![\"Milton-Erickson\"](\"https:\/\/olympichypnotherapy.com\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Milton-Erickson.jpg\")
<\/a>My mentor in Hypnotherapy is Milton Erickson<\/a>.\u00a0 (Milton has been dead for decades but his work lives on.) \u00a0 I have a great collection of worn\u00a0and underlined books dissecting the minutia of his work. I particularly like his view of the subconscious: he says,\u00a0 “Now, the unconscious mind is a vast storehouse of memories, your learnings.\u00a0 It has to be a storehouse because you cannot keep consciously in mind all the things you know.\u00a0 Your unconscious mind acts as a storehouse.\u00a0 Considering all the learning you have acquired in a lifetime, you use the vast majority of them automatically in order to function.”<\/p>\nErickson believed that the unconscious mind was always listening and that, whether or not the patient was in trance, suggestions could be made which would have a hypnotic influence, as long as those suggestions found resonance at the unconscious level. The patient could be aware of this or could be completely oblivious that something was happening. Erickson would see if the patient would respond to one or another kind of indirect suggestion and allow the unconscious mind to participate actively in the therapeutic process. In this way, what seemed like a normal conversation might induce a hypnotic trance, or a therapeutic change in the subject. According to Weitzenhoffer, “[Erickson’s] conception of the unconscious<\/i> is definitely not the one held by Freud.”<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You and I have been there, we have had periods of time where we would not change.\u00a0 It\u00a0is not that we could not, we would not.\u00a0 We had a skill and were competent at applying that skill to holding in … Continue reading