User:Cruithneach77/Stephen Brooks (Hypnotherapist)

Stephen Haig Brooks, (21 July 1951 in Cambridge, United Kingdom) is a British hypnotherapist and a pioneer in the development of indirect hypnosis. He introduced Ericksonian techniques to the UK and Europe.

First involvement with hypnosis
Brooks acquired his initial interest in hypnosis during a demonstration of hypnotic phenomena at a psychology lecture at University of Cambridge in 1969. He had previously developed an interest in experimental psychology while at school after winning a book on the subject as a school prize. He later admitted that he only choose the book for its very long title so he could impress his peers. It did however contain reference to the connection between eye movements and sensory experience, something that NLP researchers Bandler and Grinder labelled as "eye accessing cues" 20 years later. Experimental psychology and, especially, experimental hypnosis subsequently became an obsession of his, fuelled by a belief that research into hypnosis - particularly its creative and ethical application in therapy - had not been fully explored or developed.

Rejection of traditional methods of inducing hypnosis
Lack of publications and available research into experimental and permissive hypnosis in the UK led to him becoming disillusioned with the traditional direct approach, which he considered far too authoritarian and disrespectful to hypnotic subjects. He felt that instead of empowering people, it disempowered them because it implied that the hypnotist had control over them. So instead of studying hypnosis at that time he focused on developing a career in the music business, which was later to prove beneficial, as his contacts within that industry led to therapy work with well known celebrities later in his career.

Discovering Milton H Erickson
In the 1970s while browsing in his local county library Brooks discovered a book entitled “The Practical Application of Medical and Dental Hypnosis” (Published 1961). There were three authors, one of whom was Milton H Erickson[[, who was largely unknown at the time except within clinical hypnosis circles in the [[USA. It was Erickson’s only publication in book form at the time, although some of his papers had been published separately in journals in the USA. Erickson’s contribution to the book were indicated only by the initials MHE. Brooks immediately recognized which author had contributed to sections in the book as Erickson’s insights and innovative ideas seemed to “jump off the page”. The book was not published in the UK at that time, so Brooks decided to borrow the book from the library and claims to have never taken it back.

Rejection of traditional hypnosis training courses in the UK
Brooks decided to quit the music business in the mid 1970s, mainly for financial reasons. He acquired "Hypnotic Realities" (1971) by Ernest Rossi and armed with this, decided to concentrate on developing a career as a hypnotherapist. He enrolled on what was then the most well known hypnotherapy course in the UK, but was so disillusioned with the quality of training that he ended up teaching his fellow students about Erickson on the final day, surprisingly with the blessing of the tutor. Shocked by the negative experience of the poor training at this traditional hypnotherapy training school, he felt confident enough to set up in private practice as an Ericksonian hypnotherapist based on what he had learned from the books of Erickson and Rossi. He scouted around looking for suitable offices while filling in with freelance work in the music business, selling carpets and running a real ale business from home.

Setting up in private practice
He decided, that as the public were still fairly sceptical (or even afraid) of hypnosis, due mainly to how it was portrayed in the media and by stage hypnotists, whom he detested, he would not set up a permanent practice in one location. Instead, he would set up five different practices, one for each day of the week in different towns throughout the county of Essex, where he then lived. So he set up practices in Chelmsford, Southend, Rayleigh, Brentwood and Harlow using hotels, government offices and training centers. He set up anywhere he could rent a quiet room for the day on a regular basis in towns that were easily accessible within a one hour car journey of his home. This way he believed he would cover a far greater geographical area and be more certain of getting clients – little did he know how successful he would be. At that time there were only three hypnotherapists in the telephone directory for the whole of Essex, so he wasn’t that optimistic about the demand for hypnotherapy. So he placed a large advert on the television page of the county newspaper each Friday, figuring that people would refer to that page over each weekend and he waited for the phone to ring. Within a few weeks he became so busy that he was unable to see clients at weekly intervals, so appointments were booked for every three weeks. He averaged nine clients a day like this for over twelve years.

Erickson’s role as a mentor
During this time, he established contact with Erickson and received papers from him on a regular basis during the 1970's. He arranged to visit Phoenix where Erickson lived for an informal meeting along with several other well known Ericksonian therapists including Rossi, Sidney Rosen, Carol Erickson and Frank Farelly, all of whom Brooks trained with a few years later. Unfortunately, Erickson died on the day of the meeting. As Brooks was the only person in the UK with a deep knowledge of Erickson, it was difficult for him to find anyone of a high enough calibre to study with. He did subsequently study with a number of Erickson’s pupils, all of whom had been taught directly by Erickson himself, these included Michael Yapko, Joe Lustig, Bill O’Hanlon, David Gordon, David Caloff, as well as the aforementioned Carol Erickson, Sidney Rosen and Ernest Rossi, all of whom subsequently taught for Brooks on BHR courses later in the 1990s.

First experiences as a practising hypnotherapist
During the years of working in private practice Brooks was confronted with the complete gamut of psychological problems. Having only Erickson’s papers and his own ingenuity to guide him, he took on all kinds of clients and every possible type of disorder. He is quoted as saying, “I would wait desperately for a paper from Erickson and when it turned up it would be something outrageous, like how to create a negative hallucination in a patient and to do it indirectly without saying anything. I had no other mentor and no other frames of reference regarding hypnosis, so just thought, 'OK if Milton can do it, so can I.' So that week every one of my clients would get a negative hallucination, regardless of their problem. I have a lot to thank them for, they were my guinea pigs really and I learned so much from them – I wouldn’t dare do that to patients now”.

The British Hypnosis Research Association
In 1979 Brooks set up British Hypnosis Research (BHR) as an association to research into Erickson’s techniques. The association was based in Cambridge and mainly attracted undergraduates from the local university as it was located in the university's Union Building (where in 1993 Brooks would give a talk about advances in hypnosis and meet with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to discuss the relationship between hypnosis and meditation). Brooks later moved back to Cambridge so his children could be close to their grandparents but he continued to run his practices in Essex.

Case studies
Brooks regularly shares case studies on his training courses and as he always demonstrates therapy with clients on his courses, he is never short of a new case study to discuss – indeed, some of his courses are based entirely on video playback of therapy sessions just recorded in front of the group. But it is his case studies from that period when he was himself still learning that he prefers to discuss, maybe because he wants his students to identify with him and the difficulty he had in the beginning.

Celebrity clients
Brooks has worked with many well know people over the years, most of whom, for confidentiality reasons he is unable to comment about personally, but whom he sometimes refers to indirectly. His high profile hypnotherapy practice in London’s Knightsbridge in the 1990s and his reputation in the right circles gave him the kudos to see many important people including politicians, TV presenters, rock stars and even a notorious murderer who wished to remember the location of victims. He tells the story of how he was asked to cancel all of his clients for the entire week to take care of a well known punk rock singer, who remained unconscious on the floor for most of the time despite Brooks charging the singer’s record company his standard hourly rate for each hour of the entire week. He has also talked of the time he declined an offer to tour the west coast of America with a big American star as it would have meant cancelling the training courses he had promised his students. And also how he helped a well known British musical recluse, who despite his introverted personality managed to create a musical masterpiece that became the foundation of a global business empire. He once had a jamming session with one famous musician (who had apparently been walking on the moon) after a therapy session in a recording studio. Brooks also gave therapy to celebrity friends indirectly in social situations, as he still does. One early context being a hypnotherapy session over Sunday dinner for a top fashion designer who had just split up with his wife. The therapy session took place at the Therfield home of one of Brooks’s old Cambridge friends who was a member of the British group Pink Floyd. Brooks has also worked with athletes and weight lifters, identifying in hypnosis what mental strategies successful sports people employ when in competition and then installing these successful strategies under hypnosis to improve performance.

First European NLP training
In 1984 Brooks attended the first ever European NLP Practitioner Training. His peers at the time included many people who would go on to establish successful NLP organizations in the UK. By the end of the training, which was held at the London School of Economics, Brooks felt frustrated that NLP had seemingly “stolen” many of Erickson’s principles and techniques without giving Erickson the due credit (Brooks later trained with family therapist Virginia Satir who told him she was equally unhappy as she believed that NLP had exploited her ideas). Brooks has since admitted that maybe he also felt a little possessive regarding Erickson, as Erickson was largely unknown in the UK up to that point and NLP seemed to be pirating his techniques. At the end of the Practitioner Training, during which Brooks had made his opinions heard, the NLP trainers took Brooks to one side and challenged him to set up the first Ericksonian Hypnosis training in Europe. The following month Brooks started teaching a series of weekly evening courses at the East West Centre in Old Street London with an initial group of 17 students, mainly from the NLP Practitioner course. Over the period of one year, on the train from Cambridge to London every Wednesday, Brooks wrote the syllabus, lessons and exercises that would form the backbone of the first ever Ericksonian Hypnosis course in Europe.

British Hypnosis Research (BHR) training courses
The success of this first course gave Brooks the confidence to set up a one year professional Diploma training at weekends. He realised that to be accepted by the medical profession the course needed to be fairly academic and ideally be taught by doctors, as this was the norm. At this time a small number of people was becoming interested in Erickson’s work and Brooks decided to approach them individually as some came from the medical field. Brooks invited four of these clinicians to teach along side him on the first BHR Ericksonian Hypnosis Diploma course. The trainers were Dr Tony Bastic, author of a book about intuition, Dr Elvider Adamson-Mecado, a psychologist at St George’s Hospital London, Dr Tony Wabba, a psychologist and anesthetist at Eastbourn General Hospital and Frank Franklin a psychotherapist and one of the first people to train in NLP with the originators of NLP, Bandler and Grinder in Santa Cruz California. Brooks now had an excellent and impressive team of trainers that would not look out of place in a hospital setting. Next he needed an appropriate venue, so with Dr Adamson Mecado’s help, St George's Hospital in Tooting London was acquired for the courses.

Opposition from the mainstream hypnosis bodies
At that time there were two clinical hypnosis societies in the UK that also ran courses, the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis (BSMDH) and the British Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (BSECH), the former catering to doctors and dentists and the latter to psychologists. Brooks despised the monopoly that these organisations held on hypnosis as they tried to limit the use of hypnosis to only themselves. He determined to change the regulations and the perception of the caring professions regarding who was allowed to use hypnosis in the UK, especially within the British NHS (National Health Service). It seemed ludicrous to Brooks that hypnosis should be limited to only doctors, dentists and psychologists who had only received brief training in an outdated direct traditional authoritarian approach to hypnosis. At one point there was a running battle between Brooks and the British Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis and they heavily criticised Brooks's and Erickson’s contribution to hypnosis in published letters in the Psychologist magazine, the official journal of the British Psychological Association. As proof of Brooks's persistent effort to get Erickson’s approach accepted within the medical field, BSECH eventually accepted Erickson’s approach as valid and one of Brooks’s own students, psychologist Phillis Alden, a graduate from his Diploma course at St George's, was made Honary Secretary of BSCEH.

Final acceptance within the health profession
Within a few years, BHR and Brooks had become the face of hypnotherapy training across the NHS in the 1980s and 1990s. The fact that Erickson’s approach was indirect meant that health professionals such as nurses, counselors, occupational therapists and social workers could use hypnosis conversationally and covertly in therapeutic contexts where in the past hypnosis was not allowed. Many of Brooks’s students were eminent doctors but were unable to say openly that they were using hypnosis because their particular branch of medicine forbid it. One particular doctor was on the board of the British Medical Association but was unable to share with his colleagues that he was studying hypnosis with Stephen Brooks. Over time this all changed, largely because of Brooks commitment to introducing Ericksonian hypnosis into the mainstream NHS. Over a period of 15 years Brooks set up training courses in over twenty hospitals and universities throughout the UK and abroad.

The Training In Indirect Hypnosis video
In 1990 Brooks was asked by the National Sound Archives to record an example of contemporary hypnotherapy. Together with the University of East Sussex he made a studio video recording of a unique hypnotherapy session with a patient. He based the video on an earlier studio recording of Erickson made by Joe Lustig, one of Erickson’s students with whom Brooks had trained. The video of Brooks’s session has become a classic in the field of hypnosis and has been used on hypnosis courses by organizations in the UK. In 2009 it was re-mastered for DVD and Brooks added a commentary to explain in detail everything he is doing during the session. He added French subtitles, translated by Deborah Bacon-Dilts (wife of friend Robert Dilts) and it is a major resource for people wanting to know about Brooks work.

Notable graduates
While many BHR graduates incorporated Brooks’s hypnosis skills into their NHS work, others left the NHS to set up in private practice and others set up well known training organizations, sometimes in direct competition with Brooks and often using Brooks syllabus as the source for their own courses. Notable graduates include Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrell who went on to set up an MA Degree based on a therapy they have called the Human Givens approach, Igor Ledochowski who has published books and set up courses in Conversational Hypnosis, Adam Eason who set up Adam Eason Personal Development, Mark Tyrell who set up the Uncommon Therapy organization, Kerin Webb who now runs EOS Hypnosis courses and is author of “The Language Pattern Bible” in which Brooks is acknowledged many times throughout, NLP Trainer Ian McDermott who now runs International Teaching Seminars and who at one point was considering going into partnership with Brooks as they qualified from the first European NLP Practitioner course together in 1985, Peter and Mary Lawrence who set up the British Institute of Hypnotherapy, NLP Trainer Andrew Austin, author of the book “The Rainbow Machine”. Hugh Willbourne author of books with British stage hypnotist Paul McKenna plus many others. Brooks’ courses have always been a model and benchmark for other organizations because he has always insisted that his training be practical and fairly intensive so it is taught at post-graduate level and is updated and continually evolving.

Coping with success
During the 1990s Brooks had over 20 hypnotherapy trainers and supervisors working for him and students would be supervised while working with actual patients at the hospitals after each training weekend. At that time his Diploma Courses were based at St Ann’s Hospital London and in Selly Oak Hospital Birmingham with other shorter courses running elsewhere in the country. The BHR head office was based in Piccadilly but Brooks never went in, the business of running an extremely successful training organization was of no interest to him. His main interest lay in developing new and innovative hypnosis skills and therapy techniques. It was a time of considerable pressure for Brooks as every weekend there would be a BHR course running somewhere in the UK. Brooks decided that his original role as a hypnotherapist and trainer had evolved into that of a businessman, something that had happened to him rather than being intended. So he decided to downsize the organization. After a period of self discovery and personal development spent mainly by meditating in the jungles of northern Thailand for a few years he set up the worlds first one year online training course in Ericksonian Hypnosis.

Brooks’s online hypnosis course
In 2006 Brooks set up a one year online degree level hypnosis course using the same online training platform as the UK’s Open University. The only difference was this course was completely free. Not surprisingly, many established hypnosis training organizations were not happy about this. But by this time Brooks was more than happy living a stress free life as a Buddhist in Thailand and flying over to the UK for a few weeks each year to teach his Practitioner Diploma Course (now at Roehampton University London). The online course attracted a huge response and is highly acclaimed with over 4000 students now trained on the course. It is based on the theory and principles of Ericksonian hypnosis so does not qualify students to actually practice as therapists as it is not a Practitioner Course, but it does give students a thorough academic training in the theory and principles of Brooks’ techniques.

The present
Brooks is now acknowledged as one of true masters of hypnotherapy. Additionally he is a pioneer having developed many original and innovative techniques that have changed the way therapists work (insertive eye contact, facial symmetry calibration, stop smoking strategies, non-attachment therapy etc). He has no interest in retiring instead he is taking on even more training these days, traveling extensively worldwide in 2011/12. Being Buddhist and not that interested in self-promotion he has never bothered much with publishing his work, but a huge archive of recordings and transcripts awaits publication at sometime in the future.