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Hypnosis Training Video #515: How to Conduct & Build Community Courses for Your Hypnosis Practice

by Terra Johnston on
Erika Flint, BA, BCH, A+CPHI, OB

Erika Flint, BA, BCH, A+CPHI, OB

Cal Banyan, MA, BCH, CI, DNGH, OB, MCPHI

Cal Banyan, MA, BCH, CI, DNGH, OB, MCPHI

How To Design and teach a community Based Hypnosis Course

In this video, Cal and I are discussing how to design and teach a hypnosis class, and why hypnotists should be doing this! The ultimate goal of teaching a course about hypnosis is to help the public better understand what hypnosis is. We know that there are a lot of common misconceptions about hypnosis, and part of our work as hypnotists is to dispel the myths about hypnosis.

There are many things that don’t understand or get wrong about hypnosis, such as the very common idea that hypnosis is like mind control. People often ask if getting hypnotized means, you’re going to make them “cluck like a chicken or bark like a dog.”

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People’s misconceptions keep them from giving hypnosis a chance and seeking help that could be so valuable to them. And by conducting a hypnosis course in your community, you could help demystify these misconceptions.

Teaching a community hypnosis course is not just beneficial to the members of your community, but it is also an opportunity to help build your practice. Conducting a hypnosis class opens the door to the possibility of getting new clients. So, if teaching a hypnosis course is beneficial to both your community and your practice, then what are you waiting for?

As a hypnosis professional, you are the one that is going to be able to help someone better understand hypnosis. In order to grow your clientele and your practice, it is up to you to be of service and help clients and your community better understand hypnosis. Teaching a class is the perfect way for you to do that.

To help you get prepared to design and teach a hypnosis course in your community, we have created a framework for the things you will definitely want to include in your class.

The Framework of Designing and Conducting a Hypnosis Class

  1. Hypnosis Pre-Talk: The first thing that we really want to do is we want to tell people what hypnosis really is, and we call this a “hypnosis pre-talk.” We want to teach people about the truth about hypnosis and dispel the myths they’ve heard and the preconceived notions they may have. With your pre-talk, you're simply preparing these people to be educated about hypnosis.

  2. Demo: The second thing that you might want to incorporate into your hypnosis community-based course, is a hypnosis demo. Doing a hypnosis demo helps to “warm up” the audience. It starts convincing them that what you're doing really works. A good idea for a demo is the suggestibility test. In a group environment like a class, the suggestibility test works really well because there are so many people. Different people are going to have different results; some people will have one result and another person will have something different, so it gets people excited about hypnosis and wondering how there are different aspects of the mind in and people can have different results.

  3. Keep It Short: This is something we find to be difficult because there are just so many great things about hypnosis that we want to share. With your knowledge and passion about hypnosis, you will want to tell them every single thing and try to cram so much into the class by teaching them so many different techniques and having them experience so many different things, but that is usually overload for most people in a class like this. Usually, the students in your class will walk away with maybe one or two things, so the best thing to do is to narrow it down to maybe one to three things that you really want to teach them. So after you do your introduction, hypnosis pre-talk, and demo, then you're going to do some of the kind of teaching aspect and teach one to three things.

  4. Workshop: You really want your course to be “hands on.” It should be experiential, you actually want them to experience hypnosis. A good way to make your course more “hands on” is to do a workshop. What we like to do for workshops is a group hypnosis session, and we do a little 10-minute hypnosis experience. A good focus for a group hypnosis session is relaxation and confidence because everybody can use more confidence, right?

  5. Follow Up: During your class, people may get interested in hypnosis and want more information or even want to set up a hypnosis session. It is important to bring a sign-up sheet with have your students put their email and phone number, and then you can give them a call the next day to get them on my calendar for a free consultation. So right then and there you are getting in contact with people, it's like a call to action.

Watch The Video Below To Learn How to “Conduct Community Courses for fun and build Your Hypnosis Practice”

Transcription of Hypnosis Training Video #515

Cal Banyan: Hello everybody here, Cal Banyan here. Cal Banyan’s Hypnosis Etc., and today we're going to talk about how or why a hypnotist would want to do a community kind of education class on “what is hypnosis?” and “how does it help people?” Great idea, Erika, and by the way, this is Cal Banyan’s, Hypnosis Etc., today with Erika because she's back. She is a brainiac, she's doing great things. She was just on TV the other day, way up there in Bellingham, Washington. She comes from the software community, but she's left that far beyond now. She's working with the most powerful computer in the universe as far as we know, and that's a human mind. She came in and she started somewhere else. She just took a local class. Maybe that's why she's interested in this local class stuff and she whet her appetite, but it just wasn't enough for her to get going, doing the work, but she thought maybe I'd like to do that. She got her 5-Path 2.0 distance learning DVD set, and then that kicked in and she started seeing clients and then shortly after that she came for the week of power, which is our seven-day advanced hypnosis class where people who are already certified. And the rest, as they say, is history. How you doing Erika?

Erika Flint: I'm doing great Cal. Thank you for that very fun introduction. I'm super happy to be here today and you're right, I did take a community-based hypnosis course to begin with and I can't wait to share some of my tips with how to do that in your profession to bring in new clients and help your community. But before we get started, let me tell everybody about you, Cal. Cal Banyan is the authority on hypnosis that works. And I have been using the stuff that he teaches that works in my practice for a long time and it works very well. He is an author, he is a hypnotist. He is a trainer. He trained some of the very best in the world and I'm just so excited to be doing these videos with him to continue to share with everybody how well hypnosis works, and I think that, Cal, the thing that I really like about Cal Bannon is that he's just the real deal. If you meet them in person, you're going to love talking with him about hypnosis. He's super smart. He knows exactly how to explain how hypnosis works and he has created some of the really best techniques in the profession including 5- Path, the secret language of feelings, his model of the mind, and seventh past self-hypnosis. So, let's get started with this topic here today, Cal. How to design teach a community based hypnosis course. What do you think about the topic?

Cal Banyan: Well, you know, we were talking about it a little bit before we started hitting the camera here and at first, I didn't understand what it was about, and I thought, oh, why would you want to start? Just do a little one day course on how to hypnotize, but you have a whole different spin on it. And I really, I think that it's a really good idea to get out there because it could help hypnotists get more clients, maybe more referrals and then if they're trainers like you and I are more students in their classes. So why don't you give us a background where you got the this idea?

Erika Flint: Yeah, absolutely. So, this is, basically a community-based hypnosis course that you might teach at the Kiwanis' club or you might go to a business and you might teach a brown bag, or you might teach this at. What I do is that the Community Co-op, I teach this class, it's about 90 minutes. And the reason that I really love teaching these classes is a couple of things, but primarily I think there's still a lot of misperception about what hypnosis really is. We see it all the time. If you are a hypnotist or you're thinking about doing hypnosis, you might have some misperceptions about hypnosis. Hypnosis is mind control or is hypnosis what you see when you go to the fair or up on stage and so it's a really good idea to teach the community about what hypnosis really is by teaching these low-cost kind of entry-level hypnosis courses, like a self-hypnosis class or a stress buster class, something like that. That includes hypnosis. So that's what I'm talking about here, cal. It's really educating the public on what hypnosis really is and how it can help them in a short format so that they can get excited about it. And then maybe they want to work with you one on one type of a thing.

Cal Banyan: Very cool. So in this video we're going to like give them like the top five things they have to do or a bullet list or what are we going to do?

Erika Flint: Yeah, we're going to do like a framework, a framework for the things that you definitely want to include in a community-based self-hypnosis course or hypnosis course that is going to help you just be highly effective. And the thing that I like about this, it's the same format that I use for all of the classes that I teach like this. So, I teach a self-hypnosis class like this, I teach a stress buster class and I teach a secret language of feelings class based on your book, how it all uses this format. So let me talk about the very first step on this and this, and then you'll get a better idea of what's happening here. But the first thing that we really want to do is we want to tell people what hypnosis really is. So, this is basically a hypnosis pre-talk. We want to teach people dispel the myths about hypnosis. And that would be really important to do in any course like this. Right?

Cal Banyan: Absolutely. You know, it's just, you're preparing these people to be educated about hypnosis, to possibly become students, to possibly become clients, possibly to become referral sources because there could be psychologists and doctors and counselors in your class and all that kind of stuff. So Gosh, they got to know what hypnosis is and what it's not.

Erika Flint: Yep. So, this is just basically your basic, you know, hypnosis pre-talk and as a hypnotist you should be able to talk about hypnosis basically to anyone. It's really part of our job to educate the community on what hypnosis really is and when you feel confident doing that, your business is definitely going to grow. So that's one reason why I really like having my graduates teach community based hypnosis programs because it gets them really confident and excited about talking about hypnosis. They get really, really good at it. So the second thing that you might want to incorporate into your hypnosis community based course, you might want to do this. You might want to do a hypnosis demo. Okay. Sometimes I do a demo and sometimes I don't know. I know Cal, you do demos in your training courses. What would you do a demo in a community-based education class?

Cal Banyan: I absolutely would because I think doing a demo will be the key to success with this. And, but before I do the demo, I would probably start off just like I do in class on the first day I'm going to do an introduction, “Hi, I'm Cal Banyan, here's my background, blah blah blah, blah, blah.” Then we do the pre-talk and then what do we do? We need to do suggestibility tests. Will you do the suggestibility test? It warms up the audience and it starts convincing them that what you're doing really works because suggestibility tests like the hand class test, hands rising and falling, maybe even the several halls, pendulum, these things are going to work with most of the people in there and it begins to convince them that at a real visceral level that you know what you're talking about and then when you do those suggestibility tests, you are able to use the results of those suggestibility tests to pick out a real winner. When it comes to doing the demo. What do you think about that?

Erika Flint: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And we know that in a group environment like that, the suggestibility tests work really well because there's so many people. They're doing it so, so different people are going to have different results. Some people will have one result and another person will have something different, so it gets people excited about hypnosis and wondering how there are different aspects of the mind in and people can have different results and they're all correct, right? They are all still acceptable because everybody and every mind is different, so then everybody feels safe and comfortable using hypnosis. Perfect.

Cal Banyan: Just like in class when we do the 10-day course, if say for example, if you're doing hands rising and falling, some people they'll have you know, big difference in the height of their hand. Some people would be about the same and some people will actually move in the opposite direction and you can talk about why that stuff happens and you really show the to the people who are involved in what you're doing there either students or community members that they are in control. They are either opting in or opting out and I think that and that hypnosis doesn't overtake their will, so it's a really good opportunity to, in a way, to have a conversation with the community. Right?

Erika Flint: Right. Absolutely. I had one of the last classes that I taught, we did the lemon experience, if you remember that one where they imagine going to the fridge and put it and taking a bite of the lemon. And one of the participants reported to me that she decided not to take a bite of the lemon. And so, I asked her, you know, where did that information come from? And she said she had an experience in her past where she realized she didn't like the taste of the lemon and that was just such a beautiful teaching moment because don't we have things in our past that prevent us from doing things in our life that we want. Right. So it was whatever comes up for your students in that class is a really good way to have that. Like you're saying, have that conversation with the community and help them understand what hypnosis is. Alright, so one thing that I think is really important, and this is a mistake that I made when I first started teaching classes was I wanted to teach them everything. I was so excited about hypnosis and I was just so amped. I wanted to tell them every single thing, so I tried to cram so much into the class and teach them so many different techniques and having them experience so many different things and that is usually overload for most people in class like this. That's like an hour or 90 minutes. Usually they'll walk away with maybe one or two things and so the best thing to do is to narrow it down to maybe one to three things that you're really going to be teaching them. So after you do your introduction hypnosis, pre-talk, the suggestibility tests, and then the demo. Then you're going to do some of the kind of teaching aspect of it and you want to do it. I would say one to three things. This, I think is the hardest part because there's so many things that I don't want to tell them, but you have to narrow it down to the top three and I know Kelly, you've talked about this before, you have to do this and you're five. Got threatening to. There are so many great things that we want to share with our students. Right?

Cal Banyan: Exactly. You know, as you're talking about this, I don't want to get ahead of you, so I'm just going to keep going because I know what I would do next. So go ahead.

Erika Flint: All right. Well, what I like to do in these classes, I call them workshops, I really want it to be hands on. I want it to be experiential. It's not just that the students are sitting in glass on your dog and about hypnosis. You actually want them to experience hypnosis. So whatever it is that you are, whatever the course is. So, for example, if I'm doing a intro to hypnosis self-hypnosis course, or a relaxation recourse, a stress buster course, that type of a thing, I'm going to do some hypnosis with them. So I'm going to do, I'm a group hypnosis session with them. I'm going to say let's do this experiential thing. I want you guys to do hypnosis with me now. And then I walk them through. I have them, I'll do, you know, a basic group induction and I'll walk them through maybe. I think the first time I like it to be maybe 10 minutes of hypnosis is the next thing that I like to do because I want it to be hands on. What were you going to do? Cal?

Cal Banyan: Well, that's exactly right. As I say, wouldn't you? Wouldn't it be great if you could give them a hypnosis experience, a group hypnosis experience? Uh, and maybe just give. I would do. Are you going to talk about what you're going to do with that?

Erika Flint: No, you go ahead. You go ahead because I want to hear what you have to say.

Cal Banyan: Okay. So I've got the group there, I've done the pre talk with them, the suggestibility tests. We've done the demo right now. I'd say, Hey, you know, who wants to be part of the thing? We do a group induction and he couldn't all, if you want to experience in hypnosis, if you want to just sit there and watch, that's okay too. But this is a workshop, right? And so, uh, and of course you can opt out at any time. I'm going to do a little 10 minute hypnosis experience and the main thing we're going to work on is relaxation and confidence because everybody can use more confidence. Right? And then that's what I would do. And then I would give them post hypnotic suggestions to use as convincers, like read, read, read and things like that.

Erika Flint: Absolutely. That is so good. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do to some type of, I did read last time in the class that I taught, and it was really went over really well.

Cal Banyan: And you better have something red right up in front of it? Like what'd be fun is before they open your eyes, open their eyes, you know, put a big red carnation in your pocket or your hair or something. And they go there. Was there all the time it was there all the time. You're just noticing it now, right?

Erika Flint: Yeah the red would become more apparent to them even if it had been sitting there the whole time. Right. They just have some fun with it. Yeah. And so then what I, what I like to do is after we do that, first I'm hypnosis group hypnosis, then I get feedback. I have people report on their experience. Okay. And then you as the hypnotist can comment on their experience and you can say things like, you know, isn't it amazing that, that you felt this good in, oh my gosh, you could do time distortion to wow, it was the only eight minutes. It was only 10 minutes. Does that surprise you? Or something like that. And so, you get people's feedback on it and you can answer their questions. And I know that that is really valuable for other people in the class to have others report on their experience and I know that that's something that usually like to do too right now.

Cal Banyan: Well yeah, just like a teaching class, if you're going to have to do a really feel good kind of session with the use time distortion. Right. And so if I was going to use this group, I would suggest to them, hey, we're going to do like five minutes of hypnosis and then I do like 12. Okay, 12 minutes. Because then afterwards I could say, hey, just off the top of your head, how many minutes do you think we spend too? And have noses, and someone says it's in the back of their mind. There's five minutes. Right? And so it's all five minutes. And then you could say, be kind of surprise you if it was actually five minutes because that shows how good the mind can work. Just when you're in hypnosis, know exactly what time it is, but even more convincing, would it be if it had been 10 minutes because then it's twice as long and you would know you're hypnotized, but if it had been even longer than 10 minutes, you absolutely know you're hypnotized and that you are a great candidate for using hypnosis to change your life. Look at the clock now. Wow. And now you've just talked for another minute or two, right? So now it's like 14 minutes and you can go, wow. Almost 15 minutes. That's three times longer than you thought. And so it's just what a condenser, right?

Erika Flint: Absolutely. So then when they're sitting in that really good state of mind, what I want the students to be thinking is, oh my gosh, if I could feel this good or if I get to have this experience in this class, in this short amount of time, I wonder what else hypnosis could help me with. So, the last thing that I like to end with is, basically I want to share with them how I can help them either private one on one sessions. Maybe I'm teaching another class, maybe there's a, you know, like I have a book, you, I have your books that I bring with me. So, there is an offer. There's some type of offer at the end that is basically you had a great experience here today. I help people with hypnosis. I help them lose weight, stop smoking. Hypnosis can be used. And you'll just list off all the things that hypnosis can be used for. You. Invite them to set up a session with you privately. I usually bring a, a, a sheet with a sign up on it and with the signup I'll have them put their email and phone number and then I give them a call the next day to get them on my calendar for a free consultation. So right then, and there people are, it's like a call to action, a CTA. We've talked about that before. Sign up now and I get them on my calendar for a free consultation and then they can become my one on one private client. So right when they're feeling really good, I want to share with them how I can help them even more with the power of hypnosis. And that's usually where it ends. What do you think about that?

Cal Banyan: Perfect. As you were talking, I was writing down what I would do next and guess what? Back of the room. Sales check.

Erika Flint: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And then, you know, I really like this is for me, I don't expect, I'm not going into this thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to get a whole bunch of new clients for me. I'm thinking I'm going to help my community understand what hypnosis is and really how it can help them. And when you go into it with that loving service heart, then you're really of service to people and you can really help them because people, you know, a lot of people that come to these courses, they are suffering. It's hard for them. They don't know what to do, they don't know how to get the help and now you can just be that person in the community who's provided them with a great service, answered their questions, made them feel better for the night, and now they trust you and whether they sign up with you that night or maybe it's their or their mother or somebody else, they're going to be referring people to you. So make sure you have your brochure and your business cards with you as well.

Cal Banyan: Awesome. There's one thing I would also add in there is, and you probably, you need to tell stories of successful clients so and so came in to me for this, like he had hit your top three things that you want to work on, weight loss, smoking, confidence, sports improvement, whatever it is, and then make sure you have some short version, short book, but accurate and compelling stories. For example, in class, I always tell the blind boy story, I've changed how I do that. I used to do it at the end of the class because I wanted to really make a point of how powerful, what they're going to learn by learning 5-Path and 7th Path is that, that we could actually have somebody had a psychogenic problem and you got a referral from a psychiatrist. You could go in with hypnosis, done properly and remove the psychogenic problem. And in my case, you know, I helped a, a boy who was blind see again. And, and what I did is I said, you know what? I'm going to move that to the very beginning because I think that having that story at the very beginning of 10 days was more effective than at the end of 10 days because at the end of 10 days people are just filled up to here. They're ready to go, but in the beginning to hear that story and to have stories like that ready to be delivered in like a one-minute version, a two-minute version, the 10-minute version is really, really powerful. What do you think?

Erika Flint: I think that's fantastic. How we love stories. People love to hear stories. I think we're designed to listen to stories, so having lots of good stories. As a matter of fact, I have a spreadsheet and on my spreadsheet I just have a list of a whole bunch of stories of client stories that kind of meet certain criteria. So, if somebody asks about, you know, eating mindless eating, I have a story that I can tell about my, a client that went through mindless eating and the result that they got. If a client was not sleeping well at night, I have a story about that. So it's a good idea I think to start recording some of your favorite client stories and just have them written down so that you can remember them and have them already to go for this class or if you're at a party, if you're, you know, Christmas, thanksgiving, anything, anybody that asks you about hypnosis, you can tell them a really quick story to help get them inspired to the power of hypnosis. Well thank you for sharing that.

Cal Banyan: Perfect. The wrap it up.

Erika Flint: Alright, so thank you everyone for joining today. I’m Erika Flint. You can find me at cascadehypnosistraining.com and I look forward to seeing you in class. My next class is in January and then March. And, thanks for joining us today.

The Meta-Message Of This Episode: Teaching a hypnosis class in your community is a “win-win”

The meta-message of this episode is that two of the key components of being a great hypnotist is to be of service and to be seen in your community, and you can do exactly that by conducting a hypnosis course in your community. As a hypnotist, you should help spread the truth about hypnosis and debunk the myths surrounding it, and conducting a course is the perfect opportunity for that. Teaching a class is both beneficial to your community, and to your practice, it is a win-win, so what are you waiting for? Start designing your course!

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THESE GREAT HYPNOSIS TRAINING VIDEOS, THANKS!

I look forward to seeing you in class!  Let's help people lead better lives with hypnosis. 

From my heart to yours,

Erika Flint