Practice sessions with friends, family or fellow students

As has already been mentioned - with the volunteers for your self-hypnosis teaching session, it is recommended that you have them sign a consent form so they know what to expect, and also for permission to record.

It is important for you to record your all your sessions to assess your progress, and to ensure your volunteers know exactly whay they are getting.

A few words of caution, however, about your volunteers...

If they are not completely clear for some reason on what they will be getting from the session, some of them may approach it with misconceptions. One of which might be that they are having therapy with you, one of which that they approach it a bit of a laugh and dont take it seriously, others approach it in such a way that you may find yourself feeling less than supported by them as part of the process.

People volunteer for their own reasons, and ironically when they really want to help you, they might not be the best people to be your volunteers.

It is important to use your intuition and judgement when selecting your volunteers. That is why it's really useful to practice with fellow students. A final comment on this subject, if these people are in a relationship with you in some way i.e. family friends or close acquaintances, they may find you working with them uncomfortable - even though you have explained it's just for your learning.

Do remember, you can do your practice online. If you are going to do this, make sure you work through the next module entitled The Hypnotherapy Practice: Working online.

Work through this module and you will be able to safely work with other students or volunteers online.

Go to the community section and post there if you are looking for volunteers from among fellow students.

Important:

As your volunteers will not necessarily be the ones who will respond best to the scripts which you are practicing, go with it anyway. It is valuable to know that if you use a script which is not the best fit, it will still work.

However, as you progress and you have a selection of scripts to choose from, and when you have learnt the skills on how to decide which is most appropriate for any individual, you can select the best scripts for each person.

It is strongly recommended that you practice with as many volunteers as possible. With each script set you learn, a minimum of three is required to get the best learning experience.

Volunteer consent form

See module on teaching self-hypnosis