Book Signing with Steve! You Can Attract It, Saturday April 10th at 2pm. Barnes and Noble Ogelthorpe Mall, Savannah GA. Click here for directions.

I am happy to report that the filming for the hypnosis training video has been completed. We are now in the editing phase and will have a completed product ready for your viewing pleasure by the end of the summer. You will be able to see me demonstrating the techniques of hypnosis on clients in my office. There will also be a discussion of each technique and homework assignments. All of this is designed to help you master the art and science of hypnosis.

Other exciting projects are moving forward as well. In preparation of my long-awaited NLP book coming out next month, I wanted to share a few ideas concerning the history and techniques of NLP. These techniques are so often used in conjunction with hypnotherapy that some of them now are considered hypnotherapeutic techniques.

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) has its roots in Pavlovian behavior modification. You remember Pavlov…the Russian scientist who, in about the year 1900, made the dogs salivate by ringing the bell. He would start by ringing a bell while letting dogs smell meat powder. Eventually, he only needed to ring a bell. This alone caused the dogs to salivate. Later, A scientist named Watson came along and applied Pavlov's techniques to humans. Then BF Skinner, a student of Watson's, refined these techniques and made them highly usable and well-known. In about 1975, Richard Bandler co-founded Neuro Linguistic Programming. He added numerous variations to what is now a 100-year-old science. Bandler and his associates came up with all sorts of useful applications for behaviorism under the new name of NLP. In the 1980's, Tony Robbins took this same information, added a little seasoning, shook it really well, and out came Neuro Associative Conditioning. All of these things are essentially the same and operate on the same basic principles. I have decided to call my book a book on NLP since this is the most easily-recognizable and well-known version of the technology.

Thanks to the vast body of knowledge we now have, it is possible to apply it to almost any problem. Smoking, overeating, nail biting, fear of public speaking…all of these things are treatable with NLP. My book will take these techniques, add a few of my own, and show you how to weave them all together with hypnosis.

Let's take a look at a powerful NLP technique you can use right now. I teach this one to established actors who need a little boost between multi-million dollar movies. Yes, even established actors feel a little self-conscious sometimes. Here's how it works…think of three times in your life when you felt very powerful and in control. Write them down (one sentence describing each). Now stand alone in a room. Think of the first situation. Recall it in full color with sound and anything else that could make it real to you. At the moment when you feel fully back in that moment, slap your left shoulder with your right hand and say, "Power!" Do this with each of the three memories. Remember, you want to anchor the feelings by slapping your shoulder when you feel the memory at its most intense moment. In NLP, this process is called stacking anchors.

Now that you have the anchor installed, you can fire it off as needed. The next time you are in a situation requiring confidence, slap your left shoulder with your right hand and say, "Power!" Just as sure as Pavlov's dogs salivated when they heard that bell, you will feel confidence surging through you!

In the book, which will be available on audio CD, I will cover this technique more thoroughly as well as numerous others.

Have a wonderful and productive August and I'll talk to you next month!

Steve G. Jones
Clinical Hypnotherapist