(this is why I teach this method)

People know a lot about themselves these days.

We know our attachment styles, our trauma responses, our triggers and the many things our parents did wrong. We can recognize patterns and sometimes even tell you exactly when they started. There is an enormous amount of information available to us and much of it has been incredibly helpful in creating a new awareness around our emotional and mental wellbeing.

And still, we can know all of this and continue to do the same thing.

I see this often in my work.

A person may understand exactly why they react a certain way and still be unable to stop the reaction. They know why the relationship is difficult. They have already made the connection to childhood. They understand that a fear is irrational and may have spent years talking about it. The conscious mind has done a very good job putting the story together.

But something within them has apparently not received the memo.

As I am teaching Alchemical Hypnosis and preparing new practitioners, I have been thinking a lot about what it actually means to facilitate this kind of work. Of course there is a method to learn and a great amount of material to understand, but more and more I find myself paying attention to the practitioner.

The practitioner is in the room too.

We bring our own inner architecture into every session. Our comfort and discomfort, our expectations, our need to understand and sometimes our very human desire to make something happen. You may know an induction perfectly and feel quite confident until the person you are guiding suddenly takes the journey somewhere you did not expect.

Now what?

This is where I believe practitioner training really begins.

You cannot fake steadiness in these moments. If you are afraid of someone’s anger, they will feel it. If silence makes you uncomfortable, eventually you will fill it. If you need the journey to make sense, you may begin interpreting the person’s experience for them without even realizing you are doing it. This does not make someone a bad facilitator. It makes them human. But it does mean we have to train the practitioner and not only teach the method.

Alchemy gives us a very interesting way of looking at problems because the alchemist expects the material to change. Something may need to break down. Something may need to be separated. Two things that appear to be in conflict may need to be brought into relationship. What looks like waste may still contain something valuable.

This changes the way I look at resistance.

In many forms of hypnosis, resistance is spoken about as something to overcome. I have never found that particularly useful in my own work. If there is a wall in the inner world, I want to know who built it. If a door is locked, I am interested in who locked it and why. If a person says, “I can’t go any further,” I do not immediately assume that going further is the goal. Resistance may have been working for this person for a very long time. It may have a voice, a shape, an age and a history. It may be the only part of the inner architecture that has successfully protected something very vulnerable.

Why would I want to break through it before I understand why it is there?

Sometimes the thing standing in the way is carrying a very important part of the story. This is what I mean when I talk about developing an alchemical perspective. We become curious instead of assuming we already know. “It isn’t my inner world.” Symbols are fascinating and I love them. I work with archetypes, alchemical imagery and the language of the unconscious all the time. But if a bear appears in your trance, I do not get to tell you what your bear means. It isn’t my bear. The same is true for all images and symbols and felt senses the client has. “It is not my inner world.”

One of the hardest things to learn as a practitioner is that you are not there to have all the answers. In fact, having an answer too quickly can get in the way. That takes restraint. The work is to become curious enough to ask the next useful question.

Then we notice what changes and we notice what does not.

The inner world has its own intelligence and its own language. The practitioner learns to become fluent enough to stay in conversation with it without taking over the conversation. For me, this is a very different way of facilitating. Restraint provides a safety standard that is fundamental in this work.

“The practitioner is part of the vessel”

I often use the word coherence in my teaching. Not because I expect practitioners to be perfectly healed human beings floating around in a permanent state of enlightenment. I certainly would not qualify.

I am talking about the ability to know yourself well enough to recognize when your own material has entered the session.

• Can I notice my urge to rescue?
• Can I recognize when I want the client to forgive because forgiveness makes me more comfortable?
• Can I remain curious when the inner world presents something I personally do not believe in?
• Can I guide a Christian, an atheist, a Buddhist or someone who believes they lived on another planet without needing their inner world to agree with mine?

This requires practice.

The practitioner becomes part of the vessel in which the work takes place. Our steadiness, attention and ability to remain curious influence the field of the session. This is why I believe our own inner work matters. Not so that we become flawless. So that we become increasingly aware of what belongs to us and what belongs to the person we are guiding.

A field for healing and discovery.

“We do not just go looking for pain and suffering.”

There is another part of Alchemical Hypnosis that I deeply love. We do not assume that healing means endlessly digging for the next trauma.

The inner world also contains resources.

There may be a wise figure, a protector, an Inner Child or an Inner Mate. Over time, these relationships can become part of what we call the Alchemical Family.

I have watched people discover inner resources they had no conscious awareness of and then begin to build a relationship with them. If we only enter the unconscious looking for damage, we should not be surprised when damage is all we find.

The alchemical journey can also help us discover the inner resources and parts of ourselves that have remained available to us, even when we may have lost our conscious connection to them.

As practitioners, we learn to recognize these resources and support the client in strengthening the relationship with them.

We are not creating the person’s inner wisdom for them.

We are helping them discover their own access to it.

“The kind of practitioners I want to teach”

I have been teaching Alchemical Hypnosis for some time now and my understanding of what I want from my training continues to become clearer.

I do not simply want to turn out practitioners who know the method.

Of course, practitioners need to know the method and develop their skills through practice. There are protocols, inductions and a body of work that has been developed over more than forty years, and I take the teaching of that work seriously.

But I also want to train facilitators who are integrated in their own work and embodied in the way they practice.

I want my students to develop an alchemical lens that allows them to become curious about resistance and recognize the relationships within the inner world. To understand that conflict may be a communication between parts of Self, and to enter a journey without a predetermined idea of where it should go. I want them to support what is trying to emerge and, with practice, develop the skill to guide the journey without imposing their own direction on it.

Alchemy was never simply the fantasy of turning lead into gold. It was a study of transformation and the intelligence of matter. The alchemist observed, separated, heated, cooled, distilled and waited. The work required participation, but it also required attention.

I believe the same is true in the inner laboratory.

That is the kind of practitioner I want to send into the world.

And that is why I teach this work.

Alchemical Hypnosis Practitioner Training begins soon live on Zoom.

Join us in the Laboratory.