Bill O'Hanlon's Six New CDs

Available from: Crown House Publishing Co. LLC, Wales

Reviewed by: By Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D.

Followers of Bill O'Hanlon will delight in the recent release of his six new CDs, all influenced by the work of Milton H. Erickson. If you don't know much about Milton Erickson, this set of CDs will serve as a good introduction to Ericksonian hypnosis.

The recordings demonstrate O'Hanlon's versatility with hypnosis, rapport, and story telling. In each 40- to 60-minute presentation, his voice is friendly and comforting to listen to, with excellent inflection and pacing. Bill tells his stories in such a relaxed and casual manner that they seem spontaneous and fresh, as though you were hearing them over a mug of beer or a cup of coffee. Here is a brief review on each CD.

Meetings with a Remarkable Man: Personal Tales of Milton Erickson

O'Hanlon begins this recording with an engaging story about how he came to meet and study with Milton Erickson. While in graduate school, O'Hanlon came across a fascinating story about Erickson in Life magazine and became determined to meet the man. He devised a plan to exchange gardening services for the opportunity to talk with Erickson and observe his work. Bill shares his own observations about Erickson's amazingly intuitive approach to therapy and teaching.

Next, Bill goes on to tell Erickson's story, describing several life-changing events in Erickson's life, in which Erickson coped with physical disabilities, pain, and hardship, to become a physician and legendary hypnotherapist. These stories show the shaping of Erickson's personality, as well as his brilliant mind and uncanny skills of communication and observation. These stories will touch listeners at both the conscious and the unconscious levels, with examples of individual strength and resilience.

Calm beneath the Waves: Help Relieve Panic, Anxiety and Desperation

In the tradition of Milton Erickson, O'Hanlon crafts a series of stories about people facing anxiety and fear, and their ability to move beyond those experiences. Bill gets into rapport with listeners by telling of times in his own life when he felt anxious or panicked or hopeless. The admission is humanizing and levels the playing field between speaker and listener.

Bill then tells entrancing and uplifting stories about people who managed to confront and reframe debilitating fears and do something different to interrupt illogical patterns of thinking and behavior. Each story is engaging and easy to imagine, and all are ideal for anyone immobilized by irrational fear.

Moving On: Two Healing Trances for Resolving Sexual Abuse

On the first track of this two-track recording, O'Hanlon creates a hypnotic induction that suggests flexibility and choice. He models Erickson's gentle permissiveness and application of metaphor. The themes in the trance-work explore how survival and reframing of a trauma can lead to a sense of life purpose, and to realizing a spiritual, core self. These stories speak about changing the meaning of one's life story, maintaining boundaries, and reaching self-acceptance and validation.

In the second track, O'Hanlon makes the point that recovery is a step-by-step process. He encourages listeners to take their own next step. He reframes the experience of sexual abuse so that listeners feel encouraged to reclaim a sense of self, redefine identity, and see a future of possibilities. The themes include suffering and recovery, perfection and imperfection, and redemption, all beautifully explored in Bill's kind and nurturing voice. I would definitely recommend this CD for survivors of sexual abuse.

Beside Yourself with Comfort: Hypnotic Help for Chronic or Acute Pain Relief

On this CD, O'Hanlon hypnotically suggests and describes many methods for reducing pain. He invites readers to consider each one and choose those that work best. First, Bill discusses acute awareness of sensations, then distraction, and then reframing pain as a body signal that has served its purpose. He tells stories of people, such as Milton Erickson, who demonstrated nontraditional methods for overcoming pain.

O'Hanlon also helps listeners to alter pain's visual submodalities and dissociate from pain. He speaks of analogies that suggest habituation to pain. He tells of how people develop calluses, for example, to reduce skin sensitivity. He also recommends that listeners shift the habits that pain has brought into their daily living. He tells listeners to challenge their pain-related habits and find one small method to "win back some of your life from pain." Bill's message suggests imagination and flexibility in coping with pain, guiding people to find untapped resources within.

Keep Your Feet Moving: Favorite Teaching and Healing Tales

Listen to this CD and you might feel the "narrative imperative" to document and record your own favorite teaching and healing tales. Here is a small collection of entertaining and heart-warming stories that showcase O'Hanlon's story-telling talents. Like a series of audio Rorschach inkblots, Bill lets listeners derive their own meanings and reach their own conclusions. In these stories I found themes of resilience in adversity, refusal to be overwhelmed by fear, and making progress in small incremental steps.

What I like about this CD is Bill's easy-going way of relating tales of mythology, magic, personal experience, gifted people, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I was mesmerized by the story of how couples can remember how they fell in love. Bill tells the story of how Roger Bannister broke the four-minute-mile barrier. In the story of the African Violet Queen of Milwaukee, Bill relates how Milton Erickson helped a depressed woman find purpose and meaning. Each story is delivered skillfully, with a forceful ending.

Bill concludes with a stunning account of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived the German concentration camps and took his message of life and meaning to the world. The message is that a compelling vision of the future gives one a reason to go on living, despite pain and tragedy. If you want to be amused, astonished, riveted, and emotionally moved, listen to this CD!

Let Your Soul be Your Pilot: Finding Your Direction in Life

This CD takes a philosophical turn. Bill tells his listeners that they can find life purpose in three ways: through their wounds, through their anger, and through their bliss. Wounds, anger and bliss can be life's way of grabbing people by the lapels and shouting, "This is what you are supposed to do!"

Bill tells stories about people who found meaning in life by surviving suffering and tragedy. "Your wound is your opening to the world...You can close down, or you can go out and change the world."

What makes you angry? Bill reminds us that out of anger, people can acknowledge inequity and injustice. They can then transform their anger into energy, which provides the impetus to speak out, support a cause, and find a calling.

Bliss makes the heart pound and compels us to action. Bill asks us to examine our own sources of inspiration and happiness. Our soul's path can also be found in the friendship, love, and mentoring of others who have seen and admired our talents and potentials. To make the point, he includes his own stories of how he became fascinated with psychotherapy and solution-oriented therapy. For people who want to discover their life purpose, this CD is perfect!

Conclusion

These CDs make for well-spent listening time. Throughout these teaching tales, O'Hanlon's warmth and charm shine through. Additionally, the CDs touch on themes that psychotherapists and coaches often encounter in their work: fear, pain, recovery, meeting a life challenge, and finding purpose. As a mental health therapist, I will certainly be recommending these recordings to my clients.

Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D. is a licensed psychotherapist and life coach with a solo practice, Motivational Strategies, in Springfield, Virginia. She is a certified hypnotherapist and NLP Trainer as well as Executive Director of the National Board of Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists. Her recently-published book is The Weight, Hypnotherapy and You Weight Reduction Program: An NLP and Hypnotherapy Practitioner's Manual.

Her website is www.engagethepower.com

Her email is judy@engagethepower.com

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18 Ways to Induce and Deepen Hypnotic Trance

By Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D., L.P.C.

"You are going deeper-deeper." How many times a day does a hypnotherapist say these words? Would you like to add some variety to your deepening methods? Here are 18 things to say to induce and deepen hypnotic trance. Each item on the list has a short script as an example. You will recognize several hypnotic language patterns. Keep in mind that some methods overlap. Read all the scripts in the entire list sequentially and you will have an effective trance induction for relaxation.

Begin by telling the client to close his or her eyes. Make yourself comfortable and close your eyes.

1. Ask the client to take a deep breath and relax. Ease back and take a deep breath, all the way in. As you slowly let it out, perhaps you can feel your muscles beginning to relax, at the same time that your mind is just beginning to pay attention in a different way.

2. Pace the client's current experience with truisms and lead into trance. You are listening to my voice, and the sounds in the room. You are aware of your surroundings. You are aware of the position of your arms and legs. You can feel the texture of your clothing. You can feel the support of the chair on which you are sitting. You notice your breathing, and you notice how much more relaxed and calm you feel, than just moments ago.

3. Reassure the client that trance is easy to attain and he or she is a good hypnotic subject. Going into trance is different for each person, and whatever way you experience it is just find. I am sure you can do this.

4. Compounding: The more you listen, the more you relax. The more you relax, the easier it is to go within and achieve that level of inner awareness where special learning takes place.

5. Fractionation: As you learn to go into trance, you can practice it for improvement. Open your eyes for a moment. Look around. Now close your eyes and go right back to an even more satisfying level of relaxation and concentration.

6. Establish Cause-Effect: As you wonder what hypnosis is all about, you understand more. Each breath you exhale can make it more satisfying. I hope each moment that passes brings you a greater sense of comfort. With each word I say, you can advance more completely into relaxation and concentration, as you please.

7. Progressive Relaxation: (Suggest that each part of the body is relaxing. Be sure to pause between each sentence, giving the client time to respond). Send the thought of relaxation all the way down to your feet and feel your feet relaxing. Allow that same relaxation to move gently upward through your body, into your ankles and calves. Let the relaxing feelings continue, so that now your knees and thighs can feel more relaxed, as the relaxation moves into your hips and abdomen. Now feel the muscles of your back beginning to relax and let go of all that tension. Even your shoulders relax as comforting sensations flow down into your chest and each exhale helps that sense of relaxation and letting go. Let the relaxation flow down your arms, into your elbows, down into your wrists, and all the way down to the tips of your fingers. Your entire body is relaxing more, while that soothing feeling moves into your neck, your scalp, and all the muscles of your face relax. Your entire body feels relaxed from head to toe. All the tension has melted away.

8. Presuppose that deepening is occurring: I wonder how completely you are relaxing. You are discovering for yourself how satisfying trance can be. While you are relaxing, many subtle changes are occurring.

9. Describe some common aspects of trance: Your breathing might be slower now and more regular. Perhaps your muscles are more relaxed and your hands might feel loose and limp, while your heartbeat and pulse are slowing down. You may be finding it easier to concentrate on the things I say, although from time to time, you are thinking your own thoughts too.

10. Suggestions of all possibilities: People go into trance in a wide variety of ways and everyone's experience is unique. Some people relax quickly, and some relax more slowly and some vary the pace. Some people hear every word I say, and others tune my voice in and out. Or you might pay attention to your own thoughts and not really listen at all. For some, trance is a light, floating experience, and for some it is a deep heavy experience, and for some, it is a combination of sensations. How you create this experience for yourself is really up to you, or you can just relax and discover what happens naturally. It may be what you expect or something different, or some of each.

11. Arm Catalepsy: As you focus inward, you can notice how relax your arms are. Let them feel so relaxed that they feel heavy-so heavy that for now, they just don't want to move. They are so heavy and relaxed that it's just too much effort to move them. Try to lift your right arm and find you'd rather not lift it, or it is so heavy, it just doesn't want to lift. Stop trying and relax even more comfortably. This should give you an indication that you are now fully in hypnotic trance, and how pleasant and peaceful it can be for you.

12. Eye Closure: Now relax your eyelids and all the muscles around your eyes even more than before. Let your eyelids feel heavy and drowsy. Let your eyelids relax so much that they just don't feel like opening. They are so heavy, so relaxed that if you tried to open them, it would seem difficult. Now relax your eyelids so much more that they just want to stay shut. Later on, of course, they will open easily, but for now you can enjoy the feeling of allowing your subconscious to take part in this process, relaxing your eyelids so much they just want to stay closed. Now test your eyelids to be sure they want to stay shut. Very Good! Now stop testing and experience the satisfaction of realizing that your mind and body are fully cooperating with the process of hypnosis, as you relax more peacefully.

13. Revivify a memory of previous trance (if it was pleasant) or a similar experience of comfort and relaxation: (Note: Ask the client to describe the previous trance before you begin hypnosis. Then use the client's own words here, as you help the client access the memory). I trust you can remember that previous time when you were hypnotized. You might recall some of your thoughts and observations and the sensations you felt as your body relaxed and your mind seemed to "focus inward," as though you were "drifting effortlessly" while feeling comfortable and secure. You remember that it was "a soothing feeling to let go of all that stress." You can have those same satisfying feelings now.

14. Metaphor or Analogy: Some people say going into trance is as comfortable as going to bed at night, at the end of a long, productive day, with nothing else to do but close the eyes and let go and relax. There are no distractions and nothing to think about. You can just let the mind drift, feeling warm and comfortable, while enjoying the peaceful quiet.

15. Counting: I am going to count now from one to five. With each number, just let your mind and body relax more and more, so that by the time I reach the number five, you will be much more deeply relaxed, with a fuller sense of inner awareness. One, relaxing deeper and deeper. Two, relaxing more and completely. Three, a deeply comfortable feeling. Four, going within to find what is there to discover. Five, much more relaxed now.

Note: If you use counting to deepen the trance, reverse the count with you reorient the client. Example: Now I am going to count from five to one and with each number you'll become increasingly alert. Five, coming up now. Four, feeling more alert. Three, ready to return to conscious, wakeful awareness. Two, ready to move about again and open your eyes, and one, eyes open, fully alert now.

16. Splitting: (Pose to the client that he or she is aware of two opposite things at once. Use a different tone of voice for each one). You have a conscious mind...and you have an subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is aware of the external world...and your subconscious mind manages your inner awareness. The conscious mind deals with facts and logic...while the subconscious mind works with intuition and creativity. The conscious mind thinks about the problems...while the subconscious mind holds the solutions. Mere conversation speaks to the conscious mind...and hypnosis speaks to the subconscious mind.

17. Guided imagery: Imagine you are drifting down a quiet stream in a canoe, under a lovely blue sky. The current carries you along, so you can just sit back and relax and enjoy the scenery. Overhead, an occasional cloud floats slowly by, moving effortlessly with its own sense of direction, even though you don't know where it is going. It changes shape as it moves, sometimes resembling something recognizable, sometimes not. On either side of you there is a riverbank, with trees, grasses, shrubs and flowers. Butterflies flit among the colorful flowers, seeming to know just what to do to get at that sweet nectar deep inside each one. All is peaceful and tranquil, as you let the current carry you, and the gentle rocking of the canoe, under the warmth of the sun seems to lull you into a deeply restful state.

18. Word play: As you trance-sition into hypnotic trance in your own way, getting out of your own way, you might trance-fer some previous learning to have it your own way, or it could be that you wait for the experience to trance-form your awareness of how you own the way you do it and trance-late what I say, into something you can use now or have discovered earlier on.

This piece appears in my book, The Weight, Hypnotherapy and You Weight Reduction Program: An NLP and Hypnotherapy Practitioners Manual (Crown House 2006). To find out more about this book go to www.engagethepower.com.

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By: Ron Klein, INTERLINK Editor

A new commercial hypnosis CD by Dr. Judy Pearson and Oscar Rodriquez, Discover Your Learning Genius, gives listeners an innovative experience of dual induction hypnosis. The purpose of this recording is to help listeners acquire confidence in their learning skills in academic environments, maintain curiosity and a desire to figure things out, improve retention of information, enhance concentration and listening, and strengthen their test-taking skills. The narrative is based on Ericksonian hypnosis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and the work of Abraham Maslow who advanced the theory that skill and knowledge advance from difficult to easy and from conscious effort to unconscious competence. The speakers utilize stories, analogies, and guided imagery to involve the listener in a hypnotic process that stimulates imagination and intuitive learning.

While there is little research to back up the claim, listening to two separate hypnosis tracks at the same time is thought to increase suggestibility, deepen trance, and intensify the effects of hypnosis. Most dual induction hypnosis CDs have two sound tracks by the same speaker. In Discover Your Learning Genius the combination of a male voice and a female voice adds a new dimension to the genre. Moreover, the CD was mastered so that, if the listener is using headphones, each voices alternate from one ear to the other: Sometimes the male voice is in the right ear and the female voice is in the left ear, and then vice versa. The background music, by Dr. Harry Henshaw, himself a hypnotherapist, was specifically composed and arranged for relaxation and hypnosis.

Judy Pearson is a licensed psychotherapist with and coach certified in clinical hypnotherapy. She is also certified in Neuro-Linguistic Programming as a Master Practitioner and Trainer. Oscar Rodriguez is a life coach with training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and hypnosis. This is their first joint effort and they plan to produce more dual induction recordings in the future. Whether you are a student studying for an exam, or a professional in a training program, or someone who simply reads books and attends classes for self-improvement or career advancement, this CD could maximize your innate learning skills.

Discover Your Learning Genius can be purchased online at http://www.engagethepower.com/store/store.html.
$24.95 plus shipping and handling

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By Linda Thomson, Ph.D., M.S.N., C.P.N.P

Crown House Publishing Limited, Copyright 2007

Reviewed by Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D.

Dr. Linda Thomson describes her two-CD set, Stress Free Surgery, as a "self relaxation program to help you prepare for and recover from surgery." The first CD is for listening prior to and during surgery. The second CD is for listening post-surgery. Each CD is approximately 40 minutes in length and they come packaged in an attractive, sturdy plastic case.

Continue reading "Stress Free Surgery - Audio CD Review" »

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