This intensive seminar explores how to use Ericksonian hypnosis and related trance processes for healing and generative change. Come prepared to enter a training community that is both safe and passionate. The training includes hypnotic demonstrations, training exercises, intense personal work, group trance work, and lecture/discussion. The interplay of cognitive and experiential learning is emphasized throughout.

A major theme will be the “hero’s journey,” wherein each life is sensed and realized in terms of its deepest path and purpose. We will see how a person’s “problems” are crucial steps in the hero’s journey, and how the “call to healing” transforms these problems into resources. Working within this generative and empowering myth, we will explore how extraordinary trance states can be developed in one’s self and in others for many purposes; transformational change; healing emotional wounds and physical symptoms; changing negative beliefs and negative habits; improving self-image and self-love; deepening success in intimacy; achieving goals; and creating effective futures.

Major topics include:

--identity, trance, and hypnosis
--hypnotic work to improve happiness, health, helpfulness, and healing
--symptoms/problems as “negative trances”
--how, when, and why to develop trance
--how to do creative work with others while in trance
--steps in a hypnotic session
--identifying and transforming “problem complexes” into solutions
--incorporating “resistance” and difficulties
--sensing a life in generative terms of “the hero’s journey”
--the problem as solution/attempted solution as problem
--deep trance for personal/professional change

Being in this program, you can expect both to experience many experiential shifts, and to acquire models of how such transformational change can be developed in other areas. Hypnotic language, hypnotic experience, hypnotic influence, and hypnotic delight will all be vital to the workshop.

About the workshop presenter.

Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D., is a licensed Psychologist practicing in Encinitas, CA. Stephen was one of the original NLP students in Santa Cruz from 1974-1977, during which time he also started extensive studying with his mentors Milton Erickson and Gregory Bateson. After receiving his doctorate in Psychology from Stanford, Stephen became known as one of the premier teachers and practitioners of Ericksonian hypnotherapy. His books include Therapeutic trances: The cooperation principle in Ericksonian psychotherapy, a classic in the field; The legacy of Erickson; The courage to love: Principles and practices of self-relations psychotherapy, and Walking in two worlds: The relational self in theory, practice, and community His work is especially known for its emphasis on reconnecting mindbody processes, emphasizing embodied relationality, and encouraging and supporting radical change.