At the CPHT, we pride ourselves on keeping up to date with the latest research from neuroscience and believe that we lead the way in this regard. Two of the fastest-growing areas in psychotherapy and medicine are SF work and Brain-Based Therapy.

Research now provides more and more evidence to support the theory that our subconscious minds can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality. We know this to be true from our own personal experience – the more we dwell negatively on our problems, the bigger those problems feel and the more negative, anxious or angry we become. While we consciously know the difference between imagination and reality, our brain responds as if the events we are thinking about are happening right now and we get a related and often negative physical and emotional response. Think what happens if you imagine sucking on a lemon right now, for example, making the thought as clear in your mind as you can. I’m salivating just by typing those words!

As Solution-Focused Hypnotherapists, we help our customers to turn this around, supporting them to focus on how they want things to be and creating a positive image of this in their minds. Our students learn about the fascinating brain-based research behind this and the highly effective therapy techniques that have emerged from the growing understanding of how our brains work. They also learn how to explain this to clients in a succinct and inspiring way, so that their customers regain a real sense of control over their own emotions and behaviours.

After graduation, the Clifton Practice encourages therapists to keep their skills up to date through sessions with their highly training Supervisors and by attending their Continual Professional Development programme. New courses are frequently added to keep the content relevant and up to date.

The Clifton Practice also now offer an Advanced Hypnotherapy Diploma, accredited by the NCFE at a level 5. After 3 years of successful practice, Clifton Practice Graduates are eligible to join this Advanced Diploma programme, something that will really set them apart from others in the field.

I was recently asked why I enjoy teaching others so much. I have been involved in adult teaching, supervision and lecturing for so many years and am so passionate about it yet have never really stopped to work out why, and then it came to me. I thrive on the thrill of watching people learn, develop skills and succeed in meeting their own goals and dreams as well as on finding just the right way to support each individual to do so. What is wonderful is that I am yet to find a Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training Senior Lecturer who feels no different. Furthermore, the Hypnotherapy Practitioners Diploma (HPD) is written and delivered with this ethos at its core, both in terms of our students and their future customers. 

Support on Course

The supportive ethos is first evident right from weekend one of the HPD course. Our students come from many different walks of life, some with no experience of the therapy world at all, some who are moving across from a different approach. Regardless of background, age and experience, we know that working with real live customers with real live emotional and mental health needs can be more than a little daunting at first and often the thought of setting up in private practice as a self-employed therapist is even more so. We layer our teaching as a result – teaching the basics first in class, both at a theoretical and practical level. We then ask you to practice just this first step with friends and family at home, with access to us as your senior lecturers when you need us. Each weekend we lead group discussions where our students feel very comfortable in sharing their experiences with customers since the last teaching weekend, allowing us as lecturers to provide additional support, ideas and different ways of thinking.  It also allows the students to learn from and support each other – invariably someone asks the question another student perhaps didn’t feel ready to ask. Teaching then adds another layer of technique and research, time on the course to practice, and then off our students go again to refine their skills at home with real customers as time moves on and of course with us on hand if needed.  And so it continues. 

As lecturers, we take the opportunity to quietly and unobtrusively observe students in their practical work on the course and our first intervention if we feel a student is having difficulty is always to provide support, explanation and demonstration. At CPHT, we have specific training as supervisors to do this with a high level of skill.

Support Post-Qualification

Lasting friendships and professional relationships are made on CPHT Training courses. The ethos of support is so engrained in the training that our graduates take it with them into their practice and their ongoing interactions with colleagues. Even years after qualifying a CPHT graduate is never isolated from the support of colleagues whether in person, by phone or online. 

CPHT Graduates have optional membership access to a wide variety of professional bodies, all of which require levels of regular ongoing supervision. The Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training model takes this so seriously that it has its own supervisors’ training course, externally accredited by the NCFE as a level 5 diploma. This ensures that CPHT graduates have an army of supervisors to choose from, all of them ready to support them throughout their careers.    

There is great wisdom in the notion that an experienced therapist who does not participate in ongoing training, supervision and reflective practice is likely to be as effective as a new graduate. I’d argue less so. Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training has an ongoing programme of CPD (Continual Professional Development) courses and regularly updates them and new ones in accordance with recent research findings. 

From the first morning that students first walk into a CPHT training room to the day they graduate and every day of their career thereafter, CPHT support is always available in one form or another. That really does take some beating!

The network of Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training Schools prides themselves on providing a ‘complete’ training package, with teaching continually in line with the latest research from neuropsychology and neuroscience.

All well and good but what does this actually mean?

Well, we mean that everything that you need to move from someone who has either no prior experience of being a therapist at all or has experience in a different approach to therapy, to a fully practising and competent self-employed Solution-Focused Therapist is addressed on the course. In fact, CPHT’s Hypnotherapy Training require students to be fully competent, theoretically and practically, with a growing practice of real customers before they sign a student off on graduation day and provide full support to help them achieve this.

So what does the complete package look like?

Four key areas are required from a complete training course:

1. Theoretical teaching
2. Practical experience
3. Marketing support
4. Recognised, accredited qualification

Theoretical Teaching

Our students learn how the brain works – how anxiety and depression (our bread and butter areas) are created neurologically, along with a wide variety of other issues that customers bring to our clinics. Not only that but we teach you exactly how to explain this to customers in a wonderfully straightforward, informative way. This explanation forms the basis of any initial consultation that CPHT trained hypnotherapists go through with new customers. To say customers find it life-changing and empowering is an understatement. It is not unusual for them to feedback that despite years of other therapy approaches and medical interventions, they have never had anyone explain why they are feeling how they are feeling and how they can take control to change things at an emotional and neurological level. It is truly fascinating and empowering stuff!

The theoretical teaching covers a wide variety of issues and symptoms, including, but far from a complete list:

• Anxiety and depression
• Anger
• Fears and phobias
• Insomnia
• IBS (irritable bowel syndrome)
• OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Addictions (including Smoking)
• Weight management

Practical Experience

There is no point graduating with all of this theoretical teaching without knowing how to put it into practice and having the confidence to do so. CPHT graduates leave able to do just that. We don’t believe that leaving practical work until the last minute is the way to achieve this, so our students begin to work with customers right from weekend one, starting with friends and family and building up to real customers with real issues. By month 8, providing your lecturers are happy with their level of competency, our students are charging half price, advertising themselves as student hypnotherapists. From very early on in the course they will have insurance in place to enable them to do this.

One of the many strengths of the course that enables students to practice from the very start is that teaching is layered – each month we add in another skill and more information for students to practice so that they build up from practising basic relaxation skills through to working essentially as a full therapist by the end of the course but with the support of their lecturers, both on course weekends and in between as required.

Marketing support

So our students now have the theoretical understanding and practical experience that they need to be competent hypnotherapists. Wonderful. But that doesn’t help you to create a thriving therapy practice as a self-employed hypnotherapist and without that, your time and money have perhaps not been used to the greatest effect.

CPHT provides a marketing module to address this aspect of training and working life. Not only that, because we require students to work with customers right from the start, they are already building a great reputation from word of mouth. It isn’t unusual for students to begin to develop marketing materials and their website on course and many find themselves premises to work from too.

As a group, our students gel beautifully and provide mutual support, sharing marketing information and that helps greatly. Every weekend, the senior lecturers lead feedback sessions, where students report back on how things are going for them and their customers in terms of practical work and marketing issues are often discussed here too.

Recognised, accredited qualification

It won’t surprise you to know now that the CPHT’s Hypnotherapy Diploma course is fully accredited!