Welcome to the National Council For Hypnotherapy Podcast, where we dive into the fascinating world of hypnosis, lifting the lid on hypnotherapy, sharing insights and tips for change as we chat. So sit back, relax, and enjoy all the wonderful possibilities of hypnotherapy. My name is Tracey Grist, and I will be your host today. Hello. I'm here with Trevor Sylvester, cofounder with Becks, his wife, of the Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Quest Institute. Trevor's author of 6 books. And trains you still training? Yes.

Yeah. The Quest Institute is, is thriving, still gonna run 1 course a year.

Yeah. And how how long have you been doing the training for now?

I think this is going to be our 20, what is it? 2024? I think it's our 24th year.

Gosh.

I should find that easy to remember really, shouldn't I? I'm just sexy with numbers. So I have to be careful. But, yeah, 24 years.

So what led you into hypnotherapy, into training, into Quest and cognitive?

Okay. Well, I, I was a police officer, had been, you know, for quite some time. And then I went to Hendon Training School as an instructor. And back then, they had a really good system of training you as a as a as a teacher. So we went through quite an intense period of learning how to teach. And part of that was also coping with a kind of pastoral care because it's an 18 week course, very intense, residential, mainly young people. So they taught us counseling and transactional analysis. And I just got really interested in, you know, why people do what they do.

I mean, as a as a cop, I already was, I suppose. But it just opened doors to me, and I thought it it felt like coming home in a way. So I looked around at how I could learn more about this stuff, and I was limited because I had I was divorced. I have my children every weekend. So there weren't that many places that I could go to learn. So I found this this guy wouldn't be possible NCH, but this is going back, you know, maybe 30 years. Where on a one to one basis, I went down to Kent and he trained me in hypnotherapy and psychotherapy through the NCH back as as it was back then. And it gave me a good grounding in in psychological and psychotherapy principles and theories, but didn't give me an awful lot.

I ended up with 2 scripts, script a and script b. I once said to him, so what happens if script a doesn't doesn't work? And he looked at me like I was an idiot and he said, well, you use script b. And that's the entirety of my preparation. So luckily, I tripped over a neurolinguistic programming, NLP, and went along on a practitioner and then the master practitioner ended up going to California and training as a trainer. And just learned so much about Ericssonian hypnosis and, obviously, all of the brilliant techniques, but also how to really listen to people and realize that the answer to how you work with them comes from them, not from you. So that gave me a good kind of platform to to begin to practice. And I did so for a number of years while I remained in the police. I worked evenings and weekends.

And then when it was my time to leave Hendon, I knew I didn't wanna be a cop anymore. I wanted to be a therapist, and so I made the leap and and jumped. And I practiced for a few years, and then Bex wanted to leave as well. And we said, well, why don't we start a start a school? Thinking how easy can how hard can that be. And so, and so we did. And we launched in 2000. We're top about 10 people. And it's just grown and expanded ever since.

And now we've got 200 over 200 practitioners practicing around the country and some internationally, and, you know, it's it's a kind of a lovely family.

Yeah. Lovely. And so so you've gone down the cognitive hypnotherapy. So there are all different types of hypnotherapy. What what led you towards cognitive?

Okay. I called it cognitive hypnotherapy when we founded the school because I I did as you say, there's lots of different approaches and I wanted to differentiate ours. And what really, I think, made a big difference was I read a book called Trances People Live by Steven Molinsky.

Yeah.