Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The home stretch for Charmed! 2017

Charmed! 2017 is only about 45 days away now.  Have you made your reservations yet?

This year's program is shaping up to be outstanding.  As I write this, we have 78 classes on the roster from 32 different presenters.  Once again we have a great mix of well-known and established presenters from inside our community and new faces with new perspectives to share.

Do you have a class you'd like to teach?  There are still slots open; send your proposal before space runs out.

I'm very excited to be able to say that Charmed! 2017 will feature a full-time Practice Lab.  All day, every day (except during Unconference time), you can come into the Lab and practice something you just learned, get coaching or help from experienced hypnotists and hypnotees, or just hang out and watch people practice.  There may be informal demos from time to time as well.

Hope to see you in Baltimore.


Sunday, October 9, 2016

Charmed! 2017 is coming!

By now you've hopefully seen the announcements on FetLife and elsewhere, but in case you haven't ... Charmed! is coming back to Baltimore this coming January 13-15.

We have an exciting new venue this year right in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, easy to get to and right in the middle of all kinds of food and fun options -- though we intend to keep you too busy to do a lot of exploring.

Charmed! 2017 will offer an even larger variety of classes and workshops than last year.  We plan on at least 120 hours of scheduled programming plus our traditional Sunday Unconference time, where anyone can present and everyone is welcome to participate.  We're excited to be offering two new programming tracks this year:

  • Relationships -- All about using erotic hypnosis in the context of a long-term relationship. Any kind of lasting relationship counts here.
  • Deep Dives -- With all this space and time, we want to give people the opportunity to really explore some topics in detail.  These two-hour classes are delivered by great presenters on topics they love to teach.  
In order to fulfill our vision for Charmed! 2017, of course, we're going to need people who want to teach.  We love bringing in new presenters and giving our community leaders and top teachers the space to express themselves and educate everyone.  Sign up to present at Charmed! before December 1 and take advantage of this opportunity to star in what might be the largest erotic hypnosis event of the year.



Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Professional Training This Fall

I mentioned back in the spring that I was planning to offer a professional hypnotism "boot camp" style certification program in late July.  Well, it's time to make it official.

Professional Hypnosis and NLP Boot Camp Online

If you want to become a certified, professional hypnotist and can devote an entire week to study, practice, and training, then mark you calendar for the first week of August.  

From July 31 through August 7, I'll be teaching my combined National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH) and National Federation of Neurolinguistic Programming (NFNLP) professional certification course in a boot camp style format.  Each day we will spend most of the day in classroom format, using lecture and discussion, and then toward the end of the day we will practice the skills presented in that day's class time.

The course covers, in depth, the following topics:
  • History and nature of hypnosis
  • Over 20 different inductions
  • Techniques for assessing and increasing depth
  • Formulating and delivering suggestions
  • Self Hypnosis
  • Understanding Neurolinguistic Programming and how it dovetails with hypnosis
  • Understanding human behavior and methods for modifying it
  • Recognizing and handling abreactions
  • Hypnotic regression
  • Parts therapy
  • Strategies for using hypnosis and NLP to help clients with:
    • Stress management
    • Fear and worry/anxiety
    • Smoking cessation
    • Weight loss
    • Improving sleep
    • Academic performance
    • Pain management
  • Establishing and running your professional hypnosis/NLP practice
Students who complete the course and pass the final exam will be certified with both the NGH and NFNLP.  These credentials are widely recognized in the field and are sufficient in most jurisdictions to begin a professional practice. 

To make this training available to a wider audience and to keep the cost down, the course will be held online via Cisco Webex.  We will "meet" virtually for the classroom work, and then each participant will need a volunteer for the practice time.  I will monitor and observe the practice via webcam/mic to give suggestions and feedback.

In order to participate in this course, you will need:
  1. A working computer running OS X or Windows with a comfortable headset, speakers, and a reliable, decently fast Internet connection (wired is best for reliability).
  2. The ability to devote an entire week, including the enclosing weekends, to the course.  Because of the compressed format, there really isn't any opportunity to make up missed material.
  3. A demo volunteer that you can practice with every day.  It doesn't have to be the same person each day; variety is good.
  4. A volunteer "client" for your final exam, which is a practical in which you will conduct a complete start-to-finish hypnotherapy session for a real issue that your volunteer wants help with.
Your investment for the program of $1295 covers your class tuition, books and materials, and includes your first year of membership in NGH and NFNLP, along with all of the benefits that go with that.  Financing options are available.

To take part in this compressed program, contact me by email (wiseguy35@gmail.com) before July 15, 2016.


Online Professional Hypnosis and NLP Training (weekend format)

If your schedule doesn't suit the boot camp format, my next weekend course will start up at the end of August.  This course covers the same content as the boot camp, but spread out across 10 weekend days to make it easier to fit into a modern busy schedule.

As with the boot camp, class is conducted online via Webex; you will need a suitable computer, volunteers to practice on, and a "client" for your final exam.  The same $1295 covers tuition, books, materials, and your first year's membership in NGH and NFNLP.

The actual class dates will be set once we have a full group so that we can minimize schedule conflicts, but the general timeframe will be between 8/27 and 10/30.  Contact me by email (wiseguy35@gmail.com) by July 31 to confirm your seat.




Saturday, April 23, 2016

Catching Up

Wow ... I just realized I haven't updated this blog since November.  Yeesh!  There's been a lot going on.

First, of course, was Charmed! back in January.  It was our first year, and I think we hit about 185 total people in attendance.  The energy was amazing, and I'm proud to have been part of bringing the con to the Baltimore/DC area.

In February I taught at the NELA Fetish Fair Flea along with my friends MrDream and ZanyM.  For the first time, we had an Erotic Hypnosis Lounge running for most of the event and a lot of really cool stuff happened in there courtesy of people like AmHypnotic, MentalConfetti, Hypnostory, Ariadne, Maamaine, and others.  Really hoping that becomes an annual happening (the lounge, of course -- the Flea already is).

March brought NEEHU, which meant a return to The Society and a chance to reunite with the community.  Many, many awesome things happened there, much of which has been written about already by others.  Some personal highlights for me included the workshop that MrDream and I did to help new presenters develop class ideas and co-teaching Erotic Hypnosis 101 with Ariadne.

Last week I visited with Hypnosis New Jersey and spent an afternoon doing Kinky Human Tricks and some mentored practice time.  It's really amazing how fast that New Jersey group is growing; Moon-Gazer and pinupknits have built something awesome there.

In a couple of hours I'm presenting for my hometown Black Rose SIG on "Making It Stick" -- an extended discussion, demo, and practice session about why, and what to do when, a suggestion just isn't getting followed.  This will be an extended version of one of the classes I'm offering at MEEHU later this year.

There is a lot coming up, too.  Tomorrow is the first instructional day for my first in-person professional hypnotism course.  Six people from the DC metro area, who are also members of the erotic hypnosis community, will be getting certified as professional hypnotists and NLP practitioners over the course of the next 8 weeks or so.

Some of you know that I'm a pretty serious hobbyist woodworker; most of the photos I post on FetLife are of things I've made in my garage workshop.  In May I'm treating myself to a rare non-working vacation as I attend Weekend with WOOD in Des Moines, IA.  I'll be there in my Bruce Wayne identity just for the fun of attending.  Before I return, though, I'm going to take advantage of the proximity to Mephki's new home and do a workshop for the brand-new Iowa City hypnosis group.

Come June, I'll be at MEEHU 3 along with a long list of amazing and delightful people; if you haven't been to an *EHU yet, this is a great one to start with.  (Warning:  may be habit forming!)

I'm looking to assemble another in-person professional hypnosis course in July, this time in "boot camp" style:  eight days of instruction, Saturday to Saturday, with the final exam at the end.  I'm looking for a venue in the New York City area; if I can find one that won't drive up the class cost we'll do it in person, otherwise we'll do the class online.  Looking at the latter half of July, probably July 16-23.  Let me know if you're interested or have venue suggestions.

My next for-sure online class will start in late August and run until probably early October (dates are not finalized until we know who all is attending).  This one will be in the original format, online and spread over several weeks.

It's early yet, but I fully intend to be on hand at WEEHU 2016 and hope a lot of you will be as well.  There are a couple of other things that aren't confirmed yet.  I've got an invitation to go teach in Seattle when we can find a date that works, and I want to do something as-yet-undetermined with TES before the year is out because I love working with them.  So stay tuned.