Session 0019 Garry Coles Hypnotherapist on Hypno-Oncology

The Association of Hypno-Oncology Practitioners is the brainchild of Garry Coles who has a great belief in the power of the mind and in particular hypnotherapy and has a passion for using it to empower and assist people going through the cancer journey.
 
 He is dedicated to spreading his experience and knowledge globally to help as many people as possible by training up qualified, professional and ethical Hypno-Oncology practitioners to a high standard.

Hypno-Oncology is an adjunct therapy to assist those going through the cancer journey. It is not a replacement for the treatment or advice given to you by your qualified medical and health professionals.
 
 However, accredited practitioners can assist with the psychological wellbeing and potentially dealing with areas such as treatment side effects of those going through the cancer journey. Please feel free to explore the site and contact us or an accredited practitioner for more information or assistance.

Accredited Hypno-Oncology Practitioners are qualified, experienced  practitioners who have been further highly trained in the latest empirically evidenced approaches and techniques and have passed a rigorous exam. They have also agreed to strict professional accreditation conditions.
 
 You can be assured when consulting with an accredited Hypno-Oncology Practitioner that you will be in safe, ethical, professional hands.
 
 The techniques and approaches used have been researched, developed and tested over many years in academic and hospital oncology settings and have been used successfully with thousands of cancer sufferers.

http://www.hypno-oncology.com

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Transcript

Aidan 

  00:00 - 00:10

This is the professional hypnotherapist podcast, a production of the European association of professional hypnotherapists. That is the EAPH.ie

Aidan 

  00:10 - 01:28

Thank you for joining me today on the professional hypnotherapists podcast. I'm your host Aiden Noon Gary Coles is the director and founder of the association of hypno-oncology practitioners and an international trainer of hypnosis oncology. We hear from Gary as he shares with us, his vast knowledge and experience and working with hypno-oncology clients. Did you know that one on two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime And that one in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and then men one and eight men would be diagnosed with prostate cancer. Gary tells us that have no oncology is an adjunct therapy to assist those going through the cancer journey. It is not a replacement for the treatment or advice given to you by a qualified medical and health professionals. There are many learnings in today's podcast, and I know that you will take away many of those learnings and use them in your own practice and take action so that you can use them in your own life. All on today's professional hypnotherapist podcast.

Aidan 

  01:36 - 02:14

The association of Hypnos oncology practitioners is the brainchild of Gary Coles, who has a great belief in the power of the mind and in particular hypnotherapy and has a passion for using it to empower and assist people going through the cancer journey is dedicated to just spreading his experience and knowledge globally, to help as many people as possible by training qualified professional and ethical hypno-oncology practitioners to a high standard Gary Coles, what a wonderful speciality you have and welcome to the professional hypnotherapists podcast.

Gary

  02:16 - 02:18

Good morning then. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Aidan 

  02:19 - 02:26

Thank you, Gary, and appreciate you being with me today. What got you into first started What got you into hypnotherapy in particular

Gary

  02:27 - 03:24

My hypnotherapy journey was actually a bit of an accident to be honest, as well as the oncology part of it. my, my original, career, I was, I studied maths and computer science and I was an it consultant in the oil industry. And, that ended for various reasons, sort of business acquisitions of various reasons. And I was only in a position where I had a couple of years off, and didn't need to worry about working, but obviously had to get back to some work. and I wanted what I wanted to do next assumed it would be back in the it world, but I wasn't particularly keen on that. the only thing I was keen on is I wanted to do something for myself, for myself. and then, just, sort of looking around at various things of amusing myself over the couple of years, I saw, an advert through, a psychologist, a doctor of psychology, who was doing, introduction to hypnosis and hypnotherapy courses.

Gary

  03:24 - 04:08

I thought that sounds quite fascinating. I'll, I'll, I'll go and have a little look. And, the reason I got into that for me enough was, at the time I'd set up a web store for Christmas, because I needed to make a little bit of money and I was selling books, after Christmas came and went, I thought, well, what do I sell in January and somebody offered me a job lotta, hypnosis CDs for weight loss, quit smoking and stress and things like that. And I was surprised how well they sold. So that sort of peaked an interest again in me. And I had some hypnotherapy books, you know, like you do as a teenager, you go get books and all sorts of subjects. I went back and re-read those. And then I saw this advert for, for this hypnotherapy sort of introduction training, from a psychologist.

Gary

  04:08 - 04:48

And I thought, I'll go along, have a look. my initial thought was, perhaps I could learn, we'd learn something. Perhaps it would be something I could do perhaps part time on, on the side. but I, I must admit I was very skeptical. because I come from a scientific background, I was very skeptical about hypnotherapy and hypnosis generally. And I went along to this introduction. And again, because to me, I felt that I couldn't be hypnotized. I saw other people being able to hypnoties. I felt that I couldn't be, and I was a little bit skeptical by it. and one of the things that happened on the course was the psychologist said, well, I'm going to deal with an issue for everybody. And he approached me and said, what issue would you like me to deal with And I said, well, I haven't really got any issues.

Gary

  04:48 - 05:31

I haven't got any problems. but one thing that I did come up with was since I was a child, I had nightmares many times a week, to the extent that I would wake up punching and kicking and shouting doing that sort of thing. but I'd then turn over and go back to sleep again. So to me it was something normal. It wasn't a problem. but he said, okay, we'll, we'll, we'll do some work on that. we spent an entire afternoon doing various techniques, which to me, I felt didn't work. I didn't feel as though I was hypnotized. he tried the IMR techniques and I didn't signal, he tried to get me to visualize things that to my mind didn't work. So I'm rubbish at visualizing. and we spent this whole afternoon doing, doing this stuff. And, at the end of it, he said, right, how do you feel, what do you think

Gary

  05:31 - 06:09

And I said, well, I said, at a respect, I was keeping my eyes closed. And going along with it out of respect for who you are, because you're very highly qualified and have a good reputation and so on, but I said, I'm still really skeptical about the whole thing. so, so I said, you know, in my eyes, nothing, nothing happened. So I went to, I, sort of a little bit despondent to it. And I was just thinking around a month later, that I suddenly realized I hadn't had a nightmare since. And that sort of was a big realization. And I thought, well, if I, if I was that skeptical and thought nothing had happened, and I know I've not had a nightmare, something obviously has happened that I haven't realized that it's obviously a lot more powerful than I think.

Gary

  06:09 - 06:49

so at that point I decided to go back for proper training with him, and decided that I, again, at that point I was going to set up just part time. but I went back, I, I did some, some training qualified with, him. and then out of the blue, a few weeks later, I had a call from the hospital saying, well, we used to have a hypnotherapist at the hospital. We just understand you've just become qualified. would you like to come and sort of help out the hospital because it's really useful working with cancer patients and, and we'd like somebody to sort of hear, at that point, I must admit I was feeling a little bit Mercery I thought, well, can I set up part time Can I set up full time And I thought I'm recently qualified.

Gary

  06:50 - 07:34

I, I I'm inexperienced. I need experience. So my original thought was all going to the hospital. I'll stay there for a few weeks, get some experience and then disappear. I went into the hospital and initially I was seeing eight patients a day and the hospital was sending me on cancer causes. I got a good background in that very quickly. and, and I never did go after my first few weeks. I'm still there 16 and a half years later. So, so, so that was that side of it. And then, because I, I'm a great believer in sort of going really professional at things, when I had the chance then to study for in the first cohort in the UK for a master's degree in the subject, I did that and, and I did a research project I'm actually based in the cancer arena.

Aidan 

  07:35 - 07:37

Where did you do the master's degree

Gary

  07:38 - 07:39

The university of west London.

Aidan 

  07:39 - 07:54

It's very interesting because, you know, there are not many, academic institutions out there who provide, academic qualifications in a form of academic qualifications and hypnotherapy. That's good to know. No,

Gary

  07:54 - 08:15

It is sadly, I believe, I believe they no longer offer it, because it was done in conjunction with a private company. And I believe there was some monetary issues and copyright issues and various other things. And one of the people from the private company who was leading it passed away, and I believe it's at all fallen apart and is now no longer offered sadly,

Aidan 

  08:15 - 08:40

Well, maybe some other institution may have managed to jump on and actually do something about that. Now you mentioned previously about, you know, your, your, your previous, original working life in terms of being a, a, mathematician or someone who was very left-brained let's say, and, what I be correct in saying you will be quite well left-brained

Gary

  08:40 - 09:18

I would say so. Yeah. I mean, yes, I studied math and computer science originally, and, and I would, I was sorta went through sort of, being a computer programmer and then, a business, an it consultant, so very much so I was very much it, my, my sort of the end of the career, it was in the oil industry and I was sort of if you like software, troubleshooting, so it would be large oil installations, and it was the measurement systems actually for oil Wells and things. and if there were, there was problems or updates need to do, and I would be the troubleshooter. So it was very pressurized job, but also, yes, it was very much very logic based and analytics.

Aidan 

  09:18 - 09:49

I know. Yeah. And then, you know, oftentimes, you know, as hypnotherapists, we do come across clients who are, left-brained quite analystic analytical, and we have to take a different approach. So, so here we are, there you are, as it were, you know, you're, you're going along to this psychologist and you're learning about a hypnotherapy, and yet, you know, you had to, at some stage allow the right brain into, you know, take over and allow something to happen. How did you manage that

Gary

  09:50 - 10:19

To be honest, I don't know, just, it just seemed that it was one of those things that just happened. And that's what convinced me that there was obviously something in this and again, but, you know, with the left brain side of it, that, that, that's when I took a decision, obviously to do the master's degree and, you know, do everything scientifically. So, so although yes, it is sort of right. Brain, although, so saying that I guess the bright right. Brain stuff, I I'm, I quite like art and, and as a hobby, I play music. So th there's an artistic side to

Aidan 

  10:19 - 10:22

Me. Yeah.

Gary

  10:23 - 10:29

But, but certainly even with, hypnotherapy, I do come at, come at it from more of a scientific angle.

Aidan 

  10:29 - 10:56

Yeah. And that's, w we've touched on that in terms of the, of the research base on which you, you do operate, your work on, and the the whole area, Gary of, you know, hypno oncology, it's a very sensitive area. It's something that's close for, you know, great sensitivity, great, empathy. Would you speak to that for a moment, please

Gary

  10:57 - 11:48

Yeah, it, does, greatly, because obviously people just hear the word cancer. It's a very emotive word. It strikes fear and panic into a lot of straight away. so, so there is that side of it. and obviously, from my point of view, I deal with people through the entire journey. So if you like from day one, which is the diagnosis, which obviously can be a very fearful panic stricken time, then through the whole journey from sort of a treatment, whatever treatment they have, whether that's surgical chemotherapy, radiotherapy, you know, or other, other types of therapies such as immunotherapy and targeted therapies, and so on hormonal therapies, and then coming out the other side, hopefully that that's the best option, obviously coming out the other side. So they go back to full recovery.

Gary

  11:49 - 12:37

Obviously we work on other sides of things, sadly where it's palliative care. and also sadly we do lose people quite, quite a lot. So we have to go through that area. Perhaps I don't get involved too much in the very end of life care. because here in this area where we are, we have a very good, sort of set up for that. Anyway. we have a, a very good sort of a couple of places that are very good friend of life care, so that isn't really carried out at the hospital. so that, that would go to sort of specialists outside the hospital. But again, we do deal with some of that, and obviously that the carers, the relatives, the people left behind who, who you also need to not forget, because that, they're an integral part of the, of the cancer person's journey.

Aidan 

  12:38 - 12:45

It seems that those are perhaps to use an expression there's a multidisciplinary approach, to, to the care of the patient.

Gary

  12:47 - 13:32

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and certainly the hospital where I work. Okay. Yes, I'm there as the resident hypnotherapists. but the, the unit there offers a lot of complimentary therapists, in different sort of, spheres, of work, because it, interestingly enough, in the Western world, that we've one of the things that was carried out in Sage research shows that certainly in the UK and in the U S 40% of cancer patients will seek out some sort of complimentary or alternative therapy. And in countries like Australia, it's, it's up to 60 and 70%. And so, so, so if you think that's 40% in this country, that's 20% of the population, because one in two people actually will be affected by cancer. So theoretically 20% of the population could be looking for your services as a hypnotherapist when they're going through that journey.

Aidan 

  13:33 - 14:03

And, you know, that the whole area of Orthodox medicine, you know, because in your situation there, you, you say you've been at this hospital for 16 plus years working alongside a Orthodox medicine, generally speaking, what is your impression of how the Orthodox orthodoxy as we want to call it, that accepts our, receives our works in conjunction with the alternatives that are available are complimentary, so that are available.

Gary

  14:04 - 14:57

Yeah, they are becoming more and more on side. I don't think we help ourselves in some ways, because obviously as we know, hypnotherapy is not regulated and there are some very short courses and people making all sorts of wild accusations. I see people advertising online that they can cure cancer with hypnotherapy and all sorts of, you know, meaningless statements, which unfortunately means that we're not taken seriously. but generally they are becoming more acceptable. when I started in the hospital, when I did my research, I became, embedded into the breast cancer multidisciplinary surgery team for a year. when I became involved in the team, some were quite anti. We had a professor there who was, it was, let's say mature, in IAG, he was one of the leads. And so to him, what I was offering was quackery.

Gary

  14:57 - 15:44

He wasn't particularly interested, but we, we had other people, we had another surgeon on the team who, when he was being taught to be a surgeon, he, he actually attended, an operation that was done under hypnotherapy, rather than anesthetic. So he was very onside because he could see the power of it. I, the, the person I had to get my research passed for approval was the teaching surgeon. And, and I went through all the ethics side of things, which was quite difficult. and then they said, right, the final hurdle is you've got to sell this to the, the teaching surgeon. She says, yes. Then you're on the side. It's happening. If she says, no, then that's it. It's not happening. I had a very brief meeting with her and I got the impression that, her attitude was, I'm a famous teaching surgeon, why you wasting my time.

Gary

  15:44 - 16:40

but looking back on it, I think she was just trying to see how serious I was about my research and what I was offering. she gave me a really hard time, a lot of difficult questions, which I sort of thought I did okay. At, and at the end of the meeting, she come back and said, yeah, okay, we'll do this. We'll do do the research. I'll approve it. We can do it. which I thought that was great. And, and what I thought was fascinating was after I'd started doing the research after a few months, she actually came to me one morning and she said, well, now, now we, we know the sort of people that are going to respond and the sort of people that are going to be good for your research. And she said, once, once we've picked them, she said, if you want me to change my elective list around to accommodate the maximum amount you can see and what you do, just let me know and I'll do that. And I thought that was absolutely amazing going from somebody who I got the impression was quite anti to actually now willing to move their elective surgery list around to accommodate my work. So I thought that that was brilliant.

Aidan 

  16:40 - 16:51

Yeah. That's, that's, that's excellent because what, it actually has shown that she definitely accepted that this is, you know, what you say it is it's effective.

Gary

  16:52 - 16:53

Yeah, absolutely.

Aidan 

  16:53 - 17:16

Yeah, no. in terms of, say, for example, a patient who was presented with what's the diagnosis that they have a cancer, maybe nonspecific, maybe could you chart for us perhaps a, you know, an approach that you would take if that's possible from that, from the start

Gary

  17:17 - 18:15

Yeah. I mean, I would say that the approach is different for, for what they're coming to see me for, each time there isn't a one size fits all. And the, and, and it's interesting though, I think one of the, one of the most common questions I'm asked by hypnotherapists, and in fact, it's one of the reasons I put the course together initially was I had so many people contacting me. Hypnotherapists were very well quantified, very experienced, and they were suddenly faced by somebody in their family or a close friend that had been diagnosed. And the question was always, what can I do to help you know, so all their training and expertise sort of fell out the window really. because they, they felt equally hopeless and it was always what, what can I do to help and it sounds a bit of a, a trite answer, but my standard answer is what would the patient like you to help them with, you know, don't, don't impose what you think they want help with them, ask them what they want help with and work with that.

Gary

  18:15 - 19:01

So that, that is the first thing. and so be guided by the patient all the time. So if I've got somebody that comes to me, it depends what they want to achieve at that time. You know, if it's on the day of the diagnosis, they might be having a panic attack or an anxiety attack, in which case, we would use very fast interventions to stabilize them. they might be coming to me sort of later on in the journey. So they might be coming for pain control, for example, they may be coming to me because they have a side effect of one of the treatments they're having. so we would deal with that. it may be sort of pre and post-surgery work. So, you know, everybody is different, so it's really, it's not a one sort of approach fits all. It's what, what is that patient presenting for And then what do they want to achieve and then put a plan together to assist them

Aidan 

  19:02 - 19:18

Yeah, that, that's, that's, I think that's an excellent way of putting it because, you know, everybody's different, everybody has different needs and wants, and basically, you know, you're there to assist the client as aware and them achieving what they want to achieve.

Gary

  19:20 - 19:55

yeah. absolutely. no, obviously I have specific protocols, that I find them all useful. if you, like, obviously having, having had that amount of experience, I've, I've worked with several thousand cancer patients. and obviously the hospitals sent me on lots of courses as well. I've done my own research. So I won't be saying, because I have that background, a lot of knowledge, I know what works, what doesn't work and what approaches are deemed most suitable. So if you, like, I've got sort of protocols put together and in some cases, scripts, and so on that I would tend to use, but obviously they are, everything is geared to the individual.

Aidan 

  19:56 - 20:23

I already sort of bespoke with the client. Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of the research, that, that you have studied and that you've come across, it was that one particular piece of research that, you know, really, you know, struck you as it were strikes structure, that this is so, so important or so, evidential that it, that it's something that needs to be brought to everybody's attention.

Gary

  20:24 - 21:30

in some ways I would say the opposite. I was quite astounded that there is a lot of research out there, for the use of hypnosis and hypnotherapy with cancer patients. And there's some very effective, sort of protocols and studies that have been done, particularly, in the states. there has been a lot of stuff out there. I know it, Sinai university, for example, Sinai hospital, sorry, in, in, in New York, that there's, a lot of research being done, particularly with breast cancer patients. but it was, it was the limitations that I found were quite astounding. a couple of things that I found, and, and I'm not going to mention the particular research or something I'm going to say, but it's somebody who's very well known for doing hypnosis breast cancer research. but my original plan, was I'd looked at his research in depth and thought that actually I would like to base my research on his and see how much further we can take it.

Gary

  21:31 - 22:22

and I spent a lot of time chasing him up, trying to get hold of him, because I wanted to sort of, you know, his induction scripts and various other things so that I could actually reproduce what he would have done and move it further. eventually I, I finally got hold of him, and I think he was a little bit protective of his own work or, or whatever. but he was rather dismissive. It was, well, I've done loads of research in this area. Why don't you go away and do something else Which wasn't the answer I was really looking for. but then I looked into his research a little bit more closely, and found there were limitations, for example, where he'd done a lot of measurement on pain and anxiety, they were just basically done on one to a hundred scales, rather than doing any sort of psychology, psychological sort of digging down in questionnaires.

Gary

  22:23 - 23:24

And I also found that, a lot of the work he'd done even on scales, were carried out a couple of hours after the operation. now to my mind, the people at that stage, still have the effects of anesthetic within their system and also pain controlling their system. and for example, in the UK, I think it's a 24 to 48 hours, after general anesthetic, you're not considered capable of fully functioning cognitively. So I was then wondering, well, are any of the results biased because surely the person will not have full cognitive ability at the stage when they were answering the questions. So I thought that was a limitation and another big limitation I found, which I was astounded by, is that a great deal of hypnosis research, more in the clinical and medical areas although the research was carried out by a psychologist or so on, typically, hypnotherapists wouldn't actually be involved.

Gary

  23:24 - 24:09

Most of the, the work was actually carried out by students or researchers that had had something in the region of half a days, training in hypnotherapy, effectively just reading a script. So to my mind that that wasn't also a valid session, sort of a valid sort of way of setting it up because obviously some of us who have a lot of training, we have a lot of experience and we know that things like, the rapport presentation and there are many other factors that are a factor in a hypnotherapy session, which to my mind were being completely admitted because you want to having somebody with a couple of hours Jewish and reading from a script. so, so I think some of that was invalidated, which was why I wanted to do my own research. Yeah,

Aidan 

  24:09 - 24:15

Indeed. And, in terms of your own research, Gary, what, what have you come up with

Gary

  24:16 - 25:16

what I did was I did a study and it was for my master's degree, I did a study into presurgical hypnosis and the effects that had on recovery quality in breast cancer operations. What I was looking at, and it was based on some of the previous research that I mentioned, but I found out as much as I could about the previous research that had been done and decided that, if I, if I added a couple of other techniques, into the mix, and also it was carried out by a trained hypnotherapists, we could get better results. and I used, what they called an SF 36, form, which, which is a gold standard, psychological welfare questionnaire that is used in many, many, psychological and health studies. and the idea it's, it's, 36 questions and you then put it, put it into a computer program and it gives assessments for the person's psychological wellbeing.

Gary

  25:16 - 26:13

and it looks at a lot of different, different factors of psychological wellbeing. so that was what we were looking at. And what I did was I did, the questionnaire was somebody on the day of their operation. so it was basically just before they had their pre-made and we did a control group. And then we had another group that after they'd done the questionnaire, they had a session of pre-surgical hypnosis with me. now the session was scripted, rather than bespoke. Obviously I'd like to have done more bespoke, but obviously for research purposes, that's not going to give good results. So it had to be scripted. so, we did that, and then did a followup a week after surgery. and what was, what was interesting, some of it wasn't surprising, but, both groups, on the day of the operation, when they done the, the, the, the research questionnaire, they were all borderline depressive.

Gary

  26:13 - 27:22

Now, obviously, if you've been diagnosed with breast cancer and you're going in for an operation that day, and that is not a major surprise, but then when we followed up a week later, the control group was still borderline depressive. the group that had the hypnosis we're actually back to what was considered population norm. So, so back to their normal feeling and way of life and so on. So obviously that was a great improvement, psychologically, because generally it was believed that psychologically they will have a fast recovery quality, they can get out of the hospital quicker, and so on. but another thing that we looked at was also pain perception, and it was interesting that a week after the operation, the hypnotherapy group, perceive that they were feeling far less pain than the control group. when we dive down and looked a bit further into things, we found that not only did the hypnotherapy group perceive that they were feeling less pain, but actually they were actually taking far less pain medication than the control group in the first place. So, so there's, you know, so to me, there was two big things there that the psychological element and the pain element,

Aidan 

  27:23 - 27:51

And I love your use of the word perceive because you know, it is all about perception and they perceived that they had less pain. And therefore that took, less med medication, to ease the pain as a for now, in terms of, qualities that that's, what, what, in your opinion, Gary is the most crucial trait that someone needs to possess as a hypnosis oncology practitioner.

Gary

  27:53 - 28:42

To me, I, I, the, the big thing to me is it, you know, everybody would say empathy and so on. but to me, it's ethics. I think you've got it. You've got to be very, very ethical. and that's why it irritates me with some of the things that I say because people, people with cancer are very desperate. and I see so many people clutching at straws paying out lots of money for so-called complimentary treatments, say anything that they think might give them a chance. You know, you see, you see in Facebook groups and various other things, people, advising on this diet, that diet taking these supplements, doing this, that, and the other, and there is very little or no scientific evidence for any of it. but yet people are desperate, more power, a lot of money, to, for somebody that might be able to give them a chance.

Gary

  28:42 - 29:30

And I do see hypnotherapists even, particularly in the U S that are advertising, that they can cure cancer with hypnosis and mind control now. Okay. We do know, that we do get spontaneous remission, and we do know that things go away, but we have no evidence that that's what's caused it, or that's, what's cured it, you know, it might be that in conjunction with lots of other things, or it just might be a coincidence. and certainly from an ethics point of view, we do have a 19 for in the UK, we have a 1939 cancer act, which, forbids you to, to treat or advise or consult on the treatment of cancer, unless you're an oncologist or a doctor or a surgeon. So we have to be very careful about what we work with. but saying that yes, to me, the biggest thing is being ethical about what you're doing.

Aidan 

  29:31 - 29:56

I think that's, that's really, really important, you know, and us, this podcast is a production of the European association of professional hypnotherapists on all our therapists, hypnotherapists, you know, subscribed to this code of ethics and professional conduct. That is something that is, you know, it, , it is a must that we have that professional ethics, and, going forward.

Gary

  29:57 - 30:48

Yeah, indeed. And that was one of the, one of the things, again, why I put the, actually decided to form the association of oncology practitioners because originally, I just started doing training and, and the reason I started doing training was again, as I, as I mentioned earlier, a few people said to me, or you're an expert in this area, you need to put a training course together. And I thought nobody's going to be interested. And then I found that I was getting more and more hypnotherapists, highly qualified, experienced ones that had come across cancer in, in, in sort of the family and just didn't know what to do, and was asking for advice or if it will, perhaps I ought to put a training course together. what really, sort of, pushed me into it was, I, I was asked to, to speak at one of the UKs inaugural hypnotherapy conferences, about eight years ago, on, on what I do.

Gary

  30:48 - 31:27

And, and I've since spoken there sort of half a dozen times. And then I was invited out to, the, the biggest type of therapy conference in Wellnet and Las Vegas. And I'm going back to actually to speak for the fifth year, actually in July there. so I found, I was starting getting invited around the world to talk about what I do, and I thought, well, okay. Yeah, it must be time to put a course together. So I did put a course together and I did it originally in the UK a few times. but then I was asked to, to actually start doing it abroad. So I've taught in, in the U S several times. In fact, I'm teaching in Florida in may and, Vegas in August. then I've been out into Europe a few times just before the lockdown.

Gary

  31:27 - 32:21

I did one in Belgium, and, now what is also encouraging, is I'm finding that, that obviously it was originally geared to hit with therapists, but I'm finding now between 30 and 50% of attendees are actually doctors and psychologists rather that rather than pure hypnotherapists. in fact, the last course I did before the lockdown, was I was actually invited to go and teach, a, have to do a private course for a group of psychologists in Bahrain. So none of them will be, are hypnotherapists. They were, they were all clinical psychologists. So, so that was encouraging. since the lockdown, I I've done it online. I've done some courses to Australia and New Zealand and the states. but the reason I actually then put, put the idea of the hypnosis ecology association together was that I found that I had a lot of very well-meaning people, that were, were wanting to attend my course, that would perhaps trainee hypnotherapists.

Gary

  32:21 - 33:13

They might've only done a month of training, or they, they were just, well, meaning they wanted to help. I had no real background in it. and at that point, obviously I don't want to discourage people to, for having an interest, getting involved and finding out and so on. but from the ethics point of view, I wanted to protect the patient first and foremost. So what I decided to do was anybody can attend the training, but to actually become accredited, therefore, part of the, the association, not only do you have to do the training, but you have to pass an exam as well. and the exam actually looks at not only the hypno Oncology training, but also general, experience and knowledge of hypnotherapy practice going forward. So that way, I could say, well, anybody that joins the association, I am confident, are good and competent ethical hypnotherapists, and therefore, I, I would feel safe in working with patients

Aidan 

  33:14 - 33:18

Now, can you, is it possible for you to tell us about the course that you put together

Gary

  33:20 - 34:07

yeah. it looks at all aspects. I mean, one of the first things that does, we start on is we look at cancer itself because particularly if we're going to work in a hospital, for example, and we know rapport can be a big thing with hypnotherapy. if you're working in a hospital, you're, you're going to be considered to be, another, professional and expert in, in your, in what you do. but if you're there in the cancer unit, you'll probably find a patient coming in, clutching their patient notes, saying, oh, I've got such and such a cancer sort of stage three grade two. this is the treatment I'm having and so on. And if you suddenly look at them blankly, you're going to have lost all that respect and rapport that we know straight away. So the first part of the course does teach you, it gives you a, a cancer background.

Gary

  34:07 - 34:48

So we go into what it is, how it forms. We look at all the staging. We look at the grading, we look at the treatments, we look at the potential side effects of the treatments, and therefore we then look at what you can work with as a hypnotherapist. We look at the legal and ethical aspects of it as well. but then we go into to what you can actually do as a hypnotherapist. so we would look at things like, sort of dealing with the, you know, the panic, the fear, the stress, and so on of diagnosis, or, certain fears and phobias, like going, going into scanners, for example, having masks put on for head and neck cancers, that type of thing. So we teach a lot of very fast techniques that you can work with people in, in those sort of situations to overcome things quickly.

Gary

  34:48 - 35:33

and then we look at more sort of longer term work with people. So we would look at particularly as a lot of work you can do with side effects and things like anticipatory nausea, which comes with chemotherapy, the sleep issues and so on. we do work on pre and post-surgery work because as we just mentioned on my research, we show, we demonstrated that, that it can have a big impact on the recovery quality. w we do a lot of work on also on pain control, various types of pain control that you can work with cancer patients, and even the, the journey after sort of the cats. You know, we go onto the side of where, whether we need palliative care. so we go down that route, you know, palliative care and perhaps, you know, obviously inevitable, sadly, you know, not a good outcome.

Gary

  35:34 - 36:09

we look at what you can do, with, with the carers and the family members. and we also look at sort of post camps. So, you know, the people that do get down the recovery route, we look at sort of what differences that may have have an impact on their life, deal with that going forward, or even improving other aspects of their lives. So there's, there's an awful lot you can do with it. and that's all covered in the course. we also look at other things about how you can do group sessions, which I do sometimes in hospital. And he even, how you can do all these sort of techniques and approaches over zoom so that you can work with clients all over the world.

Aidan 

  36:10 - 36:19

Excellent. Now you mentioned there about carers and family members. what, what's your approach in that instance

Gary

  36:20 - 36:58

Again, it's the, it's the same sort of thing as with the patient What would they like help with What would they like help coming to terms with, or, you know, w whether it's quite often it's anxiety based things, quiet, or quite often it's fear based things, you know, or even, you know, looking forward or not, not in a negative way, obviously they're going to be looking for, but, assisting them in if you like in looking forward in coming to terms either what they would need to do to, to help the patient through their journey, or even helping them to come to terms with what the outcome might be. So, so again, you're still sort of, if you like client or patient led on that from

Aidan 

  36:59 - 37:18

Excellent. So that's a, it's a very comprehensive, core scary. And obviously, you know, it's, it's, evidence-based, you know, you have your research and if you know anyone out there who's interested, any hypnotherapist who is interested in completing this course, how can they contact you

Gary

  37:19 - 38:34

Well, we have a website purely for oncology, and that is, the way the website is www obviously, dot hypnos-oncology.com, or hyphen, depending on which part of the world you're in, but hypnos-oncology.com. on there, there is, actually, because I've actually done it in conjunction with a conference recently, there's an online version of the course, which is currently at half price, and that's a hippo-oncology.com backslash online, and also under live, I believe, for people that actually want to keep it, there is a product section and you can have a whole course on a USB card, so that you can watch it over and over again. and, and obviously I do do live courses as well. that there's, there's a couple of mentioned on there, as I said, they're the only two so far I've got, this year planned is only going to be, the IMD trade conference in Florida in Orlando, in mid may, where I'll be teaching, and also talking, and I will be at a HTL. I hit my thoughts alive in Vegas at the end of July, where I'm also going to be presenting and teaching. So, so, so there are online options, there's USB get it sort of keep it options and obviously live options.

Aidan 

  38:34 - 38:40

Excellent. Thank you, Gary. So is there a particular, case study that you could mention for us

Gary

  38:41 - 39:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, I've got loads and loads of case studies, and that's actually, there's a lot covered on the course because I, I do a big session on the course of thinking outside the box. lots of, of instances I've come across where I might not be straightforward and, and don't really suit the normal ways of working. I've got a lot of those and they're covered on the course. I do have some rather sad case studies where, I've worked with people and although the outcome has been terminal, that I have been able to help them and in very good psychological ways, w which we also cover. but the there's one I'd like to finish with, which I is a, is a nice one, because I would like to like to leave talks on, on, on a happy note.

Gary

  39:25 - 40:15

but it is one particular patient that I, that I worked with, a few years ago. she was quite young, early thirties had a very active lifestyle. She was into parachuting and all sorts of things like that. she was diagnosed with colon cancer and initially was told that they didn't think it was particularly bad, and she would have keyhole surgery and everything would be fine. They took her in for the operation and they opened her up and they found that it had spread hugely. they decided they had to remove the entire colon. There was other areas needs to be removed. She had to have a colostomy, fitted, because it had spread that to break all our ribs on one side to actually get access to everything. so they did this major operation. Obviously she came around, had been operated far more severely than she expected.

Gary

  40:15 - 41:28

She was in a lot of pain because all the ribs had been broken. Lots of stuff had been removed, because it had spread. She also needed quite a heavy duty chemotherapy, and she reacted badly to the chemotherapy and she actually died three times and had to be resuscitated. the first time I saw her was after she'd been resuscitated for the third time, she was an inpatient in hospital. She was in a huge amount of pain, couldn't sleep, because of the pain, despite all the pain medication. and I was asked whether I would see her on the ward and whether I could do some stuff with her for pain control, de-stressing and help with asleep. so I did some work with her as an inpatient, and, we worked on that and, helped with the pain, helped with how she was feeling, coming to terms with things and help with the sleep. then she was discharged from hospital and she came to see me for further other things, psychological aspects, sleeping stress. There is other things that we work with throughout through her journey. and that was a few years ago. the last time she saw me, she came to me as a, as a private client. and she came to me for assistance sports performance. She wanted me to help her improve her triathlon performances. So I think that's, that's quite a nice outcome.

Aidan 

  41:29 - 41:32

Excellent. That was wonderful. Maybe you just give us your website again, please

Gary

  41:33 - 42:04

Yeah, absolutely. and I'm quite happy if anybody has got any interest in the course wants to answer, ask questions, even if they're not interested in the course. And they just want to ask questions. I'm more than happy. There is a contact form on the website, but the website is hypnosis-oncology.com or hypnosis hyphen oncology.com because the Americans called it dash. We called it, hyphen. So hypnos-oncology.com and there's lots of stuff you can find out on there about my live trainings, my online trainings, and there's a contact form for any questions that anybody would like to send to me.

Aidan 

  42:05 - 42:12

Excellent. So that was Gary Coles, a hypnosis oncology practitioner and trainer tacky. Gary,

Gary

  42:12 - 42:14

Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me.

Aidan 

  42:15 - 42:28

Thank you very much for joining me today on the professional hypnotherapists podcast, please head over to EAP H.ie and find solutions for you right now.