and approach.

David Grove and Clean Language

David Grove was a hypnotist and therapist from New Zealand who developed his own unique approach to ‘hypnotic changework’. During the 1990’s he was modelled extensively by two ‘NLPers’ James Lawley and Penny Tompkins who created their own model called for changework called Symbolic Modelling.

The major influence is with Grove’s approach to eliciting and ‘rolling with’ realtime feedback from the client. This is a major element in HWT.

I have learned ‘Clean’ from Wendy Sullivan, Judy Rees, James Lawley, Penny Tompkin and Norman Vaughton. Norman Vaughton deserves a special mention here as an influence on my more recent style (post Hypnosis Master Programme). Norman was a close colleague of David Grove for about 15 years, and was also a close student and friend of Ernest Rossi in his ideodynamic work. Watching Norman do hypnosis is like watching a wizard at work – the air crackles with magic.

Book wise I would recommend ‘Clean Language’ by Sullivan and Rees as a good intro, progressing to Metaphors in Mind by Lawley and Tompkins.

‘Old School’ Direct Hypnosis 

I came into this later, after studying NLP, Post Ericksonian and Clean Language, but it really was useful to get into. My major credit here goes to Anthony and Freddy Jacquin, with whom I trained in their direct, rapid induction based approach in 2008. My original influence from the ‘Jacquin School’ was the excellent Reality is Plastic by Anthony Jacquin, which I would still recommend as the best practical book on old school rapid induction and direct suggestion based hypnosis on the market.

Another influence from Direct Hypnosis was Jon Chase. I have never trained with Jon personally (I doubt I could stand to ;-)) but his youtube videos were an invaluable resource to me when I was looking into direct hypnosis, as was his book Don’t Look in His Eyes. Just to be clear here, whilst I think Jon is an excellent hypnotist, I find him personally infuriating and would not necessarily endorse his perspective on what hypnosis is or how it works. 😀

Whilst not an original influence on HWT, I would also recommend checking out Jeffrey Stephens for direct hypnosis. Jeff is one of the best ‘power hypnotists’ I have seen. Whilst I have my reservations about his approach to changework, he really is second to none at doing what he does.

Last but not least in this category, I cannot leave out the legendary Dave Elman. His book Hypnotherapy is well worth a read (tip – pay attention to his language structures.)

Magic and Mentalism

I learned a lot about people managing and framing from performing as a magician and mentalist. Derren Brown was an early influence, and I can still spot ‘Brownisms’ in the mix when I see myself on video.

Mentalism and Magic resources that directly influenced my hypnosis include Henning Nelms’ Magic and Showmanship, Luke Jermay’s 7 Deceptions and Building Blocks, Kenton Knepper’s Wonder Words and Kentonism, Derren Brown’s Pure Effect and Absolute Magic, Paul Brook’s Alchemical Tools, Banachek’s Psychological Subtleties, Richard Osterlind’s Making Magic Real and Making Real Magic and Jerome Finley’s Random Acts of Kindness.

Other Influences

I cannot ignore the impact my years of training in Taijiquan and Russian Systema have had on my approach to hypnosis, especially in the area of kinaesthetic sensitivity in handling subjects. You can see this influence here:

Handshake Interrupt & Arm Catalepsy – The Right Touch!

I also need to mention Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion from which I have consciously borrowed at least one major concept for HWT. Other later influences include James Tsakalos’ Spiral Somatics, Keith Johnstone’s Impro and Frank Pucelik’s take on representational systems and non-verbal process control.

Another major influence (a huge influence) was hanging out with the London ‘Street Hypnosis’ crowd in 2008/2009. Just getting together and playing created a great environment for everyone to develop their stuff along their own individual lines, and it was from this crucible that the original Hypnosis Without Trance material was forged.

Names to mention from the ‘Last Thursday Group’ include Darren Altman, John P Morgan, Ben White, Gaz Colfer, Richard Parker, Simon Goodlad and Daniel Barker (sorry to anyone I’ve missed). And later, from the London Magic, Hypnosis and Mentalism Meet (I’m naming hypnotists only here) Mike Stoner, Amit Badiani, Marcus Lewis, Vince Lynch and Peter Crossland.

Beyond Facilitation and Phenomena

Going beyond hypnotic facilitation and ‘phenomena’, I have a whole range of influences on how I do changework, I’m not going to go into detail, but I will rattle off a list:

• NLP
• Clean Language
• Symbolic Modelling
• Palo Alto Mental Research Institute (Watzlawick, Weakland, Fisch, Bevin, Jackson et al.)
• Albert Ellis’ REBT
• Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing
• Andy Austin’s IEMT
• Eckhart Tolle’s take on Ego (not into his ‘Pain Body’ stuff at all)
• Robert Fritz
• Jorgen Rasmussen (author of Provocative Therapy)
• Norman Vaughton
• Stephen Heller
• Milton Erickson

And there is probably a whole bunch more, but those are the one’s off the top.

I hope that some of that is useful to you as a resource list – if you have any questions, please do make use of the comments section below!

All the very best

James

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