Progression in your life: Hypnosis provides clarity

After the summer vacations and after the New Year, people are often full of good spirits to improve their lives. To stimulate real progression in their lives for once.

But that is often easier said than done, fortunately hypnosis can help people improve their lives and achieve goals.

Ideal to know if you are a hypnotherapist or a coach helping people with a variety of goals.

In this blog article, we take a closer look at the progression technique in hypnosis and what it is all useful for.

In fact, many people are familiar with techniques such as regression, which is often combined with the inner child.

But what is also a very nice technique, the opposite technique of regression is progression.

Difference between progression and regression

With the regression technique, you go back to the moment when a particular limiting belief originated. The regression technique often identifies the moment when a problem in your life first arose. The idea is that by resolving this problem, your life will improve in the future.

A progression actually helps you move into the future. With a progression, you move toward a positive future and are given the tools to achieve that positive future. This in turn has all kinds of different benefits than a regression.

It deals more with looking forward in your life, rather than looking back. It also delivers a lot.

This is an ideal technique to use when you precisely want to improve your life.

Improving your life

There are all kinds of factors that can make you think about improving your life, think about:

1. Physical rehabilitation.
2. Recovering from a mental health issue, such as depression.
3. Find a better job / become (more) successful as an entrepreneur.
4. Become a better version of yourself.

All things that will cause you to improve your life and thus get "progression" in your life.

The progression technique thus gives people an idea of the future and the "route" to that future. Researchers say the technique can be used by therapists to give clients a picture of what their journey or recovery from a particular problem might look like. It can indicate in advance some "milestones" that you may begin to experience during treatment of certain problems[1].

This technique often helps strengthen clients’ egos as well. As a result, their self-confidence and self-image are often enhanced.

You may think, yes but without knowing the cause of the problem, such a "milestone" is harder to achieve than with knowing the cause of the problem.

But it doesn't always have to be that way. Ultimately, the placebo effect is also something that makes people better, because they have the expectation that the pill will solve their problem in the future, after taking it.

So using a placebo is using a positive expectation about the future.

Progression in depression

In the case of depression, making progress can be incredibly important. The greater the feelings of hopelessness , the more important it is to restore people’s hope—to give them a glimpse of how life can also be “fun” or “meaningful.”

Because people suffering from depression often find it difficult to imagine that life can be fun again, a guided visualization about that future is important to give.

For the progression technique to be successful, it may be helpful for the client to be in a deep state of hypnosis the first time, but in subsequent sessions, a light state of hypnosis may be sufficient.

In guided visualization, it is important for people to see that they are achieving a certain goal and also to feel how much pleasure and satisfaction it gives them that they have achieved the goal. In other words, they should feel that it is already so.

"It's already happened," I sometimes say.

Progression in pain and fatigue

Research has also examined whether progression helps people experiencing pain and fatigue. In a study comparing treatment with and without progression, it was found that people who received progression experienced a nearly immediate reduction in pain and fatigue compared to those who did not receive progression[2].

So in the short term, the progression technique can be very effective in reducing pain and fatigue. More research needs to be done on this particular technique for its long-term effects.

However, research on hypnotherapy in general for people with fibromyalgia shows that hypnotherapy also significantly reduced fibromyalgia symptoms over the longer term—for example, at 12 and 24 weeks—including fatigue and pain[3].

And since people are often given more than 1 technique during hypnotherapy to work through their problems, progression can certainly play a role in that. You can then enhance the long-term effects by combining progression with other techniques.

Progression for creating hope

Thus, the progression technique is ideal for creating hope in one's life and even giving people meaning for their lives.

For example, if a regression is painful—because someone has been struggling with a problem for decades—they may feel unhappy that they only realize something after turning⁵⁰. In such cases, moving forward is very important; after all, you can still live to be 80 or even 100, which means you still have 30 to 50 years to shape your life in a fun and meaningful way .

Progression is made together with the client

It’s not that the hypnotherapist “determines” what such a wonderful future looks like. This is something you do together with the client. In particular, you offer suggestions that stimulate the client’s imagination so they can visualize an ideal future on their own[4].

You can also use a life event for this, such as:

1. Look good and feel good at your wedding.
2. Have work that makes you happy.
3. Being able to run another marathon.
4. Playing with your children/grandchildren during summer vacation.

So you determine that future hope event depending on your client's problems and goals.

Shaping a progression

When you help someone with the progression technique, it starts as always. You induce hypnosis and deepen the hypnotic state.

You can lead people to a room with a door and then when they open that door in their mind, they are in the future vision that is ideal. Where they will be completely happy.

You suggest that they feel good, that they have achieved their goals, that they feel strong, light and confident. These suggestions cause those feelings to be aroused.

You can ask what a client sees and how it feels to be confident . The hypnotic state makes it easier to imagine this than when out of that state.

Because in that hypnotic state, certain problems suddenly no longer play a role. Not the depression, not the obesity, not the pain and/or not the fatigue either.

By asking questions and giving hints about the feelings, you help the client to see, feel and experience the future picture in the best way possible.

You’ll also want to anchor this feeling so that they can always recall it whenever they struggle with making decisions in their daily lives. For example, if someone wants to lose weight for a wedding, this feeling helps them resist cookies and drinks so they don’t eat more than necessary.

Creating a roadmap for the future

For some practical goals, such as opening a hypnotherapy practice, you can also help people by taking steps back.

"What did you do before setting up the practice?"

Each time you help the client take a step back to the moment they are in the chair.

This also gives your client a clear plan with the steps they can take. Especially with larger goals, this gives them a foothold.

Consider, for example, the milestones named earlier in this blog article.

Then when people reach such a milestone in real life, it immediately triggers those good feelings, which is incredibly good for motivation to do what it takes to achieve their goals.

Progression Learning

When you take the training courses of the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands you first learn the regression technique, in the third course, the Pathfinder, you also get the progression technique. We also call this one The Dream.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis? Then join our free online masterclass.

Or register directly for one of our events and trainings. You can attend the trainings in class on location or live online. Then you join the class via a web-cam and people can practice with you via a laptop.

Ideal if you can't make it on location for once, or don't live near the Netherlands.

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Click here to learn more about our training programs.

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