Our clients come to us for their own personal happily ever after as they overcome obstacles and make change in their lives. They want to experience results in their everyday lives, and they usually want results quickly. Almost as important, they want results that are long lasting. Utilizing powerful age progression techniques, the 5PATH hypnotist is able to help his or her clients create the expectation that they have the ability to achieve their goals quickly and permanently in every session. In this article I will discuss ways that you can create an expectation of ongoing change and growth within your client, maximizing their confidence and ability to achieve their goals in both the short and long term. These tools and techniques are based on my study of 5-PATH, both in class and additional materials, such as the Hypnosis, Etc Podcast and the BOLSM CD’s, and are combined with the work that I have done with my clients over the years.
I do my best to employ Age Progression in every session with my clients, especially after utilizing age regression and forgiveness work. I have a few transition phrases that I use, such as “now that you’ve cleared away the past, let’s talk about the future that you are creating for yourself. In a moment, I’m going to count from 1-5…” and I introduce a time or place in the future for them to progress to. In order to determine the “when” for them to progress to, I try to come up with real life situations that are coming in the near future and beyond: opportunities to test their change and growth before their next session, a few weeks down the road, gradually building up to several months into the future. Performing age progression in this manner helps the hypnotist evaluate the client’s anticipated success. How the client does in age progression will indicate to the hypnotist how well the client believes in his or her potential to actually make the change.
Regular use of age progression in this manner also gives the hypnotist and the client the opportunity to verify actual results. How the client actually does between sessions, especially in situations they experienced in age progression in the last session, will give them the confidence to expect ongoing success. This makes each session more effective in producing desired results.
In addition to creating an anticipation of success and confidence, these age progression techniques create the opportunity to have the client coach themselves, encouraging themselves to follow through on their growth in between sessions and after the sessions are complete. I like to do this by making sure that we have progressed far enough into the future that the client has achieved and maintained their goals, often several months into the future. I will then ask future self to give the client a few words of encouragement so that they can get to that future self and achieve their goals. This ends up working very similarly to informed child work, but it is usually much more punctuated- short and to the point! At this point, their wise future self gets placed inside of their minds to support and guide them along the way.
An effective way to further maximize your age progression work is to progress to regularly occurring events in the client’s life, especially ones that take place on an annual basis. I personally experienced this phenomena when I had 5-PATH sessions myself several years ago. During these sessions, it was tax time, and I had a lot of nervousness about being self employed that was specifically centered around paying my taxes. Thanks to my sessions, not only did I do well with this while I was in the middle of my sessions, when the time came time to do my taxes a whole year later, I had a bit of a déjàvu, and a big “I’ve changed because now I know” moment. It felt great to see how I had come full circle a whole year later, noticing how good I felt. I have experienced that effect with a few other annual events since that time, and it felt so empowering to notice for myself that I had truly made the change, and that I could expect ongoing success in achieving my goals.
It is easy to incorporate annual events into your sessions. I regularly incorporate the client’s birthday into my age progression work, along with varying holidays. I especially enjoy working with the energy of the new year, and for students and teachers, I might incorporate the new school year and end of the school year as well. For clients that you are working on confidence at work, you might want to incorporate their annual review or other significant annual work event. Selecting “when” in your age progression work gives you the opportunity to be flexible and creative with your clients, focusing on their specific needs.
I hope that this article has helped you think about the value of age progression. I highly recommend incorporating it into every session with your clients, especially utilizing recurring events so that clients can experience their changes for themselves on an ongoing basis.
Are you interested in learning more about Age Progression and working with Annual events in your sessions? I will be presenting at the National Guild of Hypnotists Annual Convention to discuss these topics.
Session 11042: Age Progression Friday, August 9 at 4pm
Session 22114: Achieving your goals in your personal new year! Saturday, August 10 from 11am-1pm
