Miraculous Healing with Neuro-Linguistic Hypnotherapy

Title: Miraculous Healing with Neuro-Linguistic Hypnotherapy®
Author: Keith Livingston and Michael Bennett
Format: DVD, CD, and Manual
Source: http://www.hypnosis101.com/healing-trauma.htm
Price: $89.95
Rating: Good

A lot of times, to really study NLP, you're expected to shell out thousands of dollars for a lengthy training course. Keith Livingston, with his "Neuro-Linguistic Hypnotherapy ®," takes a different approach, extricating specific skills and patterns to present in individual mini-courses, some of which he offers for free on his website, hypnosis101.com.

Miraculous Healing is not one of those he presents for free, but it's well worth the price tag. This product, created in collaboration with Michael Bennett of Bennett/Stellar University, presents the Traumatic Injury Relief Pattern, an NLP pattern that uses elements of dissociation, mental rehearsal, the fast phobia cure, and eye accessing to end chronic suffering and anxiety brought about by traumatic events, especially accidents. It's based on the idea that after a traumatic event, the unconscious mind holds on to suffering as a way of warning us not to do certain things. I don't want to go into any more detail here, because it would be easy to outline the pattern clearly enough that anyone with a little NLP training could figure out how to do it.

The package, which includes a DVD, a CD, and a manual (all conveniently packed into one customized three ring binder with a disc-holder page for those of us who don't like scattering our instructional materials all over the place), explains and demonstrates the pattern thoroughly. I particularly love the way that this product employs three different media, so that you can get some instruction by watching, some by listening, and some by reading.

The DVD starts off with Livingston explaining the steps in the pattern, but the bulk of the video comes from a workshop with Michael Bennett. He starts off by demonstrating the pattern with a volunteer, a young woman who has suffered chronic headaches and pain in the three years since being in a car accident. By the end of her session, about thirty minutes long, she is pain-free. (Livingston mentions in the introduction that she remained pain-free.) The rest of the DVD is the Q & A session that followed the demonstration.

The CD is an interview between Livingston and Bennett, focussing on the additional NLP techniques Bennett used during the demonstration, including embedded suggestions, reframing, visualization, and future pacing.

The 15-page manual recaps the Traumatic Injury Relief Pattern on one convenient page and provides a handy diagram for some EMDR-like hand movements—both very useful. The remainder of the manual is a short course, with exercises, in a number of NLP techniques.

All-in-all, it's a very well-put-together product. While much of it is familiar to the student of NLP, it's always good to review and see it all put together in an effective way.

If I were to nitpick, I'd point out two things. First, Livingston recounts a legend that this pattern was developed by modeling a Peruvian shaman. For real? Why do we have to ascribe some legendary origin to this technique? The methods are good enough to stand on their own without the veneer of hocus-pocus. Second, the theme music on the CD, which replays on every track, gets old fast.

To wrap up, if you do medical support hypnosis or work with people suffering from past trauma, Miraculous Healing provides you with a great tool to put in your belt.