Hypnotherapy school produces 'biocomputer' techs
Course work includes lectures, demonstrations, experimentation 04/13/2007
Source: Boulder County Business Report
Author: Barbara Hey
LONGMONT - Zoilita Grant, founder of the Colorado School of Hypnotherapy, has been a psychotherapist for more than 30 years. She offers a combination of hypnosis and traditional talk therapy - hypnotherapy - to her clients.
In 2000 she established the school to train others in this skill. Hypnotherapy can be used to cope with an array of physical and psychological issues - from pain to stress.
"Hypnotherapy has the power to transform your mind and transform your life," Grant said.
In combination with talk therapy, hypnosis "creates results that are more complete," Grant said. It can accelerate the therapeutic process.
In a hypnotic trance, clients connect to their subconscious where deep-seated memories and beliefs reside. These entrenched memories can derail even the best efforts to make changes. "It's important to remember that if the subconscious and conscious disagree, the subconscious always wins," she said.
Under hypnosis, a state of deep relaxation, clients can focus on desired goals without the conscious mind's interference. Contrary to misperception, she said, hypnosis enhances a person's control.
In a hypnotic state, a subject has the ability to reprogram how the body and mind react to memories or situations. That could mean visualizing the steps to a faster Bolder Boulder time or reframing the perception of sensations to defuse the anxiety of childbirth.
"My belief is that we are biocomputers, but we only use to 3 to 5 percent of our brain. Our capacity is incredible," Grant said. "In a trance state you can't tell the difference between real and vividly imagined experience. All memory is false; it's just our perception."
While hypnotized, a client can be trained to develop "inner strength and outer skills" that can be used to live in a more "fully functional way."
Her first class had six students studying on her living room floor. Last year, 34 students graduated from her school, now located in a building in the backyard of her Longmont home.
In 2006, Grant was named a life fellow of the International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Association in recognition of her contributions to hypnosis education.
Grant established the school on a community college model, offering a core curriculum of vocational education. The course work includes lectures, demonstrations, experiential learning as well as practice with feedback. The basic program provides counseling clinical hypnotherapy certification, a CCHt degree, and can be pursued by anyone with a high school diploma after an in-depth interview with Grant.
The training entails 375 hours of instruction, weekend classes from March to October and midweek practicum sessions. The total cost is $4,000.
According to Colorado law, graduates can begin to treat patients after registering in a state database and agreeing to operate within their scope of education and expertise.
The school offers a graduate hypnosis certification program - also 375 hours - for graduate-level psychotherapists to get add-on training, as well as a hypnosis basics class of 126 hours.
In the CCHt program, Grant covers the pragmatics of setting up a hypnotherapy practice - the ethics and guidelines governing the work of a psychotherapist and the how-to's of determining a treatment plan.
Hypnosis can be used in the short term to reach a specific goal or for ongoing spiritual self-exploration. To cover any need, Grant's curriculum encompasses five different schools of hypnosis, but it focuses on clinical hypnosis, its most common application.
Her mission is for graduates to leave with essential clinical and practical skills, ready to start an income-generating practice.
"People can experience wonderful personal growth with hypnosis. But when I looked out into the world and asked who is making a living as a hypnotherapist, it was those who focused on practical uses," she said.
Hypnosis can be a tool to develop coping skills, jumpstart creativity, improve sports performance, control pain and prepare for surgery, childbirth or dental work. Hypnosis can also help conquer weight problems, self-defeating behaviors, bad habits and dealing with anxiety and trauma.
Patients with serious psychiatric issues are referred to other professionals.
Studies have also found that hypnosis can also speed healing, strengthen the immune system, help cancer patients, alleviate migraines, warts and irritable bowel disease, among other illnesses.
Athena West, a 2002 graduate of the school, left her career as software engineer to become a hypnotherapist. She underwent hypnotherapy when in a quandary about whether to have children.
"It was very profound. I got much more out of it than traditional therapy," she said. Now a mother, she also has a practice in Boulder.
She said the school offered a "wonderful combination of professional and personal development."
Of her clients, some face physical challenges, some face life challenges, and others have constitutional issues. The work is multilayered.
A client may come in for one reason, and as the work progresses other issues arise. "Weight loss is extremely difficult," she said. The problem is not simply about weight or food but self-esteem and particulars of personal history and temperament.
"I see my work as a figure eight, helping clients to build resilience and a sense of personal safety from which they build capacity to deal with experiences and memory," West said.
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