Sunday, July 15, 2012

"Integrative hypnosis" and mind/body pronunciation


Clip art: Clker
Clip art: Clker
On Badenhop's SeiShinDo website there is an excerpt from an interview he did with Melissa Tiers, an "integrative" hypnotherapist. Now to understand exactly where the two of them are coming from you'd need some background in hypnosis, psychotherapy, NLP, CBT--and SeiShinDo, but a quick read is instructive. Tiers talks about her four therapeutic stages of a session with a client and something about how she figures out which technique to use. (The "how" itself is fascinating, sounding very much like what I have often heard from highly experienced pronunciation instructors . . . it just comes to me . . . but I'll leave that for another post!) In essence, the four steps are: (1) identify the problem, (2) isolate the problematic emotional state associated with it, (3) identify another context the client associates with a more positive emotion, and then (4) connect up the emotion of (3) to (1). What is especially relevant to integrated pronunciation teaching is the assumption there that change must be (a) a multiple-modality, mind/body operation, that it (b) requires extreme attention (perhaps a little short of the classical hypnotic "trance!"), that it (c) demands some "out of the box" thinking at times, and that it (d) requires explicit, principled management of emotion. Now I am not necessarily "suggesting" that you get trained in hypnosis (or sign on with Charlie Badenhop for a little stress therapy online) but Ms Tiers' perspective, as one working "in the middle" of change, is near mesmerizing . . . (You may not remember this post, but next time you hear a the word "Badenhop" it will bring "Tiers" to your eyes . . . ) 

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