ASCH Webinar: Spiritual Dimensions in Hypnosis

Every client comes to therapy with a set of personal beliefs, experiences, and biases, including those about the concept and nature of spirituality. This webinar will include case examples, experiential exercises, and discussions designed to explore how hypnosis methodologies can be utilized to elicit transformative spiritual experience aligned with the unconscious, intuitive wisdom within.

An innovative, process-oriented, non-linear approach, the USE-IT model highlights the core Ericksonian competencies of tailoring and utilization, along with other hypnosis methodologies for eliciting realizations that transcend the individual’s ordinary conscious thinking.

When perceived as spiritual, the intuitive power within can become motivational and transcendent, providing access to transformative resources that can be integrated into the client’s psychic schema.

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Five Phenomenological Features of USE-IT

Utilize:
Understanding the client’s views about spirituality, while applying the concept of Client/Self/Circumstances, and utilizing the methodology of hypnosis creates limitless potential for eliciting recognition of transcendent/transformative resources.

Synchronize:
Tailoring the trance and the therapy to the client’s ecology involves strategic use of both the client’s and the clinicians’ intuitively elicited allegorical themes (metaphor, simile, stories, imagery) with intuitively meaningful references related to the client’s desired goals.

Elicit:
New revelations of unrecognized resources elicited from the unconscious/intuitive/spiritual dimension via hypnosis provide motivation, strength, and tools for problem-solving, reframing cognitive distortions, and healing, within the phenomenology of various conditions, including trauma sequelae and the process of grieving. (The case of Jean’s mother)

Integrate:
Intuitive resources and realizations ratified as spiritual by the client become perceptions and reference experiences of inner wisdom that can become absorbed into the client’s psychic schema and anchored as implicit shifts in the limbic system.

Transform:
Transformed shifts in thinking, feeling, and coping create a renewed belief in self-efficacy and capacity. The realization of intuitive power within can become a spiritual guidance system that informs the client’s ongoing lived experience.

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Learning Objectives

1. Name the phenomenological features of the USE-It Model.
2. Describe one operational detail of each feature of the USE-IT Model.
3. Explain the way the core competencies of Tailoring and Utilization are conceptually and operationally relevant to evoking a client’s felt-sense of a Spiritual experience in Hypnosis.
4. Given an individual client, create & demonstrate an intervention or an exercise that incorporates hypnosis methodology and the client’s beliefs about spirituality to evoke an experiential moment.

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References

Accaria, Philip, Dr., Ph.D., FASCH, An Introduction to Energy Medicine: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Day Solutions

Berne, Eric, Intuition and Ego States, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977.

Freedson, Bette, Other Realms, Other Ways: A Clinician’s Guide to the Magick of Intuition, iantella books, 2021.

Freedson, Bette, PassageWays: Everyday Adventures into the Paranormal, iantella books, 2021.

Cameron Alldredge Profile: Baylor University directory page psychologyneuroscience.artsandsciences.baylor.edu

Marks-Tarlow, Terry, Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Embodied Response, Norton, 2012.

Simonton, O. Carl, M.D., Getting Well Again, Bantam Books, 1992.

Miller, Scott, and Hubble, Mark, “How Psychotherapy Lost Its Magick,” Psychotherapy Networker, 2017.
https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/1077/how-psychotherapy-lost-its-magick

Vozza, Stephanie, “How to tap into your intuition to predict the future more effectively,” Fast Company, 2-13-2024.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91023740/how-to-tap-into-your-intuition-to-predict-the-future-more-effectively

Zeig, Jeffrey K., PhD, The Induction of Hypnosis: An Ericksonian Elicitation Approach, The Milton Erickson Foundation Press, 2014.

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Presenter

Bette Freedson, LCSW, LICSW, CGP
📧 bjfreedson@gmail.com

North Carolina Society of Clinical Hypnosis Board member, Bette Freedson, LCSW, LICSW, CGP is an ASCH Approved ‎Consultant, and an author and speaker. Bette’s most recent book is Passageways: Everyday Adventures into the ‎Paranormal. She is also the author of Other Realms, Other Ways: A Clinician’s Guide to the Magick of Intuition, and Soul ‎Mothers’ Wisdom: Seven Insights for the Single Mother. Bette is also a contributing author to ERICKSONIAN THERAPY ‎NOW: The Master Class with Jeffrey K. Zeig, PhD.

Professionally trained in hypnosis, Bette incorporates Ericksonian hypnosis along with the power of intuition into her ‎clinical social work practice, her teaching, and her writing.

An approved consultant of the American Academy of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH), with roots in public education both as a ‎teacher and as a social worker, Bette incorporates the wisdom of the non-conscious mind into her writing, teaching, and ‎clinical practice, always mindful of tailoring her presentation to the specific learning needs of her audience.

A frequent faculty member for programs of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, Bette has also conducted workshops for ‎The Sweetser Training Institute, ASCH and its components, the National Association of Social Workers, and its ‎components, and the Northeast Society of Group Psychotherapy.

Bette has co-presented a weekend program at Kripalu entitled “A Woman’s Sacred Journey”, and served for two years as a ‎member of the NASW specialty practice section on Children, Adolescents and Young Adults (CAYA).

In 2026, Bette is on the faculty of the 2026 Intensive Training Program of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation. She is teaching “Spiritual Dimensions in Hypnosis” as part of Module 4 – “Mastering Clinical Challenges.”

Bette Freedson’s private seminars on developing intuition, entitled The Psychic Studio, assist members in exploring the ‎nature of intuition and utilizing this innately gifted ability in life.

Bette Freedson, LICSW, LCSW, CGP lives and practices in Southern Maine.

Registration Instructions 

We are currently moving portal systems for a better user experience. You will be able to register with your current ASCH account information soon. The link and directions will be posted here.

Online registration will take you to the ASCH site and require a new account set-up (non-members) or Member login.  If you are an ASCH member enter the email address associated with your ASCH Membership as our UserID; click Forgot Password to set a new password. 

Payments can now be made in a secure online environment.  The system DOES NOT save credit card information once the transaction has been completed and registration submitted. 

Continuing Education Hours 

Online attendance, full engagement and completion of a pre-test, post-test and daily program evaluations are required for a certificate of completion. 

Cancellations 

Cancellations must be made in writing to info@asch.net. No cancellations will be taken by phone. 

Workshop CME & ASCH Continuing Education (CE) Credits 

This program has been approved by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Standards of Training Committee to be used toward Membership and Certification requirements.

The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis-Education and Research Foundation (ASCH-ERF) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis-Education and Research Foundation (ASCH-ERF) designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

This program is Approved by the National Association of Social Workers (886386995-7390) for 2 continuing education contact hours.

This course is approved by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and as such is an approved continuing education course per Florida’s AC-Rule 64B-4-6002 American Society of Clinical Hypnosis-ERF is designated as an Approved PACE Program Provider.

The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Education & Research Foundation Nationally Approved PACE Program Provider for FAGD/MAGD credit.  Approval does not imply acceptance by any regulatory authority or AGD endorsement. 10/1/2024 to 9/30/2027.  Provider ID#217022