you're given all the info you'll ever need on a subject up front

and no questions asked. A to Z on parts therapy with no time to

inwardly digest. All you'll ever need to know about regression

and let's not bother to find out why and how eh? No, the LCCH

isn't into packaged hypnosis for the masses and never mind the

consequences. They've worked hard at smoothing your path

through the information minefield. They understand how

I wonder how many people

learning works. They've designed the Certificate course so that

who embark on the Certificate

you will learn to sit up, crawl, utter the word Mama, and then

Ccourse actually start out with

pull yourself to an upright position before you start to take your

the intention of completing all

first tentative steps out into the big bad, yet brilliantly wonderful

three  courses:  Certificate,

world of Clinical Hypnosis. On the Diploma you learn to run and

Diploma, and Practitioner? I

for quite some time that's what you become adept at - running.

know I did, but knowing that

Not the high jump, not hurdles, not the long jump, just running.

you want to do something and

By the end of the Diploma you can run like the wind. And this is

actually going on to do it are

where many stop. Hey, if you can run why do anything else?

completely

But if you do sign on for the Practitioner, and I hope you do, you

will learn that all that running has prepared you to think about

the route. It has shown you that there are more ways to run than

I was completely entranced by

in a straight line.  It has enabled you to consolidate your

hypnosis after the Certificate

learning, to put it into practice and to come out the other side

course,  rounded  out  my

holding your gold medal high shouting `Yo'.

studies with the Diploma, but

found that I needed a break in order to process everything I'd

Mixed metaphors aside, what I'm trying to say is that why stop

learned before I went on to complete the Practitioner. The time

at the Diploma when there's still so much more to learn? Why

that I spent away from studying, immediately after the Diploma,

stop mid-way through a series of courses when, if you

enabled me to consolidate the protocols with the practice.

completed them ,they would give you an insight into the human

Working with clients gave me the confidence I needed to be

mind and those much-desired credits towards a degree? If

able to go back into the classroom and continue with my

you've got past the Certificate course and learned how we

studies. Without that experience under my belt I didn't feel I

think, react, relax, and take on new learning then you're already

would, in all honesty, have been able to say I was a practising

on your way to becoming a really great Hypnotherapist. Why

Hypnotherapist, even after successful completion of the

stop there? If all you want to do is stop people smoking, and

Practitioner course.

hey there's nothing wrong with that, then fine, go ahead and

stop. But if you want more for yourself; if you want to see what

Of course we're all different. What worked for me may not be

else you can help people with, people, after all who are just like

appropriate for you. You may like the idea of getting all your

you, with feelings and thoughts and debts and homes, then you

study out of the way first, before setting your practice up. You

owe it to yourself to sign up for more. Because at the end of the

may not like the idea of seeing clients before you're armed with

day you're investing in yourself. Your future. And you're worth it

as many interventions and protocols as possible. It may be

aren't you? Well aren't you?

though that you've decided that you need only go as far as the

Diploma - that there isn't that much more you can learn from the

I was going to write a piece solely about the Practitioner course

LCCH that you can't learn elsewhere, from a book perhaps. For

and tell you what it entailed, and it was going to be immensely

a while I thought that. For a while. Then I realized that I was

edifying and you would have been able to decide, from the

working without a full deck of cards. Oh sure I had all the cards

serious nature of my writing, that this was a course you should

from one to ten, but the important cards; the trump cards if you

attend. Instead I've told you about salami, decks of cards and

will, were absent. There were those patients who responded

running before you can walk. Well you know the Practitioner

really well to the interventions I used from the Diploma, and

course is just about the best of the bunch. It's longer than it

there were those patients that I knew I could help if only I had

was. It's more in-depth than the Diploma. It covers ground you

something else to work with; the trump cards that could only be

absolutely will not have covered before in the other LCCH

found in the Practitioner course.

courses. It is delivered by a team of dedicated professionals

who really know their stuff, and I have enjoyed it immensely.

There was something else of course too, that I'd missed by only

doing the first two courses and leaving it for a while at that. I

Metaphors of course are the stuff of storytelling. Not a minute

hadn't realized until I finally began the Practitioner just how well

goes by without we express ourselves in some way or another

designed the three courses are, and how they actually

through metaphor. I came to hypnosis because, as a writer for

complement each other and build on the work begun by the

TV, I was acutely aware of the importance and use of language

in getting meaning across to people. When you take your

patient into trance you ask them to reduce their modalities by

Back at the beginning of the Certificate course you would have

one third and replace the visual stimuli with imagination. When

been told that the coursework would be imparted to you

you attend the Certificate and the Diploma course and fail to go

`salami-style'. This means that the theory, interventions, and

on and take the Practitioner you're effectively reducing your

protocols are split up into bite-sized portions and served in an

ability to practise as an Hypnotherapist by one third ­ and

apparently random fashion. Of course there is nothing random

imagination doesn't figure in it anywhere at all. Think about it.

about it. You need to learn some of the theory and some of the

Then imagine just how good it would be to be playing with that

basic protocols and scripts before you can even begin to

full deck of cards. Deal yourself the Knight, the Queen and the

understand the more complex stuff. Imagine being asked to run

King and go on to win.

before you can walk and then told that because you can run you

should be able to hurdle too. You come off the blocks at speed,

the momentum keeping you upright. You fall over the first

hurdle and barely limp to the end. That's what happens when