J.P. Noble Award
24/07/2017 20:01 Filed in: Personal
Back in June I attended the annual conference of the National Society for Hypnosis, Psychotherapy & Mindfulness, and was very surprised, and also very honoured to find a dissertation I had submitted to the National College of Hypnosis & Psychotherapy had won the J.P. Noble Award for 2017. The dissertation was titled 'Working with Mindfulness & Hypnosis in Psychotherapy; a challenge and an opportunity', and covered the ways in which mindfulness can inform, integrate with, or work as an adjunct to psychotherapy, and also the similarities, differences and tensions that exist between hypnosis and mindfulness in a psychotherapeutic setting.
A blog post on this subject is probably long overdue, especially as I am increasing finding clients become confused around the similarities of their experiences in mindfulness meditation practices and in self-hypnosis. This is not particularly surprising, as both states tend to be characterised by coming to rest, and turning our attention inwards. However, there is a fundamental difference too: Mindfulness involves an intentional awareness of our present moment experience; we turn towards our experience, however, in hypnosis, we tend to disconnect from some aspects of our present moment experience and become absorbed instead by internal images, or imagined sensations and experiences, or perhaps we visit past or future moments, rather than the present. Quite a substantial difference!
A blog post on this subject is probably long overdue, especially as I am increasing finding clients become confused around the similarities of their experiences in mindfulness meditation practices and in self-hypnosis. This is not particularly surprising, as both states tend to be characterised by coming to rest, and turning our attention inwards. However, there is a fundamental difference too: Mindfulness involves an intentional awareness of our present moment experience; we turn towards our experience, however, in hypnosis, we tend to disconnect from some aspects of our present moment experience and become absorbed instead by internal images, or imagined sensations and experiences, or perhaps we visit past or future moments, rather than the present. Quite a substantial difference!