10 Weeks to 40m Ultra-marathon

10 Weeks to 40m Ultra-marathon

This is the summary of my third week’s training for the Brecon Beacon’s ultra-marathon. Mileage is upped, and the long runs are getting longer!

I started the week by putting an additional 1kg in my rucksack. I’ll have to run with emergency equipment on the runs, and that will weigh a few kilos, so I might as well get ready for it. Also, if I get to do the Marines’ selection run across Dartmoor I want to show them respect and run with as much weigh as I can to hopefully match their weight.

The additional weight did make a small difference – I felt a little slower up the hills, until I adjusted my running posture slightly to compensate for the weight.

My Sunday long run was a nightmare – so frustrating! I will always put my huskies first, and it was because of them I had to cut the run short. The temperature was 7 degrees when I left at first light. Yet rose quickly, and the last few miles I chose a route back that was shaded by trees so they didn’t overheat. I was hoping for 19-21 miles, yet had to settle for a little over 16.

Huskies have fur that insulates them against cold and heat. They cool through their mouths, ears, paws and anus. So when the heat comes up they can’t efficiently shed heat, and the insulation means they overheat quickly. Under 14 degrees is the optimum for working, although I know mine can do light work at 16-17 degrees. When I got back at just before 10am the thermometer was already pushing 19, and it was hotter in the sun.

Sunday was BBQ day and I fuelled up on meat and wine! Perfect for my run the next morning – commencing proper ‘back to back’ runs, getting my legs used to moving while tired. In coming weeks I’ll be looking at getting to around 26 miles on the Sunday and 14 on the Monday – getting the 40m distance in over two days.

I’ve also been hunting for the right foods to carry with me. Carbs, especially fast carbs, are NOT necessarily the right foods to be eating on an ultramarathon. I know it goes against the grain, yet it is worth looking at what happens at the hormonal level.

When you eat carbs your body produces insulin. The job of insulin is to take those carbs and store them as fat – and keep them there. Yet, I hear you say, this doesn’t matter because the carbs will first be used up to refuel – carbs are the first energy source of the body. And you’d be right.

However, you can only process around 300kcals of carbs an hour. Yet you will be burning far more energy. This energy (at the lower respiratory levels where ‘stress’ isn’t induced, such as during an ultramarathon) needs to come from your fat stores. When insulin is present glucogen doesn’t come out to play. Glucogen is the hormone which releases the fat for burning as energy.

Eat carbs and you inhibit fat burning.

And it gets worse. If you have fast carbs, like many energy gels provide, you will produce more insulin than what is actually required. This will further inhibit fat burning.

As a result I am looking towards fat and protein foods for my energy sources during runs, to ‘top up’ the depleting energy stores. And also I’m looking to allow my body to adjust to ‘fat burning’ mode as much as possible. Running an ultramarathon is just as much about correct nutrition and biological reactions as it is about running.

To keep the biological reactions at the right level I am looking at running within the ‘fat burning zone’ as much as possible. This is a lower heart rate, one where you can chat as you run. Here fat will be the primary energy source. Put your body under further stress and you will be burning protein from your muscles instead – not really a good idea!

I’ve found a great drink to use – each little plastic bottle contains around 350kcals all from fat, protein, and just a little carbs. I like the idea of taking fluid on with your food – it helps it be processed quicker in the stomach without drawing fluid from elsewhere in the body. I’ve found a product in Tesco’s that is a chocolate milkshake from full fat milk with single cream, real cocoa, and just a little sugar for sweetness. This could be perfect – I am one of the few who thrive on dairy. I’ll be giving them a go on my runs – I’ll let you know how it works out!

Interestingly, I think I have now hit ‘running fitness’. My body has adapted and now I just ‘run’, it is just a natural thing to do. My Tuesday run was supposed to be just 7 miles, yet I felt I could go on forever, so added another 2 on the end to complete 9 miles in total. I was going to do the further additional 2.5 miles to complete my 40miles for the week – yet I also know it is possible to push it too far, too quick. So I’ve allowed myself to get to the total in 4 days instead. And running the Wednesday 3.5miles, which took my running total to 41 this week, just seemed very short! The Thursday run was just bonus miles on top, and classed by me as active recovery.

I’m now pondering on what routes to run next week in order to keep things interesting on the longer runs.

This is my third week’s mileage, week commencing Sunday 9^th September:

Sunday:                16 miles

Monday:              12.5 miles

Tuesday:              9 miles

Wednesday:      3.5 miles

Thursday:            3.5 miles

Friday:                  Rest

Saturday:             Rest

Weekly Total =  44.5 miles

A Difference in Perception

A difference in perception

This blog post will be of interest to my hypnotist friends and anyone who would wonder as to the way that hypnosis works.

Hypnosis is all about changing people’s perceptions. By perceptions I am talking about how they experience the world – the way they receive and process information through their senses. As a hypnotist I guide their perceptions in such a way that they think differently. In a stage or street hypnosis context the perceptions may be guided so that I am invisible or someone has a set of horns growing out of their head. Or that their hand is stuck to a lamppost. Or that they can’t remember their name. Or that the next puff of the cigarette they are smoking will be the most disgusting thing that they have ever tasted.

In hypnotherapy perceptions are changed so that someone thinks differently – to let go of some trauma, to react differently, to have different habits. It is just another change to the way they perceive things. Perceive things differently, get a different thought process.

So hypnosis is all about changing perceptions.

The way that you perceive the world is not actually reality. Well, it is your reality, yet it is coloured by your life’s experience and may not be accurate to the original source of the information. Confused? Let’s take the eyes as an example.

The millions of rods and cones in your eyes receive reflected light. This information is coded into an electro-chemical pulse which fires through your neurology. It gets passed through the visual cortex in your brain where it is processed for depth, colour, movement, and distance and so on, and it is then crossed referenced against your life’s learning. Then on something known as the visual special sketch pad the image is formed in your mind.

What you see is not reality. It is your perception, or impression, of that reality, coloured by your life’s experience. The human mind looks to familiarise its experiences. In doing so it adjusts the information to suit. A hypnotist will change this perception to what they want it to be.

You can do this with a little demonstration to yourself. Here is the methodology I use to help people see an imaginary dog. I often do this process right at the very start of a session. The reason for this is that I get to know how I need to work with a client – how visual they can be, how to work with their imagination, the way they handle instructions, the language I must use – it is a good calibration tool. I can also then use it to springboard into pure hypnosis, using it as an induction.

If you can see then this methodology will work for you. If it doesn’t you just may need more explanation, or to have it put in a different way, or need a little bit of training. Yet it is possible for all of us to have a ‘positive hallucination’ – we do it all the time.

My ‘standard’ methodology goes like this.

“Look at the settee over there. Take in everything that you can see. As much detail as possible. Take in the information so that you can remember exactly what it looks like now.

Not now, but in a moment, I will ask you to close your eyes. As you close your eyes I want you to hold onto the image that you can see right now, so that when your eyes are closed you can still see the settee. OK, go ahead and close your eyes and hold onto the image of the settee. Make it real in your mind.

You can see the settee? Good. Your eyes are closed yet you can still see the settee. That’s because your mind creates the image. Every time our eyes are open information is received by the eyes, and then processed by your mind and the image is created. What you see is not reality – it is your perception of reality. You create the images whether your eyes are open or closed.

Now here’s the thing. Not now but in a moment I am going to say 1, 2 and then click my fingers. When I click my fingers a dog will appear in your mind on the settee. 1, 2, and what type of dog is this dog? Good. Did you tell it to be that type of dog, or did it just appear? It just appeared. That’s good. And what is it doing? OK, did you tell it to do that? That’s right, it is just doing that.

Now here’s the thing. Not now but in a moment I am going to say 1, 2, eyes open. Your eyes will open and you will look at the settee. And when you open your eyes you will hold onto the image of the dog, the same way in reverse you held onto the image of the settee. So I will say 1, 2, eyes open and you will look at the settee and see that dog there. 1, 2, eyes open and what is that dog doing now?

That’s right…”

For those of you who are familiar with Anthony Jacquin and Kev Sheldrake’s Automatic Imagination Model (AIM) you can see there are numerous opportunities within the above framework to utilise AIM. If my client cannot hold onto the image when they open their eyes I often utilise AIM as a method to ensure that they can. There are obviously many ways of working with a ‘live’ subject as every subject is different. Yet every subject can do this process – they do it every time they form an image, eyes open or shut.

From here I often have a play, the dog gets a unicorn’s horn, grows twice as big, shrinks to the size of a mouse, is wearing silly clothes, that kind of thing. Often I give the suggestion that every time they look towards the settee they will see the dog – and it can give them comfort during a hypnotherapy.

And from here the hypnotists amongst you will spot many opportunities to springboard directly into hypnosis. The moment you have ‘automatic perception changes at your suggestion’ you have hypnosis.

As all of our senses work the same way – we ‘perceive’ reality, all of our senses can be subject to perception changes. Perhaps the hypnotists amongst you can have a play with other senses too – I do!

This blog is a technical post designed to get the hypnotists thinking. Let me know how you get on, and please give me feedback! Hopefully, especially when you play with this, you hypnotists will realise (if you haven’t already) that the rituals you use aren’t necessary to create hypnotic phenomena – you can just go straight to phenomena. Use your skills to springboard from a phenomena creation and welcome to the quick world of amazing hypnosis...

11 Weeks to 40m Ultra-marathon

11 Weeks to 40m Ultra-marathon

I was pleased with my first week’s training – I really started to feel natural running with the huskies over longer distances. I am getting strict with them too – they are always maintained as being “on task” rather than diverting their focus. I’m training them to stay focused throughout the entire runs on the task at hand. They’re doing brilliantly, especially at their young age.

Running an ultra-marathon is not like running a marathon. The whole approach needs to be different. Efficiency is a key element so I’ve been really working on my running style. As a minimalist runner preferring the ‘barefoot style’ I’ve been working on my technique, looking for a gentle ‘tap-tap-tap’ with my footfall, landing on the midsole-forefoot, my foot beneath my knee and not in front of it, leaning slightly forward, arms in front of my body, and having a soft hip, knee and ankle to allow my legs to ‘roll’. This has created some style changes of running with the dogs in harness. I’ve increased my cadence (footfall rate) especially on the downhill sections. In fact, I am now even faster than before on a downhill than previously – considerably so, despite taking more steps. When your heel hits the ground it acts as a brake (and sends a shock through your body) and I now know that before I was over-striding and heel striking.

If you want to learn more about running efficiently then please stick ‘POSE running’ into Google.

My hands are now maintained as quite low, and my style looks like a loose and adapted ‘military shuffle’ of running with a pack. This is an efficient way of running for an ultra-marathon, where I need to travel distance without undue effort. I’m also running with a pack to get used to the load I will have to carry on the ultra. Currently it’s just with 2 litres of water inside, yet starting next week I will add a 0.5kg weight each week to get me used to an increased load. This is also in preparation for the potential run with the Marines – they do their 30mile Dartmoor run with weighted packs. I don’t want to let them down, and want to show them respect!

I do all my runs early in the morning where currently it is cool enough to work my huskies, and I do them on just a cup of coffee, and no breakfast. I also am not taking on any water during the runs, or any snacks along the way. I have a good reason for doing this in preparation for the ultra – I’ll be delving into nutrition and hydration in future blogs. For now the water makes a good starting weight in the pack, and just stays in the hydration bladder.

This is my second week’s mileage, week commencing Sunday 2^nd September:

Sunday:                14 miles

Monday:              7 miles

Tuesday:              6 miles

Wednesday:      10.5 miles

Thursday:            3.5 miles

Friday:                  Rest

Saturday:             Rest

Weekly Total = 41 miles

This is the weekly mileage I am aiming for each week. I’m now on target. The long run will start to get longer, as will the long run the day that follows it. In future weeks I will be aiming to get to the  40mile target as early in the week as possible, a day earlier all the time. As before, anything more will then just be the icing on the cake.

On the Wednesday I took on a ‘journey’ – I did a route that took me ‘somewhere’ albeit a circular route. It felt really, really good to be travelling somewhere. Psychologically it rocked! I actually felt like adding the final miles on to get the 40mile target completed that day – yet thought better of it! I am cautious of just doing too much too soon – I need to allow adaptation to take place to prevent injuries!

One issue I am having on longer runs is the annoyance of off lead dogs interfering with mine when they are working. Other dogs trying to play with them when they are working is a distraction and also good training to keep mine “on task”. Yet I have to let the frustration go from my own mind!

Next week the first weight will be added to my pack and the long runs increased in distance slightly. I wonder whether the light weight will make a difference? And just when will I reach the limits of my body’s hydration and energy? And will I continue to enjoy this journey more and more with every step? I’m posting this on a Friday…and looking forward to Sunday’s long run already… J

12 Weeks to 40m Ultra-marathon

12 Weeks to 40m Ultra-marathon

OK, I like a challenge. And when one as cool as this is presented, I have to take it! “Vote with your feet” is an old saying from my Ju-Jitsu coach. Perhaps I’m taking this one a little more literally. I’m signing up for a 40mile ultra-marathon across the Brecon Beacons in December. And I have just 12 weeks to go from zero to hero.

Actually, as a former professional athlete with 13 World Titles to my name, being a sports performance expert, being a personal trainer and getting miles under my feet with my crazed huskies, it isn’t too much of an ordeal. Just needs a bit of careful planning and training – and a steep learning curve. As my ultra-marathon running adventure racing friend Gary Valance said “the race you struggle with is the one you haven’t prepared for.”

I’m going to be doing the run with my two huskies – Harley and Max, who are young and will be in their first working season. You may think that having two huskies out in harness in front of you will help over the distance. Actually, there are as many disadvantages as advantages.

I need to run at my dogs’ pace, which often isn’t appropriate to my running cadence. They will veer off after deer, rabbits and squirrels. I need to use my legs to brake when going downhill as I am being dragged by 8-paw drive. Then there’s the stop starts, the pit stops, the gates to go through, roads to cross, stiles to climb over – it puts a different demand on your body. It adds on average around 1-1.5mins to my mile times. I also can’t train with them if it is 14 degrees and rising as they will over-heat. It also adds to the mental pressure – I’ll be commanding a team that needs to work together. And my team is young and inexperienced.

I will also need to carry spare kit for them on top of mine – it will add to my rucksack load. As this is a self-sufficient race, I will need to carry everything myself, including the 3-500ml of water per hour that I will require and all food. More on the nutrition and hydration in later blog posts.

Last week was my first week in training (after deciding to do the race a couple of days previously) when I just though “hey, why not?” From then until now I have learned so much, surfed the forums, spoken with doctors, spoken with soldiers and marines, networked with ultra-marathoners, and read the excellent book “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to put one foot in front of the other. I’ll be getting across in my blog the lessons I learn as I go.

To start with, running an ultra-marathon is all about getting the miles under your feet. There are so many components to the race – physical fitness, mental condition, husky condition, team dynamics, nutrition, hydration, equipment, injury management – yet the most important thing is to get out there and run.

The key appears to be the weekly long run. To get an ever increasing distance under your feet in a single run, getting your body used to carrying out the distance. There are many schools of thought as to the correct distance to cover in training. The one that suits me, my lifestyle, my other training and fits with my knowledge base is to have a weekly average of around the final distance – 40miles per week.

This is to be broken down into a long run, followed by a second long run, and the rest of the miles coming as quickly as possible in the days afterwards, allowing for body recovery of course. Everything else on top is just icing on the cake.

This is my first week’s mileage:

Monday:              14 miles

Tuesday:              4.5 miles

Wednesday:      7 miles

Thursday:            3.5 miles

Friday:                  4 miles

Weekly Total = 33miles

33miles is under the mileage I wanted to go for, yet is still a good starting point. As the week progressed my runs became easier on my legs as they just adapted to the appropriate running style.

It is also worth noting where I am running. I am doing the run across the Brecon Beacons – not exactly flat! And it is a cross country run. So my running terrain is cross country and hilly – to prepare me for the end goal. I use the military training grounds between Aldershot and Church Crookham as my main running ground.  This is the old Para training ground known locally as ‘The Area’ and includes Beacon Hill with its sharp inclines, and every old-school Para’s friend ‘Flagstaff’ (known to civilians as ‘Caesars Camp’). I ensured that my running terrain was a complete mixture from sand, soft forest trails, tarmac, loose gravel, and mud – everything I can find.

I’m pretty pleased with my first week. It is a good base to start from. In the next few weeks, where I’m laying down the foundations of my conditioning, I will be looking to slightly increase my main long run and the run that follows it the next day. This will be built up to a long run of around 26miles with a run of 14miles the next day – getting 40miles under my feet in two days.

I also have had some very interesting texts from friends of mine in the Marines. It seems that I have an invitation to go and run the 30mile Dartmoor final selection run with recruits – how cool is that? Hopefully this will take place in late October or early November – a perfect final testing ground whilst allowing adaptation to take place before the big race. This gets me just as excited as the Brecons – the chance to run with elite soldiers on selection would be an amazing experience!

To close this post, I guess it is worth reminding myself that if you aren’t moving forward, you’re not even standing still – you’re going backwards…I want to move forward at some pace...

Turning off the Critical Voice Part 2

Since my previous blog post I have been developing this idea still further, road testing ideas, and putting it into real world contexts of both hypnotherapy and street. This morning for example I utilised the methodology to remove a client’s phobia of spiders, and then her fear of confined spaces, all in about 10 minutes including repeated testing. Along the way I may have used a new approach to phobias?

To simplify, I removed the critical voice that believed she had a phobia of spiders. I did so linguistically, rather than the process in my previous blog. Whilst this voice was suspended I had her exposed (ethically) to spiders. She was fine. I then allowed the voice to return and left her with a state of confusion. She knew that she had just been nicely with a spider, reacting neutrally, and yet she also knew she had a phobia of spiders – a quick piece of linguistic guidance to make a choice between her reactions, and she decided to be neutral, and was again successfully exposed to the spiders to embed the new response.

I then repeated the same with the fear of confined spaces, again successfully.

It is important to note that just removing the critical voice IS NOT enough to make the changes stick. To do that the exposure is necessary, so they have the new experience. I don’t want my clients relying on faith that it will work – I want them to have the absolute belief based on real world tangible experience. The removal of the critical voice just allowed this to be possible.

(For reference, the phobia of spiders was not anticipatory, so my first tool of choice would previously have been the FPC. The fear of confined spaces was anticipatory, so I would have used Nick Kemp’s excellent voice tempo process. I just decided to do some real world testing of my current line of thinking.)

I had seen this client at her place of work, and I gave a few HWT card and hand sticks to her colleagues as a warm up for what was to come afterwards. I wanted to continue to play with the idea of just removing the voice responsible for reality and just suggest a new reality directly.

I popped into a sports shop on the way back to my truck to test my ideas in a real world situation. Again, I don’t want to rely on faith that these new thoughts would work – I want belief based on tangible evidence.

I asked a shop worker if he was willing to experience a mind trick that was really cool, got his agreement, got him to place his hand flat on the wall, and asked “what do you think if I told you your hand was stuck to the wall?” I quickly then elicited his critical voice which was responsible for that reality, turned it off, told him his hand was stuck fast and this he could believe, now, and got a perfect hand stick. From here I could have used James Tripp’s hypnotic loop and ramped up the phenomena, but was too excited!

I’m going to continue to play with it in a street setting, to see what works and what doesn’t, continuing to test and explore. I hope the readers who are hypnotists will also do so. And I will also continue to explore in my hypnotherapy setting, as my clients can only benefit from the results.

Now, I’m not a stage hypnotist, yet if I was, I can already see a few really good applications for this methodology. To start with, how about removing the critical voice which blocks entry into hypnosis? And then removing the critical voice responsible for holding back inhibitions, allowing the subjects to be more extroverts? And then removing the critical voice that is responsible for that subject’s link with reality? I’ve already been using this linguistically, and I’m sure it won’t take someone long to work out how to bring it into their stage patter. Imagine having nearly the whole audience as possible good subjects, or even using the whole audience as a subject unified as one? In my mind I’m seeing some massive changes to stage hypnosis as a result of this, shaking off the old tried and tested for something new and fresh. Combine this with AIM and HWT and you may just be bringing something new, and much needed, to the show.

As before, if as readers you are a hypnotist, please go out and play with the ideas presented here. Let me know your thoughts, ideas, questions, developments – pop me an email to gary@garyturner.co.uk. You can’t patent an idea like this – taking methodologies that have been around for decades and applying them in a new direction – so let’s get our knowledge out there, and all of us become better hypnotists.

Turning Off The Critical Voice

This post will be of interest to all hypnotists. I believe I am utilising a methodology that I can’t find reference to anyone doing before. This methodology completely removes the major blockage to hypnosis and phenomena produced – the critical voice. I have kept the descriptions and explanations simple and generalised.

With hypnosis, especially with more classical work (and I am not referring to relaxatherapy or scriptosis, both of which I don’t think use hypnosis), attempts are commonly carried out to quieten the critical voice. Eye fixation is the usual, often combined with confusion methods to occupy any critical voice which is left.

In Anthony Jacquin and Kev Sheldrakes’ Automatic Imagination Model (AIM) attempts are made to imagine the critical voice away, and imagine it happening automatically. On the rare times when AIM has failed for me, it has not been possible for my subject to imagine this happening automatically, and the voice remains to spoil the fun, preventing the client from having the required experience.

In James Tripp’s Hypnosis Without Trance (HWT) the hypnotic loop is set, building belief, which when in place becomes its own feedback loop deepening the effect of the phenomena, supported usually by eye fixation and occupying the subject’s mind with continued instructions. Yet again, here, on the rare times when I have failed with this methodology, it is usually because the critical voice pops up.

I also find that when talking to subjects who do not enter more classical methodologies of hypnosis, the blockage is the critical voice. This is often the case with those who are highly analytical, those who think very fast, the ones who are always questioning their reality.

The critical voice, that internal self-talk of the client, always seems to be the saboteur.

We all have self-talk (“we all hear voices in our head, apart from psychiatrists and dead people, and we try and avoid those” to misquote the ever humorous Andy Austin), and all self-talk voices are elements of the multiplicity of personality, whether minor or major (see ‘Multiplicity’ by Rita Carter), often referred to in the metaphor of a ‘part’ in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. The critical voice is the self-talk that a client has which keeps his hold on reality, the one which holds them back from automatic imagination – hypnosis.

 So I decided to turn the critical voices completely off.

To do this I already knew a good methodology, courtesy of studying the works of Andrew T Austin, and turn negative voices off almost every hypnotherapy client session. I normally turn off the negative voices, the ones which are the saboteurs, the ones calling for bad food, the ones saying “go on, just have a cigarette” and so forth. I find the methodology incredibly effective.

 Here is the methodology: (Credit here must go to Andrew T Austin – I learn so much from every one of his products and trainings)

1. “Can you hear that voice? Find that negative voice and let me know when you can hear it.” (Elicit the voice, that ‘part’ of the “subject’s personality.)


2. “What would that voice look like if you could see it?” (Changes the submodalities from auditory to visual.)

3. “Where would that voice be if it were in the room?” (Again changes the submodalities and also dissociates, the voice is no longer part of them.)

4. “Get some black duct tape, and in your mind, tape the mouth closed so tightly that you can’t hear it.” (Mentally shutting off the voice.)

5. Tell it “ok, I’ve heard, yet you’re not helping, so now’s the time to just be quiet, and relax.” (This is what I would do for a negative or problem voice, and normally the person relaxes with the voice too, therefore getting a somatic reaction – after all this voice is an element of them – for the purposes of what follows I’ve been putting it so far behind them they can’t even see it)

This methodology has never failed (for me) to turn off a voice, and therefore an element of personality can be shut down. Knowing how and why it works I’m doing it linguistically too, putting it into conversation, which could sit better with street hypnosis or stage hypnosis for example.

In testing I used the AIM with a simple hand stick:

“Imagine your hand becoming stuck, stuck fast to the table. Imagine it become stuck automatically so much that even if you wanted to pull it away it would just stick tighter and tighter the more you tried. Now try and lift your hand…”

Sometimes even this simplified version of AIM gets a secure hand stick, often much to my surprise!

Yet when it comes free and I ask for feedback I usually get “I knew I could lift it if I wanted to.” I then get creative to elicit the voice. Conversations in this respect are usually simple though, and generally go:
Me: “How did you know you could lift it?”
Subject: “I just knew.”
Me: “How?”
Subject: “I just told myself I could lift it…”

And there we have the critical voice. And then I promptly turn off.

Since starting with this methodology I have had zero failings with getting hypnosis (automatic perception changes, automatic ‘unconscious’ following of suggestions) utilising this methodology of turning off the critical voice. This is with traditional ‘induction’ led hypnosis, waking hypnosis, conversational hypnosis, AIM, and HWT. I’m playing and getting inventive with the applications, and I have messaged and had discussions with some of my leading peers to let them develop and expand this concept further in their own direction.

Hypnosis has stayed still too long. Anthony and Kevin with AIM, and James with HWT, are looking at hypnosis with a critical eye, and stripping back everything unnecessary from it. Jorgen Rassmussen is applying hypnosis in a new direction – provocative hypnosis he calls it. Mavericks like the ‘new kid on the block’ Craig Galvin are already pushing boundaries. I’d like to think that my new application of a technique (taught to me by Andy Austin) is my contribution to moving hypnosis forward.

If you are a hypnotist – please go out and give it a go – I anticipate your hit rates will increase dramatically, leaving you much more confident in your work and having more ‘good’ subjects available. Get creative with the concepts I’ve created, see what you can develop. I’d love to hear how you get on, and developments you create. Please let me know at gary@garyturner.co.uk – and remember, if I can find something new there is more out there – what can you find?