NLP-Hypnosis: We Are Family!
Born in a Seminar Room…
During the introduction of me as a Certified NLP Practitioner and Professional Freelance Copywriter by my good friend Vincent Cheng, Founder of JeVince and Malaysian Business Network, during his Sales 2.0 Marketing 2.0 Workshop prompted a participant to speak on the relationship of NLP and Hypnosis how the two are not related. He expressed how his trainer, also mine, is bad at it and too academic.
For the purpose of this entry, I’ll focus on the relationship between neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis. What’s the nexus?
Beginnings of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)
Richard Bandler, then Psychology Student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joined followers of John Grinder, then associate professor of linguistics at the same varsity, reputedly the youngest in the States at the time.
The two became friends and began fusing their interests and skills and began studying the works of Virginia Satir (mother of Family Therapy) and Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy). With the materials at hand, they studied the two for the reasons of their successes. Through a friend, the co-founders of neurolinguistic programming stumbled upon the work of Milton Erickson, MD, Grandfather of Hypnosis.
They were so engrossed with this general practitioner’s works on hypnosis. They incorporated Ericksonian work into NLP.
NLP From the Eyes of Clinical Hypnosis
In Clinical Hypnosis, there are fundamentally three approaches to hypnosis:
- Autocratic: The autocratic approach is telling the Patients (LCCH/BSCH term for ‘Client’) on what to do. Close your eyes. Think of a time when you were…
- Permissive: Patients are ‘invited’ to close their eyes. Whenever you are ready, close your eyes…
- Non-Traditional: Non-traditional methods depart from the two. Non-traditional uses natural occurring hypnotic states to create the change. Briefly, you and I enter hypnotic trances everyday: when we’re day dreaming, concentrated in work, engrossed in reading books, etc.
Where does Clinical Hypnosis put NLP? You can almost guess it – non-traditional.
Ericksonian Influence is “Apostolic Succession” in NLP: Past, Present and Future
Erickson’s work incorporated by the Co-Founders of NLP into this new field of personal change lays the hands on NLP. There are NLP trainers and practitioners who write out that Bandler and Grinder went to meet Erickson, who endorsed their work.
Since its conception in the 1970s, NLP expands and grow because of those who carry on the torch.
Depending on the pre- or post-NLP training of your practitioner, you will see traces of NLP amidst what they bring onto the table.
Just as my trainer, William Horton, Psy. D., is trained in Hypnosis (Dr. Horton is a Certified Hypnotherapist, National Guild of Hypnosis/NGH & International Association of Counsellors and Trainers/IACT), I am doing the same. As a student of the International Certificate in Clinical Hypnosis conducted by the London College of Clinical Hypnosis Malaysia, I’m bringing back hypnosis into NLP as I practice it.
In addition to conducting NLP therapies and coaching, I use my NLP-hypnosis in my copywriting and speechwriting.
At the end of the day, NLP in inseparable from Hypnosis. No matter how far down the line you may be from John Grinder and Richard Brandler, or you got your line through NLP Gurus Tony Robbins, Tad James, Steve Andreas and more, NLP will trace its roots back to hypnosis.
