'Spiritual Hypnotherapy' by Holly Holmes-Meredith

The author has the experience of facilitating more than 20,000 hypnotic sessions and runs her own hypnotherapy training school. She follows the non-directive style.


The book is more of a guide for practicing hypnotherapists but could also be useful for those who have some knowledge of hypnotherapy and want to know more. It has 5 chapters. The first 3 chapters explain how hypnotherapy is a spiritual path. Chapter 4 has interviews with five hypnotherapists who trained in her school. Chapter 5 is conclusion.


Holly says that the Taoist concept of ‘going with the flow’ is at the heart of the hypnotherapy process she uses with clients and to teach hypnotherapists. She reckons that these are intrinsically a part of the empowerment and transpersonal style of hypnotherapy, so the therapist follows these even if consciously not aware.


She explains the process through the following ten Taoist principles, with brief examples from her cases:
1. Wu-wei (knowing when to act and when not to act).
2. Trust in Nature as an organic pattern and our unity with it.
3. Accessing Chi and the energy work of Hypnotherapy.
4. Yin/Yang: the balancing and integrating of opposites and the idea that all phenomena contain seeds of their counterparts.
5. Go with the flow. Be like water. Spontaneity and “right response” come from listening to the way things are.
6. Everything is cyclical, transient and changing. The only constant is change.
7. Return to the state of “uncarved wood” or the natural state.
8. Interdependence: all things are a part of a unified field.
9. The Law of Reverse Effect: to change anything, you must first accept it the way it is.
10. Emptiness, non-doing.


Holly’s explanations are crisp and clear, and contain the wisdom gained from her many years of practice and teaching. She brings out many points which are important for a hypnotherapist to remember. Chapter 1 includes a topic on accessing the higher self and a chart that categorizes the differences between the higher self and the egoic consciousness, to enable the client to know which “voices” to listen to while in hypnosis.


In the interviews with hypnotherapists, they describe how each of them became a therapist and how their lives are evolving spiritually through the practice of hypnotherapy. I am sure readers will resonate with at least one of the accounts if not more.


I read this book twice, underlining important lines and paragraphs in the second reading, for use as a quick reference hand book.


Holly writes in a flowing style - much like the practice she describes - which I found to my liking, and I look forward to read more of her books.

'Spiritual Hypnotherapy' is available for free download at www.ibrt.org.