Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy/NLP [Paperback]

Jack Elias (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2005

Finding True Magic is the primary training text for the Transpersonal Hypnotherapy/NLP Certification Program offered by the Institute for Therapeutic Learning. Finding True Magic and the Transpersonal Hypnotherapy/NLP training are appropriate for laypeople seeking personal growth, as well as for therapists and other professionals intent on advancing their therapeutic skills. In fact, about 50 per cent of ITL students take the training primarily for personal development. This book explores the possibilities for recognizing and freeing ourselves from a destructive process of perceiving, thinking, and acting that can be viewed as a pernicious worldwide epidemic. Unlike other diseases, which we strive to isolate and cure, this insidious fever has a characteristic that makes us blind to its presence: we come to identify its symptoms as our very own true self. We lovingly speak of this disease as our ego, our sense of limited separate selfhood. Jack Elias calls it "egoic-minding," because it is a process, not a thing. Egoic-minding is a fragmented, biased way of perceiving and thinking. It can be viewed as a sort of destructive hypnotic trance that causes us to experience each other as strangers, as different, as threats. The delirium of this trance causes us to do violence to each other and to our world, without ever recognizing that it (our egoic thought process) is the true enemy. By synthesizing insights and techniques of Eastern and Western philosophy and psychology, Finding True Magic explores various ways to disperse the feverish trance of egoic-minding, heal the trauma it causes, and wake us up to the sacred magic of our true Self. This true inner Self is the wellspring of our capacity for cooperation, community-building, and the celebration of life. Everyone has the right to the make use of the essential insights and dynamics of healing communication, without resorting to the long-term expense of a professional intermediary. The model of such therapeutic relationships has changed in recent years, due to the financial burdens it places on our medical system. Financial considerations aside, however, therapy and therapists should change simply because there is a more effective approach to healing and personal growth. That approach, which is the subject of this book, relies on the inherent goodness of our shared Being, a resource that is surprisingly easy to contact in the space between egoic thoughts. Most of us do not experience that space in the normal course of our thinking, however. We may be surprised to hear such a thing, given our experience of the seemingly impenetrable stream of our thoughts. But this space is quite real. It is the space of Silence, Healing Power, and Insight. We have all experienced this silence on occasion, perhaps through prayer, or in a tender moment of love or awe. Most of us have not been taught, and have remained unaware that this silent Presence is always so close and available. Holistic mind/body therapeutic techniques, such as those presented here, derive transformative power when they help us to tap into this willing Presence, also called Grace.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An extraordinary stand alone text from which even the most experienced therapist will learn a lot about therapy and herself." -- Leticia Oliver, DCH, Journal of the A.B.of Hypnotherapy

"East Meets West in True Magic. Finding True Magic is a remarkable textbook on Transpersonal Hypnotherapy. Recommended for deep study." -- Ormand McGill, PhD., Dean of American Hypnotists, Author, Hypnotism and Mysticism of India

"Finding True Magic provides a great amount of practical and creative guidance. It's a pleasure to have your book." -- Tulku Thondup, Author of The Healing Power of Mind

"If you do healing, you must have this book. If you teach, you and your students must have this book!" -- Marilyn Gordon, Author of Extraordinary Healing

This uncommonly wise book raises the idea of therapy to new levels of application and consideration, teaching effective therapeutic artistry. -- Alex Docker, PhD., Dean of Studies, American Pacific University

About the Author

Jack Elias is the founder and director of the Institute for Therapeutic Learning, a licensed Vocational School in Seattle, Washington, which trains and certifies Transpersonal Clinical Hypnotherapists. Jack has been training hypnotherapists and maintaining a private counseling practice since 1988. Mr. Elias presents a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western perspectives on the nature of consciousness and communication. He teaches simple, yet powerful techniques to help people achieve their highest personal and professional goals. Since 1967 he has studied Eastern meditation, philosophy and psychology with recognized Buddhists masters such as Shunryo Suzuki Roshi and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Siddha Yoga master Gurumayi. In the `real world,' he had 20 years experience in sales, marketing and financial planning before beginning his teaching and counseling career. Mr. Elias offers dynamic experiential workshops, seminars and certification trainings. His trainings are eligible for credit at various universities, and for RN CEU's.

Product Details

• Paperback: 347 pages
• Publisher: Five Wisdoms Press; 2 edition (December 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 096552101X
• ISBN-13: 978-0965521017
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #354,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elias Brings True Consciousness into Hypnotherapy and NLP, September 1, 2001

By 

Gregory McHugh (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnotherapy / NLP (Paperback)

No other author (that I have read or studied) in this field brings such passion and consciousness to the how to of hypnotherapy as Jack Elias. When I first started with this manual of technique I was pushed back a little by his "process" and then shortly realized that he was literally attempting to move me to an altered state while writing of his purposes and concepts. I could feel the compression of wisdom and mind wrenching and concept blowing sentences that brought whole realms of my own belief systems to the fore to be examined in an instant. Often, I would have to read and reread whole paragraphs and then put the book down and breathe deeply as minirealizations of the Truth of Elias's monologue seeped in. I found my self celebrating "eurekas" often.

Elias teaches that "exploring attaining . . .wholeness and inner peace" is an integral part of his manual for practitioners because he believes that success with clients is directly related to the depth and experience of the therapist's own contemplation and conscious inner life.

So the process of the practitioner becoming more "awake", if you will, is easily woven into the teaching and training process of this manual. Detailed scripts are integrated into the discussions of various areas. Elias breaks the training in the manual into phases. First is a basic introduction to hypnosis and the nature of the egoic mind. Second is an illumination of Regression/Past Life Therapy with discussion on accessing the Higher Self or True Self, coverage of the Vedic traditions of India and its view of Shakti and the power of illusion in an interplay of the psyche that Elias calls "egoic minding" and the awakening from egoic trance. He also includes a model of the psyche that correlates the Neuro Linguistic Programming model of the Psyche with the Five Skandhas of Buddhism.

The manual continues with a great piece on subpersonalities and trance work and an effective (though brief) work on "Shame and the Addictive Personality".

Elias gives a whole section to archetypes, which can minimally play a very helpful role for the hypnotherapist seeking to do a thorough assessment of the client and develop a very "whole" case plan. This section has extensive scripts and commentary on accessing archetypes and utilizing them for the hypnotherapeutic processes.

Finally, the manual deals with shadow work, entity attachment and releasing, couples and group hypnosis, and developing a practice.

Practitioners that want to get themselves out of their "box".
into deeper unfolding of themselves, and even more effective healing with their clients should make this manual a must.

82 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Toward Awakening, March 7, 1999

By 

Leona Moran (Kenmore, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnotherapy / NLP (Paperback)

What is True Magic? Sogyal Rinpoche says the Tibetan mystic, Terton Sogyal, was not really impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water. A real miracle happens, he said, if someone can liberate just one negative emotion. Most of us would be happy to liberate just one negative emotion for ourselves, and, if we are in one of the many helping professions, for others. Jack Elias' book, Finding True Magic, makes that kind of miracle accessible for professionals and for those seeking personal growth. True Magic, in Elias' perspective, can be found in the basic goodness of each individual. Grounded in uncompromising and unsentimental faith in innate basic goodness, he assembles a wealth of practical techniques that make the magic of healing profoundly inspiring and understandable. He makes simple observations and then explains how they transform and empower the therapeutic process and personal growth. Finding True Magic is a resource for therapists, a guide for individuals, and the manual for a comprehensive hypnotherapy training course. Elias writes in the genre of Daniel Goleman, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Mark Epstein: brilliant, passionate thinkers with a genius for interpreting and applying Eastern thought for the benefit of Westerners in the helping professions and those seeking to bring illumination to the dilemmas of their personal lives. He draws upon the experience of continuous study during his entire adult life with some of the major teachers of Eastern philosophy who have come to the West. These teachings have been deepened and integrated by his own meditation practice and in 10 years as a counselor, hypnotherapist and teacher. A radical key to Elias' therapy is his "de-hypnosis" approach. He assumes that therapy's goal should be to wake us up from unnecessary limiting trances, not simply to make ourselves more comfortable. For example, he states "Hypnotic processes are redundant...because we are always already in trance," and, "We think we live in the world, but we live in our minds." It seems so simple once you hear it, but recognizing that people are already in trance, that their problem is their trance, and that your job is to help them wake up from the trance, radically alters and empowers therapy. Elias takes this notion one quantum step further by declaring that the greatest limiting delusion, the most powerful trance distortion we experience, is the sense of being a separate fearful self. This false self trance, this "egoic minding process" as he calls it, is the cause of all suffering. Challenging this sacred territory of "who we think we are" is the quickest, most powerful way to dissolve problems and suffering, in Elias' approach. The goal of therapy is not simply to achieve relief of symptoms, but to dismantle this trance of fearful,isolated selfhood. Finding True Magic is an exposition of insights and techniques designed to de-hypnotize us from the tricks, delusions and resulting confusion of this inherently violent and fearful egoic process, freeing up the spontaneous energies and intelligence of healthy change, enjoyment and successful living. Some of the most immediately useful elements are 18 original scripts that can be used by students and therapists in traditional trance work or by individuals as a basis for healing meditation or journaling. Script topics range from self hypnosis for deep, healing relaxation to regression and past life therapy, resolving inner conflicts, pain relief, exploring the human relationship to archetypal energies, and more. Each script reflects the use of relaxation, healing imagery, and application of newly discovered inner resources that lead to ecologically sound, lasting solutions. The solutions and newly recognized resources which emerge spontaneously from the unconscious can be claimed as evidence of the individual's own inner strength and healing power. Solutions - and the ability to generate creative healing solutions - become permanent resources for future growth. Text, instructions, examples and scripts incorporate and teach the arts of hypnotic communication: trance induction techniques, deep relaxation, pacing and leading, neuro-linguistic processes, vivid use of metaphor, imagery and more. The whole approach relies on the natural way the mind perceives, interprets, stores, processes and retrieves sensory information to quickly resolve problems such as phobias, trauma relief, motivation and performance enhancement. The goal of all these techniques is to accomplish brief therapy that is based in natural mind/body healing capacities that are powerful, deep and transformative. Finding True Magic is a resource that makes this liberating kind of work possible for therapists of a variety of persuasions. It provides unforgettable insights about the role of the helper and illuminates the path of personal growth. Gifted writers somehow infuse their work with their own voices. Elias' voice is clear, touching and compelling in these pages, enlivening the text with passion for the material and revealing the depth of his own rigorous honesty and contemplation of the ideas he presents. Direct, articulate and poetic, his writing invites the reader - whether experienced therapist or lay person - to embark upon a journey toward awakening. Finding True Magic evokes fresh new understandings and insights with each re-reading.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Road Map For A Magical Journey Towards Wholeness, May 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnotherapy / NLP (Paperback)

More than an excellent explanation of hypnotherapy and NLP techniques, Finding True Magic is an invaluable manual for truly living an awake and ecstatic life, a guide to achieving moment by moment magic throughout one's life.

Jack Elias' therapeutic approach goes far beyond the more superficial levels of popular hypnosis, by dealing with deeper core issues and emphasizing the healing of each person as a whole.

His work is based on the sometimes startling realization that we already walk around in trance, hypnotized by our beliefs and our habitual ways of thinking. Reading this book initiates a mystical process that involves waking up from our limiting thoughts, experiencing the joy, peace, and purity that comprise our inherent magical state, and opening to new choices and new resources in order to honor and respect ourselves and others.

The simple yet profound techniques and ideas found in this book lead to transformations that are indeed truly magical. Finding True Magic is a gift to all humanity.