People Building Newsletter No.1

Hello People!

In this issue of our newsletter, we've gone all serious and studious (some might say defensive!) and we have been busy trawling the academic literature for research studies about NLP and hypnosis. We found extensive studies to support the efficacy of hypnosis in a range of settings and they are mostly of high quality and well-designed by boffins in the medical world. Perhaps not surprisingly, as NLP is a mere toddler, in therapy terms, there's not as much research but we still managed to find some really interesting stuff, so hope you enjoy it!!

Hypnotherapy studies

Well there are massive amounts of research in this area and hypnotherapy has been found to be effective in reducing pain in studies where brave volunteers have been exposed to various not very nice stimuli such as painful heat or tourniquets around their arms! On a more serious note, hypnotherapy has also been shown to reduce acute and chronic pain associated with illness and disease, promoting well-being and being linked to reduced depression anxiety and stress.

1. Domangue (1985) carried out a neurochemical study of hypnotic control of pain. Domangue found that depression was negatively correlated with levels of serotonin and beta endorphin and that following hypnotherapy there were both clinically and statistically significant decreases in depression, anxiety and pain and increases in beta-endorphin-like substances.

2. Barabasz and Barabasz (1989) studied a sample of 20 patients with a varied chronic pain syndromes. They used a Hypnotic technique known as Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST). All of the patients were initially rated as having low Hypnotic susceptibility on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale (SHSS). Following exposure to the training technique, the subjects demonstrated significant increases in both SHSS scores and in pain reduction when compared to controls.

3. A study Gutfeld and Rao (1992) was conducted with 42 patients suffering from chronic headaches. These patients, all of whom had not responded well to conventional treatments, were split into two groups. One received Hypnotherapy to relieve their daily headaches; the rest acted as a control group. The Hypnotherapy group experienced reduced frequency and duration of headaches, cutting the intensity by about 30%.

4. Kuttner (1988) found that a Hypnotic approach emphasizing storytelling and imagery was significantly more effective than behavioral techniques or standard medical practice in alleviating distress during bone marrow aspirations in young children with leukemia.

NLP Studies

What's interesting about the NLP studies is the variety, here are just a few to whet your appetite!
Baxter, 1994, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry - "Clients with obsessive compulsive disorder had raised activity in neural networks inside the caudate nucleus of the brain (demonstrated on PET scans of the brain). Drugs such as Prozac raise serotonin levels and the caudate nucleus activity is thus reduced. Baxter found that when clients repeated a simple reframe to themselves, the Positron Emission Tomography scan showed the same raising of serotonin levels and the same lowering of activity in the caudate nucleus.

Buckalew and Ross, 1981, "Relationship of Perceptual Characteristics to Efficacy of Placebos", reported in Psychological Reports - Visual submodalities have been shown to affect kinesthetic states, for example room color has an effect on temperature perception (Berry, "Effect of Coloured Illumination Upon Perceived Temperature", Journal of Applied Psychology 45/4) and packaging color changes the effectiveness of the placebo effect.

"Awareness of Meaningful Sounds Under General Anaesthesia. "Theoretical and Clinical aspects of Hypnosis", Symposium Specialists, 1981 - "In one of the clearest demonstrations of the [NLP/Milton Model] ability to communicate with a person's (literally) unconscious mind, Cheek induced 3000 fully anaesthetised patients to produce hand movements as signals for "yes" and "no" [to answer questions], obviously without their conscious knowledge."

Swack, 1992, A Study of Initial Response and Reversion Rates of Subjects Treated With The Allergy technique) - Dr Judith Swack showed that allergies in humans can also be removed by psychological means, in a small study of ten people who had a variety of allergies (cats, dust, flowers, cigarette smoke etc). Seven of the ten responded to the NLP "ten minute allergy process" by become completely response-free. Over two years, the results reduced, as three of the seven regained some allergic response. Interestingly, of the three who initially got no success with the allergy process, two became allergy free following the use of other NLP techniques (eg Time Line Therapy and V/K dissociation). In this study, the success of the 10 minute process outside the context of NLP generally was initially 70% and on long term follow-up 40%, and the success of NLP in treating allergies was 100%

Of course, studies are important but what will be more meaningful to you as a practitioner is the results you get in your therapy room!

If you know someone who is interested in having therapy, please invite them to visit http://www.gemmabailey.co.uk Other news!

Free Events

This has been the first time People Building have run free events and they have been very successful, filling the February training on the last free event. We had one frosty night when the audience was so miserable that we felt like vacating the room and leaving them to it!! In fact, we did a collapsed anchor technique that night to rid ourselves of any bad associations that we had to the room!! We have met some great people along the way and are looking forward to getting to know them even better, when training commences in February. We are running some more Free NLP and Hypnotherapy tasters this year. There are no longer spaces left on February's practitioner training but we still have spaces for March. Those that attend the Free event will be entitled to receive the discounted price for training.

Forthcoming Dates:

Wednesday 22nd November 2006- Full
Wednesday 13th December 2006
Saturday 20th January 2006
Wednesday 28th February 2006

Want a free Life coaching session? Our website is being set up with a life coaching questionnaire facility. Keep an eye on http://www.peoplebuilding.co.uk and submit your life coaching questionnaire to Karen or Adeline for a free one hour session of life coaching. It really is free so tell your friends!

Ha Ha Ha!!!!

How many paranoids does it take to change a light bulb?

Why are you picking on me. I know this is about me. How the hell did you know I needed to change a light bulb?

Motivation

To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing."

- Eva Young

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

- Aristotle

Gemma's food for thought….

I sometimes have clients come to see me in my private practice who are put off by the fact that I look young for my age. When clients express this concern I usually reply with “You are welcome to find yourself an older therapist and I would like you to consider whether quantity of years equates to the quality of the therapists skills.” Never be put off about the doubts that others may have about your abilities, the day you are influenced by someone else's doubt of you, is the day you doubt yourself.

“No organisation represents more achievement now, than People Building.”

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