HypnoCoaching®

We’re making some changes!

As Lindsay has now retired from her parish ministry and has joined my practice, becoming our Reiki Master Teacher, we’ve been discussing how we can coordinate our work and what we want to do about our practice branding. We’ve gotten some consultation from colleagues and have now begun to implement the changes. This blog explains what is going on for those interested. 

First, we’ve simplified our website substantially (http://www.csgiles.org). The consultants felt we’d let it get too big with so much information that it had become overwhelming. We now explain things more concisely. We’ve also moved detailed information onto secondary pages that you can get to by clicking a link if you are so inclined but do not otherwise see. 

The most obvious general change you may notice is how I describe my part of the practice. For the past thirty years I’ve called what I do “Consulting Hypnotism.” I am now referring to it as “HypnoCoaching.”

HypnoCoaching is an advanced certification within the National Guild of Hypnotists. It is an explicit combination of life coaching and the hypnotic arts to create a comprehensive approach to helping clients achieve their goals while also becoming a better version of themselves. HypnoCoaching can address any issue--from cancer to time management--but always keeps the client’s overall life satisfaction in mind.

The HypnoCoaching program was created twenty years ago by Dr. Lisa Halpin, a colleague and friend of Lindsay and myself. Lisa developed it after a series of conversations she and I had about the need for such a program, and I was the very first practitioner to achieve the certification (followed shortly thereafter by Lindsay, although she’ll be confining her work to Reiki going forward). 

I have always used HypnoCoaching techniques in my work but didn’t call them that. However, over the years my clientele has changed. Twenty years ago many of my private clients were people dealing with a scary medical diagnosis, often cancer. However, as my skill set improved and my five group programs for cancer patients around Chicagoland improved in effectiveness (four of them are free), many cancer patients now decide that’s all they need. This opened slots in my private practice for other sorts of work and that is what happened. 

Today most of my private clients come to me for help to improve their personal effectiveness. I still work intensively with some cancer patients, but the bread and butter work has come to be helping people with issues regarding their occupations, relationships, life satisfaction, mood and their overall success. Unfortunately, most people still think of my work in the context of medical issues only and don’t think of me when they have a different need I could help them with. 

Therefore, I’ve decided to fully embrace the HypnoCoaching nomenclature. This will make my brand of hypnotism more clear, differentiate me from colleagues, and make it clear that I provide what amounts to life coaching by means of hypnosis.

Apart from the nomenclature, established clients will not notice many changes. We are not changing our pricing, etc. We will be adding new benefits for our clientele. In addition to our email newsletter, the self-hypnosis recordings I make for clients and the videos I make for my YouTube Channel, we will be improving email and phone support. I will also regularly schedule free Facebook Live events where I will respond to questions or issues suggested anonymously by past or active clients (a recording provided for those who can’t be with us in real time). Details will be announced in Powerlines and on the website soon. 

New clients coming onboard will experience the major change. I will ask every new client to sign up for an initial program of sessions. We’ll provide no-interest financing to make that affordable, but our outcomes data makes it clear that my work is most effective when I get to know a client over time. It is least effective for those who only want a few sessions for minor goals. I’d rather send such clients to colleagues so I can concentrate on the work I do best.

I hope you will enjoy the more straightforward approach to what I do and I’m looking forward to putting my “brand” of hypnotism out to the public in a way that makes it self-explanatory.