Mindfulness and Self Hypnosis usually have different goals. Mindfulness has been developed from Buddhist meditation and is traditionally used for more spiritual outcomes. It has recently become popular as a way of relaxing and resolving psychological problems in the west, but is rarely used to achieve materialistic goals. Self hypnosis too has been used widely for relaxation and resolving psychological problems, but tends to be used for achieving more materialistic goals, like success, confidence, wealth etc. Combining both principles and practices they can complement each other is surprising ways, and this is the approach that I prefer to teach on my courses and retreats. Self Hypnosis has it's place in psychotherapy but should only be taught after considering a clients / patients personality and psychological state. Self hypnosis should not be taught to abreactive Patients or Patients receiving regression therapy. If Patients are given the tools of change to take home and apply to themselves when there is a danger of them abreacting then the therapist is acting dangerously and unethically. Even if the Patient is only receiving forms of age regression they should not be given self-hypnosis skills. Patients are willing and eager to help themselves, however the last

Every therapist faces the problem of having clients with low motivation. Yet, therapists are rarely taught how to specifically motivate clients to achieve outcomes. Most training is based on using therapy techniques to overcome problems, however, if the client is unmotivated to get better then therapy techniques are not as effective. One approach to motivating clients comes from the work of Milton Erickson. His Ericksonian hypnosis approach to motivation is based on the concept of tasking clients. Tasking involves giving homework or behavioural challenges and tasks for the client to carry out between therapy sessions. These tasks are often given while the client is in hypnosis as the trance state acts as a kind of glue or adhesive to make the suggestions given by the therapist more likely to be taken on at the unconscious level. So here we see hypnosis being used to motivate clients to carry out tasks which then, in themselves, increase motivation to succeed at therapy. Tasks work by creating a change in the Patient’s routine which bring about a change in the Patient’s behaviour and therefore a change in the way the problem functions. Tasks are given to interrupt habitual patterns of behaviour or thinking.

An Article about how techniques for inducing hypnosis have changed over the years - from the Independent Newspaper, England by John McCrone. Hypnosis can be explained as a form of self-induced sensory deprivation…well perhaps. Hypnotists with swinging fob watches are out. Far more effective ways of putting people into a trance have been discovered which, with their employment of confusion and word twisting, are not too far removed from brainwashing techniques. Yet while the practice of hypnosis has made considerable strides of late, science is still uncertain whether the phenomenon even exists. Hypnotism has been studied for over 200 years. For a long time, the only way known of putting subjects into a trance was to get them to focus on a spot on the ceiling or a monotonous pendulum while the hypnotist commanded them to fall asleep. However, this "authoritarian" method has since widely been replaced among hypnotherapists by an indirect technique pioneered by the US therapist, Milton Erickson. Today, a hypnotist uses a careful manipulation of the conversation they have with their clients to "lead" them into a trance state. As Stephen Brooks, director of the training group, British Hypnosis Research, explains it, there is none of