72 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Succinct and Practical Manual, October 23, 2004
This review is from: The Deep Trance Training Manual: Hypnotic Skills (Spiral-bound)
I should first point that that if you are familiar with NLP, Ericksonian Hypnosis and with techniques from Ormond McGill - you will not find anything new in this book.
In that respect I was initially disappointed when I got this book, but then I have realized that it does fill the need for people who don't like to read a lot and who have attended only one of those three-day or seven-day hypnosis trainings, because most of the stuff that is presented in this book is not even taught in such courses. So for a person with an average hypnosis training, the techniques in this book are bound to take his hypnosis practice to the next level.
This is a very small book - only about 100 pages and the first half of the book takes you through some very basic and essential NLP skills such as calibration, eye-accessing cues, verbal predicates, establishing rapport, Milton Model, and at the end of the book, you'll find a list of hypnotic language patterns. I still believe that any professional hypnotist should take NLP training.
The next section of the book has an overview of different suggestibility tests, inductions and deepeners both from traditional hypnosis, from Ericksonian hypnosis and from Ormond McGill.
I'd like to add few words about Ormond McGill, since he seems to be the only well-known hypnotist in the west who has incorporated what are otherwise known as esoteric techniques in his practice of hypnosis.
You'll find a lot of books on hypnosis that deal just with traditional hypnosis, NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis.
Traditional hypnosis had a path similar to the way that chemistry emerged from alchemy: people kept the mechanical techniques, but left the spirit (life-force) out of it. You still get the results, but there's always something missing there - like a physical body without life in it. That was also the path of modern medicine.
Mesmer was on the right track. He recognized that there is something intangible (life-force / energy) involved in the process - he called in animal magnetism. Benjamin Franklin laughed him away - saying no, no, it's imagination that does the trick. Yet both were right. It is imagination that stirs the energy, the life-force and creates changes. Traditional hypnosis dropped the "working with the energy" bit, and kept for the most part just the mechanical techniques and went on toward the development and use of hypnotic language (as in Ericksonian hypnosis).
In Eastern countries, where this invisible energy is accounted, there are numerous practices for learning how to use mind-power to play with this energy and get some extraordinary results. Ormond McGill published one lovely book "Hypnotism and Mysticism in India" which contains some good exercises. In essence they are very similar to the mind-training exercises described in the book "Initiation into Hermetics" by Franz Bardon.
If you understand the role that "energy / life-force" plays, and you learn to use your own mind-power to manipulate it, you'll get much, much farther with hypnosis. Hypnotic techniques and hypnotic language, together with essential NLP skills will give you "external skills" of hypnosis, working with the energy will give you "internal skills" (I like to refer to them as "internal martial arts" - after all, that's what Oriental "nei kung" practices are all about).
This book "The Deep Trance Training Manual" deals for the most part with "external skills", but there is a brief mention of some methods used by Ormond McGill, and I am very glad that Igor mentioned them. But, there is much, much more to this.
Still, if there were only one practical book on hypnosis that you were buying, I'd recommend you get this one. It has no fluff, only one technique after another. If you put to practice everything you learn in this book, you will be way ahead of any average hypnotist.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Suggestibility Tests Alone Are Worth The Price of the Book, August 13, 2007
This review is from: The Deep Trance Training Manual: Hypnotic Skills (Spiral-bound)
Ledochowsky is an excellent hypnotist, as I have listened to many recordings of him. He is steeped in the Ericsonian and NLP traditions. What is very nice about this book is that it covers both Ericsonian and traditional hypnotic techniques. What many Ericsonian hypnotists miss is that even Ericson disn't always do Ericsonian hypnosis - some people respond better to a more authoritarian approach.
Of note in this book is the coverage of "suggestibility tests". Suggestibility tests are actually done to induce or deepen trance, they are a proof and expectation building exercise and create conscious overload. This book contains a wide variety of them. All hypnotists should have a few of these under their belt.
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