Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey upcoming events

Integrating Hypnosis into Clinical Practice and Applications (Saturday, September 26, 2026)

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 15:00:00 GMT

The Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey is pleased to offer the next in the series of conversations based on the book, Introduction to Clinical Hypnosis: the basics and beyond, edited by Dr. Gary Elkins.

Join us on Saturday, September 26, 2026 as we welcome Ciara Christensen, Ph.D. and Aaron Finley, Psy.D. presenting "Integrating Hypnosis into Clinical Practice and Applications.”

This program will be held virtually on Zoom from 11AM to 1PM EDT.
The Clinical Conversations are free to members of ASCH, its component sections, SCEH, ESH, and ISH. There is a $15 fee for nonmembers. All proceeds go to fund the Stephen R. Lankton Scholarship Award.

This program has been approved by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Standards ofTraining Committee for 2 CE credits to be used toward Membership and Certification requirements. (See additional information below.)

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

This two-hour workshop offers a practical and engaging overview of the research supporting clinical hypnosis as an evidence-based intervention across a range of clinical concerns. We will discuss clinical hypnosis, highlight representative research demonstrating its efficacy, and explore how hypnotic techniques can be thoughtfully integrated with established therapeutic approaches. Drawing on research, clinical examples, and interactive discussion, participants will consider how hypnosis can expand the therapeutic toolkit and support meaningful clinical change. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of both the evidence for clinical hypnosis and its potential applications across diverse practice settings.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the conclusion of this program, participants will be able to:

1. Describe at least three findings from the research literature demonstrating how the integration of hypnotic interventions can improve treatment outcomes across clinical conditions.

2. Describe at least three therapeutic approaches with which hypnotic interventions can be integrated to enhance clinical treatment.

AGENDA

11:00 - 11:10 am: Opening: What Makes Hypnosis Clinically Useful?

11:10 – 11:40 am: Medical and Psychophysiological Applications

Pain and headache: Review hypnosis as analgesic intervention, direct suggestions for analgesia, and adjunctive value with medication or other care.
Fibromyalgia: Review hypnosis for chronic pain and central sensitization example, highlighting sleep quality, catastrophizing, stress management, and quality-of-life outcomes.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Use as the primary gut-brain interaction example; discuss Gut Directed Hypnotherapy as one of the evidence-based psychological treatments alongside CBT.
Asthma and hypertension: Review hypnosis for autonomic and psychophysiological regulation examples, linking to relaxation, parasympathetic tone, symptom perception, and self-management.
Autoimmune disorders and skin disorders: Review hypnosis as adjunctive mind-body applications, with emphasis on symptom management, flare-up remission, coping, and quality of life.
Menopause: Review hypnosis especially for hot flashes, imagery, cooling suggestions, and alternatives when hormone replacement therapy is not preferred or available.

11:40 – 12:10 pm: Clinical and Behavioral Health Applications

Anxiety and stress: Review hypnosis for physical symptoms and psychological symptoms; emphasize CBT plus hypnosis, relaxation, self-hypnosis, and self-efficacy.
Depression: Discuss hypnosis as an adjunctive treatment that supports coping, reframing, positive orientation, self-image, and hope, including Cognitive Hypnotherapy.
PTSD: Review hypnosis for anxiety and depression, dissociation, arousal regulation, safe remembering, and integration.
Addiction and relapse prevention: Review hypnosis for behavioral-change, emphasizing altered states, stages of change, self-efficacy, abstinence support, and relapse prevention.
Eating disorders and obesity/weight loss: Review hypnosis for self-regulation and behavioral-change examples, while clearly distinguishing eating disorders from weight-management interventions.
Sleep difficulties and disturbances: Review hypnosis for sleep; connects to anxiety, depression, pain, trauma, and overall functioning.

12:10 – 12:25 pm: Procedure-Specific and Specialty Applications

Pre-surgery: Review hypnosis for procedural preparation, emphasizing reduction of
Dentistry: Review hypnosis for anxiety reduction, pain management, rapid inductions, local anesthesia support, and patient cooperation.
Conversion disorders / functional neurological disorder: Review hypnosis for specialized clinical application with careful assessment, personalization, and attention to therapeutic context.

12:25 – 12:37 pm: Strengthening, Performance, and Integration

Ego strengthening: Review hypnosis for link across the presentation because many conditions involve self-efficacy, resilience, coping, and confidence.
Sports performance: Review hypnosis for focus, activation, mental rehearsal, and performance enhancement.

12:37 – 1:00 pm: Questions, Wrap-Up

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Ciara Christensen, PhD, is a licensed psychologist who earned her doctorate from Washington State University in 2012. She is PSYPACT authorized and has worked across hospital-based and private practice settings. Dr. Christensen has held several leadership roles in the field of clinical hypnosis, serving as President of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (SCEH) and as President of the American Psychological Association’s Division 30, Society of Psychological Hypnosis. Her work in hypnosis spans research, education, and clinical practice, with publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations and workshops delivered nationally and internationally.

Aaron Finley, Psy.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles, where he maintains a clinical practice. He earned his doctoral degree from Baylor University, completing his research training within the Mind-Body Medicine Research Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Gary Elkins. Dr. Finley’s research interests explore the intersection of psychological flow states and their application to clinical and quality-of-life contexts. His scholarly work has focused on the efficacy of hypnosis in managing vasomotor symptoms in post-treatment cancer survivors and menopausal women, enhancing sleep quality among caregivers of individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and investigating pathways to post-traumatic growth.

This program has been approved by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Standards of Training Committee to be used toward Membership and Certification requirements: 2 credits

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. 10/1/2021 to 9/30/2027. Provider ID#217022

Unraveling Problems Hypnotically: Utilization, Avolitional Agency, and Therapeutic Change (Saturday, January 23, 2027)

Sat, 23 Jan 2027 14:00:00 GMT

Unraveling Problems Hypnotically:

Utilization, Avolitional Agency, and Therapeutic Change

The Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey is pleased to welcome Douglas Flemons, Ph.D., LMFT for our Advanced Workshop. Dr. Flemons will lay out the foundational principles of an acceptance-based, non-adversarial approach to clinical hypnosis and therapeutic change.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Social Workers, Psychologists, Mental Health Counselors, Graduate Students (with a letter from their university), Marriage and Family Therapists, Physicians, Nurses and Dentists practicing within the scope of their license.

Students and non-licensed professionals are required to submit proof of their status and supervisor.

KNOWLEDGE/SKILL LEVEL OF PARTICIPANTS: Previous hypnosis training is recommended but not required.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Douglas Flemons, PhD, is an emeritus professor of family therapy and the author of several books, including two on hypnosis—Of One Mind (Norton, 2002) and The Heart and Mind of Hypnotherapy (Norton, 2022). His most recent book is Empathic Engagement in Clinical Practice (APA, 2026). Douglas is an advisory editor for the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, which, in 2021, awarded him the Milton H. Erickson Award for Scientific Excellence in Writing on Clinical Hypnosis for his article, “Toward a Relational Theory of Hypnosis.” He presents nationally and internationally on hypnosis, empathy, brief therapy, and suicide assessment. And, since 1993, he has offered an (almost) annual Florida-Board-approved 50-hour hypnosis intensive, Inviting Connection, Inventing Change. Douglas and his wife live in North Carolina, co-directing their private practice and training institute, Context Consultants.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Clients typically contact a clinical hypnotist when they’re caught in the grip of a vexing mind-body problem. No longer able to manage it on their own, they come to us with the hope and expectation that we will help them wrest control from it, or perhaps, once and for all, even conquer it. This appeal for a competitive advantage against what clients perceive as a malicious Other creates an interesting challenge for us. Hypnosis and hypnotherapeutic change embody the logic of mind-body cooperation, not competition, the logic of mind-body connection, not contention. Our capacity to make a difference rests on our ability to invite clients into a synergistic relationship with us and with their own experience. Hypnosis is a context not for defending against and vanquishing a perceived enemy, but for collaborative learning and change.

This workshop will lay out the foundational principles of an acceptance-based, non-adversarial approach to clinical hypnosis and therapeutic change. We’ll explore and experiment with utilizing internal and external impediments to hypnosis, rather than trying to block or overcome them. And we’ll make sense of the seemingly paradoxical notion of avolitional agency as a defining quality of hypnotic experience and the non-purposive unraveling of mind-body problems. Consider this an invitation to a day of rethinking assumptions and discovering possibilities, with opportunities for you to engage, ask questions, and experiment.

COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to—

1. distinguish between disjunctive and conjunctive approaches to problem resolution.

2. state two similarities between hypnotic and meditative experience.

3. define hypnosis as a flow experience.

4. describe the role of prediction and expectancy in symptoms, placebos, nocebos, and hypnotic experience.

5. articulate a utilization approach to hypnosis.

6. specify the guiding principle of improvisation in utilization.

7. identify the role of avolitional agency in hypnotic and hypnotherapeutic experience.

TIMED AGENDA (6 hours of Education/Instruction)

9:00 – 10:30

The Self-Referential Knotting of Mind-Body Problems

• Mind-body disjunction in Western thought and medicine

• Mind-body conjunction in Eastern practice and in hypnosis and hypnotherapy

• The infusion and influence of language in conscious awareness and the self-conscious monitoring of experience

• Prediction in the construction of perception

• Expectancy: placebos, nocebos, and hypnosis

• The self-referential knotting of mind-body problems

10:30 – 10:45 Break

10:45 – 12:00

From Contention to Connection: Hypnosis, Flow, and Avolitional Agency

• Judgment: the entrenchment of disjunctive self-other differences

• Acknowledgment: the establishment of conjunctive self-other differences

• Absorption and flow: the facilitation of self-other indifferences (being of one mind)

• Embodied minds and mindful bodies

• Hypnosis:

o shifting clients from contention/control to cooperation/coordination

o indifferentiating the boundaries of clients’ circumscribed volitional self

• Avolitional agency: self-less (and thus also other-less) engagement

12:00 – 1:00 Lunch

1:00 – 2:30

Utilization in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy

• Ericksonian utilization as an orientation to practice

• Distilling and incorporating clients’ skills and resources

• The key rule of improv: Yes, And

• Getting in sync with being out of sync

• The logic of inclusion: treating—

o resistance as cooperation

o disruptions as contributions

o hindrances as advantages

o impediments as expediments

2:30 – 2:45 Break

2:45 – 4:30

Unraveling Problems Hypnotically

• Fashioning treatable problem definitions

• Intravening rather than intervening

• Collaborative intravention with disjunctive mind-body problems

• Transmuting clients’ helplessness into avolitional agency

• Hypnotically altering the patterns, meaning, and defining boundaries of mind-body problems

• Inviting avolitional emulation

• Undertaking collaborative mind-body experiments

Extemporaneously incorporating client responses

CERTIFICATES OF ATTENDANCE

CHSNJ Certificates of attendance are included in the cost of the workshop. Certificates of attendance will be emailed to professionals who attend the entire program, provide their license number, and return the CHSNJ program evaluation. The CHSNJ certificate provides information about continuing education credits and approvals.

CANCELLATION POLICY:

A full tuition refund, less a $50 fee, will be made for cancellations up to 14 days prior to the workshop. After that, there is no reimbursement.

COMPLAINTS AND GRIEVANCES

All grievances must be in writing to chsnj1986@gmail.com. A reply will come within 5 business days.

"New Jersey social workers not pleased with a grievance resolution provided by the Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey may appeal to the approving entity or their jurisdictional board."