Narrative Trancework and Hypnotic Fables

Welcome To My Homepage Biographies Blog My Photos Intensive Self-Healing Training My Upcoming Events All That Matters, R.I., March 26-28, 2010 Topanga CA, 4 April 2010 Cumbria UK 2010 Kripalu, April 30-May 2, May 2-May 7 2010 Tatamagouche Centre, June 3-6, 2010 River Falls, WI - June 11-13, 2010 Testimonials Narrative Trancework and Hypnotic Fables Narrative Medicine On-line Course Practitioner Integration Weeks Postgraduate Training Past Indigenous Studies Courses Past Courses about Healing Past Courses for Medicine and Psychology Communities Australia Workshops May 2010 Newsletter Supervision Group Coyote Institute Published Abstracts Full Text Articles Book Reviews Favorite Links Curriculum Vita Guest Book Contact Post-Graduate Training Logistics Power of Words Sept 23-26 Vermont

A weekend of Coyote Howling and Healing!!

Peter Blum and Lewis Mehl-Madrona

Tentatively Scheduled for Malibu, California
December 10-12, 2010

Sponsored by Earthways and Coyote Institute

Watch for more details as they develop!

Also see www.earthways.org




       Words have served healers, doctors, priests and politicians from time immemorial.  In this three day workshop we will learn the art of speaking the language of healing.  We will consider how words affect attitudes, change beliefs, and nurture faith.  Through our words, deep inner resources for self-love are kindled which become physiological changes. In at least one Creation story, the Word was sufficiently powerful to create the world.  We do maintain our identities with the
words of our stories about ourselves and perhaps our stories also maintain the integrity of our body, for words are physical events, spoken by people through bodies with vibrational energy and the capacity to change those who hear these words.

Hypnosis is the art of speaking persuasively.  In hypnotherapy we aim to facilitate a movement toward greater health and the reduction of suffering and pain.  We persuade people to relinquish old self- deleterious stories in order to embrace those that are more life affirming.  

In North America many indigenous cultures use storytelling, imagery, and visualization as part of the healing and curing process.  One tribe, for example, uses a practice that translates literally as “putting them to sleep so that they dream like they’re asleep, but they’re really awake.”  Stories are crucial to indigenous cultures. Some scholars have argued that our modern culture suffers in its loss of traditional stories.  We will explore how stories inspire people to believe that they can be healed or cured.  Stories revision people’s sense of what healing and curing means and how it comes to pass. Storytelling requires the use of language as rhetoric, including the power of persuasion (hypnosis).  Evocative visual images make the story more powerful. 

With voice, tonality, phrasing, and words we can change our body reality, transforming sickness to health; despair to hope; and misery to happiness. Our words flow with pictures of mountain streams, armies of blood cells, and the eternal peace of the soul. What words do we choose?  How do we breathe these words?  How do we learn to speak the poetry of the spirit? With this attitude, we will flow between the analytic side of technique and the experiential side of storytelling and poetry, striking a balance that will aid in the restoration of wellness for ourselves and our clients.  This workshop will aim at professional development through personal experience, combining self-healing opportunities with consideration of technique and method.
       Contemporary practitioners of hypnotherapy, particularly those influenced by Dr. Milton H. Erickson, depend to a large extent on their ability to a) enter into trance along with their clients, and b) invoke trance and powerful changes in trance, through ‘special linguistic circumstances’. Hypnotic language patterns encourage us to ‘invent’ our own grammar. Our minds are conditioned to receive verbal communication in certain ‘grammatically correct’ patterns. When we receive communications that have been coded differently, it creates confusion and opens the door for new and creative ways of thinking. Successful and creative hypnotherapists put more poetry into their inductions. They may even experiment with singing, chanting, or whispering to their clients while they are in trance.
       Beside the words comes the music of delivery. A certain rhythm and cadence develops, seemingly by itself, as our conscious mind withdraws into the background. We begin to supply a surprising thread of images and metaphors… often with internal rhyme and rhythm! Having collected information during the intake and pre-talk with the client,
we can weave a story with this thread of images and metaphors.
       The use of hypnotic fables and storytelling is another overlap between traditional healing practices and the work of Dr. Erickson (who studied with the local Chippewa) and those who followed in his footsteps.

“[Traditional] healers lacking in any formal education often
demonstrate a masterful command of language in telling stories. With
their stories, they communicate complex ideas about love, forgiveness,
faith, hope, and self-transformation. They practice the sophisticated
art of a master hypnotherapist without ever demonstrating any
awareness of the techniques they are using. They use the ancient art
of storytelling – a masterful tool of persuasion and, no doubt, the
mother of hypnosis.” — Coyote Wisdom


The techniques of the imaginative hypnotherapist, like those of the traditional healer, may utilize unusual objects or artifacts in the treatment room: sound and light machines to induce alpha-theta brainwave states;  burning of sage, incense, or aromatherapy with essential oils to anchor state-dependent learning in the limbic system; playing of special trance-inducing musical sounds (repetitive drumming, harmonic chanting, singing bowls, etc) which are outside of the client’s normal reality.

In Imagery In Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine, in describingthe healings performed by Navaho medicine men, Jeanne Achterberg says “there is emphasis on song, prayer, body painting, sweating and emetic (the purification), and vigil for concentration and clarity of thought… Throughout the long ritual, the patient is involved in symbolic drama, especially as he is encouraged to continuously develop and sustain images of the personal healing process.” Later, in the same chapter, Achterberg mentions Dr. Bergman, a physician who studied in a Navaho school for ‘medicine men’. “Bergman conducted an hypnosis demonstration for those healers with whom he was studying. He said that instead of looking half asleep, as they usually did during their meetings, they watched in wide-eyed wonder (although he noted that they scarcefly seemed to be breathing). Thomas Largewhiskers, a venerated 100-year-old medicine man, said he was surprised to see that white men knew anything so worthwhile!”

Outline of Three Day course:

       Friday, December 10th:  In the morning we will demonstrate hypnotic
technique from our respective standpoints which integrate much from
indigenous perspectives, both Native American and Tibetan.  We will
consider briefly some theory -- namely the neuroscience behind
hypnosis and trance and will reflect upon the nature of the trance
state, upon absorption, flow, immersion, inter-connectedness, and
those aspects of consciousness which are compatible with accelerated
learning.  We will videorecord our demonstration and will discuscs the
elements of technique with participants who will then practice
technique with our guidance.  In the afternoon, we will further
elaborate upon hypnotic technique with an indigenous flavor and will
focus upon how hypnosis can be used to change the body, to modify
physical illness, and to reduce pain that Is considered in biomedicine
to be physical. We will look at the power of suggestion upon
physiology. We will this time do a group hypnotic exercise and will
review technique and motivations.  We will practice together with
guidance.

       Saturday, December 12th, we will add storytelling into our mix, considering what makes a good story, a healing story, and a powerful story, asking how we tell these stories as part of our therapeutic work.  We will look at storytelling as the original hypnosis from time immemorial and reflect upon how a story maintains audience attention and how stories elicit trance states. There can be deeply encoded messages for change in story that bypass conscious resistance – these may consist of universally shared myths, or fables, both ancient and modern; or of client specific stories, constructed with that particular client’s situation in mind. Or of anecdotal stories, meant to convey an underlying (hidden) message to the client’s unconscious mind. We will see how the elements of technique that we reviewed on Saturday are also the elements of good storytelling and will see how indigenous elders, healers, and storytellers have used these techniques long before there were hypnosis training courses, as these techniques naturally arise from the intuitive understanding of language and its effect on the body.  We will practice telling stories as part of our hypnotic work, both as a stand alone event and within a larger hypnosis sesssion.


       Sunday, December 13th, we will continue to demonstrate and practice, including now the use of guided imagery In hypnosis, exploring how to utilize the resources of memories of one’s personal experiences to choose metaphoric images – primarily from the natural world.  We will review ideomotor technique, signaling methods, and enactments with the
body that aid in trance induction and symptom relief. This includes various arm lift techniques, post-hypnotic suggestions, walking hypnosis, and body positioning. We will work with a participant who has a particular afflication to demonstrate how hypnosis can be used for that person/purpose and will continue to provide supervised practice time to integrate what is being learned people's ongoing practice.

       Those who wish to receive credit in this course toward the Center for Narrative Studies (part of Coyote Institute) Certificate in Narrative Therapies can enroll in an on-line course for the next 12 weeks which will meet weekly through webcam technology.  Auditing of this on-line component is also possible.

Peter Blum has been a Certified Instructor for the National Guild of Hypnotists since 1994. In 2004 he was awarded Instructor of the Year by the NGH. He has trained hundreds in the spiritual art of hypnosis. He has been studying and working with Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona for the past 20 years.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, is Director of the Center for Narrative Studies, a project of the Coyote Institute in South Burlington, Vermont.  He is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Johnson State College in Vermont. Lewis is the author of five books.  Coyote Medicine: Lessons from Native America (Firestone, New York, 1998) explores his efforts to integrate his aboriginal origins and culture into his medical practice.  Coyote Healing: Miracles from Native America (Bear and Company, Rochester, VT, 2003) explores the unexpected healings that occur with traditional aboriginal healers and generates some principles for healing.  Coyote Wisdom: The Healing Power of Story (Bear and Company, Rochester, VT, 2005), which tells about how narrative organizes experience and guides the healing process.  Narrative Medicine: the use of story and history in the healing process (Bear and Company, Rochester, VT) is about how we can see the various systems of healing from diverse cultures around the world (including Western technological medicine) as stories which interface with the stories of the culture to which the healing is being applied.  His latest book, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry, brings the brain, neuroplasticity, and epigenetics into our unfolding understanding of how words shape and change brains and behavior.

Both Earthways and Coyote Institute are not-for-profit entities.  Fees are "By Donation", which means that no one will be turned away regardless of ability to make a donation.  We suggest donating what would be reasonable and customary for such a workshop. Suggested donations are in the range $75 to $150 per day. Participants need not attend all three days.  A portion of your donation may be tax-deductable.  Ask us for details.

More information will be forthcoming.  You may contact Andrew@earthways.org or Lewis at mehlmadrona@gmail.com, or Peter at pblum@hvc.rr.com

Directions:

To follow soon.