UK College News Update
The UK College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy
Don Robertson
The UK College has been established since 2003 as an accredited hypnotherapy training school running courses mainly in London. We’re known for specialising in cognitive-behavioural and evidence-based approaches to hypnotherapy based on reviews of mainstream research on the subject. You can read our College News blog for updates. Sometimes we feel that we’re doing so many things that it’s difficult to keep everyone updated, so here’s a quick summary of some of the main ones…
Introductory CBT Courses
The College have recently teamed up with some leading CBT trainers to develop some entry-level certificate courses in CBT, based on the new National Occupational Standards. The first course run in April and will be repeated again in October, this time over three consecutive weekends. Student feedback was very positive. We hope to develop this further into a full programme of training over the next couple of years.
The Founder of Hypnotherapy
In collaboration with the National Council for Hypnotherapy, I recently spent a year researching the unpublished writings of James Braid, the founder of hypnotherapy. We published the first complete collection of Braid’s writings with commentary and extensive prefatory essays. The book includes On Hypnotism (1860) a backward translation of Braid’s last essay, summarising his life’s work for the French Academy of Sciences just before his death. This was previously published as an article in the prestigious International Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis (IJCEH). This volume contains many other rare books, letters, and articles by Braid and is essential reading for any hypnotist because it helps to dispel many popular misconceptions about hypnosis and shows how scientific hypnotherapy was from its origin, highlighting the parallels with modern evidence-based psychological therapies such as CBT.
The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Complete Writings of James Braid, the Father of Hypnotherapy is available from Amazon UK.
Other Books
I’ve also written two books on CBT which are due for publication in 2010 by Karnac, the UK’s leading specialist psychotherapy publisher. The Practice of Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy and The Philosophy of CBT are now available for pre-order from Karnac.
Online Articles
I’ve continually been updating our UK Hypnosis blog with many detailed articles on hypnosis research and history. We also have a dedicated webpage and blog for James Braid, where you can read excerpts from his collected works,
Research on Hypnosis
Through the Register for Evidence-Based Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy (REBHP) we’ve been very active in promoting evidence-based practice in hypnotherapy and distributing our own reviews of the research and the main research journal in the field, IJCEH. The register is about to move into a new phase in its development, after much work behind-the-scenes, and we hope to announce the news shortly. The College also provide a special research forum with easy access to research on hypnosis.
Coping with Noise
I’ve also been busy, over the past few years, with an ongoing programme of Government commissioned research into the use of online cognitive-behavioural therapy for noise-related stresss, using supported self-help. We’ve published our initial findings from the pilot study and are now in the third phase of the Coping with Noise project, refining the software and taking onboard new participants for a streamlined version of the course of therapy.
Modular Diploma
The College have been running the cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy diploma for many years now and it has continually evolved, as we constantly update the content to reflect current research in the field of hypnotherapy, and integrate elements of best practice from CBT. The UK College spent many months developing their own NCFE issued award (Level 4) which is mapped against the National Occupational Standards for hypnotherapy and externally approved by the largest independent hypnotherapy organisations in the UK. We recently spent many months developing our new website www.ukcognitive.com which uses the Moodle software employed by many colleges and universities to provide online lessons and assessment in addition to our face-to-face classroom training.
Conversion Diploma
A few years ago, to meet demand from qualified hypnotherapists who wanted to attend our training, we introduced a “conversion diploma“. This is a condensed one-week version of the diploma in cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy and is therefore only available to hypnotherapists who are already professionally qualified but are seeking a different training and qualification to use in their work. The next course will run from the 1st – 7th August 2010.
Smoking Cessation
We are still running our popular smoking cessation workshops and this is the route through which many hypnotherapists first come across our training. They’re often surprised at the amount of research and effort which we put into developing our course content.
Taster Workshops
We run a few taster workshops throughout the year. We realise many people want to visit our training to get a feel for how things work before they book on a longer course, and that’s exactly why we designed this workshop. If you attend the taster and go on to do our diploma course, you’ll receive a discount which effectively means that the taster workshop was free of charge. For others, who just want to learn a little about self-hypnosis and hypnotherapy, the price is as low as we could make it, to encourage as many people as possible to come along and try things out. The next workshop takes place on Sunday 8th August in Central Croydon.
In the Pipeline
We have many projects under development as the College continues to expand, including the introduction of CBT training courses. We’re also in the process of revamping our whole UKhypnosis.com website to allow more resources and functionality. You’ll hear more and more announcements as the months pass, explaining some of the other things we’re currently introducing.
Well, I hope that gives you a picture of what’s going on, and if you have any questions, please feel free to call the UK College (free!) on 0800 195 9809 or email me at,
Regards,
Donald Robertson
The UK College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy Ltd.
