My life went through some serious and primarily positive changes over the past several months. Those changes are now affording me the opportunity to do things that I was unable to do previously like taking time for myself and for seeing friends, pursuing various educational opportunities, and seriously evaluating my future, especially my future profession.
One of the things I will be doing is getting a serious education in a subject that fascinated me ever since my early teens, if not earlier.
That subject is hypnosis.
Several years ago, I recorded and participated in several classes on hypnosis presented by a local hypnotherapist through the Midwest Training Institute of Hypnosis. I learned a lot there, which only made me realize there was a whole lot more for me to learn, but my opportunities to continue learning were limited because of my situation and because of other priorities. Now my situation and my priorities have changed, and I also have a new opportunity to greatly further my education. This opportunity is a remote education course being taught by someone I respect highly. The course will run from mid-September through the end of October: it will consist of 80 hours of online lectures and demonstrations with assigned homework of reading and studying and 20 hours of required practice in between classes.
Yes, I said homework and practice. Hypnosis homework. Hypnosis practice.
This homework practice will consist of practicing hypnosis techniques from the course. These techniques range from a variety of simple inductions and basic trance tests up to the final exam which is a full hypnotherapy session. That, of course, means I need people to practice with.
I am calling for volunteers to act as my practice subjects and test clients, not just during the class but after the class is over, as well, because I will be continuing my education even after successfully completing the class. My classes will be on weekends so I will have the entire week in between to finish the homework. One more thing: I will record my practice sessions, because that is the only way for the instructor to review and grade my performance. Only the instructor and myself will see them.
I was intending to take my time and explore my future professional options, but the unexpected timing of the course was too good to pass up. Whether this will result in me becoming a professional hypnotist or hypnotherapist is still to be determined. I have a great deal of research to do to support that decision, so I don’t want to try to make that decision right now, and this course does contain instruction on becoming a professional, so waiting to make that decision until after the course is actually advisable.
This is in addition to and after my decision to attend a hypnosis conference in late August in Las Vegas. That decision was mainly because it looked like it would be very interesting and was highly recommended by people who attended the conference in the past. In addition, a number of my friends were already attending, so after checking out the class schedule and found more than enough classes and presentations to make the trip worthwhile I decided to make the jump. Another plus here is that there are classes on starting out in the field here as well.
This whole sequence, particularly the timing, is somewhat of a surprise. I really wasn’t expecting to be doing something about my future profession quite this soon, but after I got started, I started thinking it was probably my best option. I do know that out of the many things I am proficient at and the many professions that I could choose, this path is one that relies the least on outside elements like finding a good place to work and the most on myself. I find the latter slightly scary.
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