Have you heard about hypnotherapy (clinical hypnosis) and wondered if hypnotherapists are just a bunch of charlatans?  Actually, not just anyone is allowed to put on a sign on a door and announce that they are a clinical hypnotist, so give them a lot of money for their services.  Most countries require that any clinical hypnotist must be licensed.  In order to get this license, they need to go to school to learn clinical hypnosis.  One such school is the aptly named Institute of Clinical Hypnosis.

Get Ready To Travel

The Institute of Clinical Hypnosis is located in London, England.  It opened in 1994 and has been growing an international reputation for training world class healers as well as hypnotherapists.  Not just anyone can enroll in a course at the Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, because the prices of the classes are fabulously expensive.  One of the reasons the costs are so high is to discourage charlatans trying to use hypnosis as a means of trying to make a quick buck (or in this case, quick bob).

Also, due to the nature of hypnotherapy, you have to go to the classes at the Institute of Clinical Hypnosis in person. There aren’t any online classes.  You can take a course as a supplement to your medical or therapist’s degree, or get a four year diploma in Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy.

Making More Mainstream

One of the reasons that hypnotherapy and other forms of alternative treatments are viewed with suspicion by the public at large is that the hypnotherapy medical profession is largely self-regulating.  For example, there isn’t one watchdog organization in hypnotherapy to be the final “say so” in any matters concerning hypnotherapy in the UK.  The Institute of Clinical Hypnosis is working to get an overall regulating body going.

So, it’s not just training a future hypnotherapist that concerns the Institute of Clinical Hypnosis.  They want to ensure the future of the profession of the whole, establish national marks that all hypnotherapists have to measure up to and to maintain the integrity of the industry.

UK Licensing Quirks

As stated before, in many countries, you need to have a certificate or license in order to perform.  Oddly enough, in the home country of the Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, no such license is currently required, although you do have to be accredited, which means you have to fulfill the requirements of one of three UK hypnotherapists organizations.

When you first hear the words “clinical experimental hypnosis”, your body probably braced itself for something bad to suddenly pop out of the blue.  Hypnotherapy, also called clinical hypnosis, is medical treatment by helping you think better thoughts to help promote healing, get rid of anxiety or to get rid of bad habits.  Why would there be experiments about people’s thoughts?  Just what are they doing in the basement of the Institute for Clinical Hypnosis?

It’s Not What You Think

Calm down, now.  Clinical experimental hypnosis is not about trying to use the power of hypnotherapy in order to create a zombie army by cults, governments or mad hypnotherapists.  People can’t be made to do anything they don’t want to, including become hypnotized.  Even if they are agreeable to becoming hypnotized, if the hypnotist suggests something abhorrent to the subject, the subject still retains enough self-awareness to refuse to do it.

So, What Is It, Then?

Clinical hypnosis is a form of alternative therapy, which gets a lot of flack because there haven’t been many scientific studies done of the various therapies.  Clinical experimental hypnosis is just a means to try and scientifically look at using hypnotherapy for various ailments and behaviors.

Clinical experimental hypnosis is just like a double-blind drug study for a new medication, only instead of a medication, it’s hypnosis that’s being looked at.  Usually, in clinical experimental hypnosis studies, there are only a fraction of the volunteers under hypnosis.  The rest aren’t given any treatment (called a “control group”) and the others are given the most popular drug or another kind of alternative therapy, such as acupuncture or acupressure.

Want To Know More?

This isn’t just a group of hobbyists tinkering about – these are medical processes taken very seriously.  There is even an organization to help with all of this called the Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (SCEH), which has it’s headquarters in Pullman, Washington.  It was founded in 1949 and is still going strong today.  It says that any hypnotherapist needs to embrace scientific experimentation as a way to help people better.

Ailments that respond well to hypnotherapy include quitting smoking, loosing weight, managing skin conditions (especially those that flare up when you are under stress), managing stress, irritable bowel syndrome, nail biting, phobias, allergies, ailments brought on by tension and insomnia.  Please do not use this article in the place of your doctor or therapist’s advice.