Book Review: The Weight, Hypnotherapy and You Weight Reduction Program: An NLP and Hypnotherapy Practitioners Manual. By Dr. Judy Pearson.

This review appeared in an email circulated by L. Michael Hall and has been reprinted on www.engagethepower.com with his permission.

From: L. Michael Hall

I have just reviewed a new book soon to be published and released from Crown House Publications. It is from Judith Pearson, Ph.D., with a Preface by John Burton, Ed.D. and it is entitled, The Weight, Hypnotherapy and You Weight Reduction Program, or the WHY program for short.

Reading the pre-publication manuscript reminded me so much of the Coaching Program that Michelle Duval created for Equilibrio and which she shares and describes in the Meta-Coach Training System. Here Judith has done the same for Weight Reduction, that is, this book offers a complete package for the person who wants to make this his or her focus.

How are the two similar? Both take a very highly ethical position about people in creating a legitimate, proven, and balanced program. Judith provides a way to qualify clients or rather how to work with people to help them self-qualify to see if they are ready for it. As you probably know, far too many weight reduction are more concerned about selling the program than ethically enabling people to succeed by helping them to get ready and by telling them the truth about the challenges.

Judith also has created a comprehensive program that addresses all aspects of weight reduction, from the psychology behind over-eating, the financial investment for setting up the program, the medical considerations for a client, the questions about food, nutrition, exercise, etc. Yet there's more. This book is not for the person wanting the weight reduction, it is for those who facilitate the process, for Coaches, Therapists, and NLP Practitioners who want to create a commercially viable business. That's what the book is truly about. In this Judith has provided so much that helps one to do precisely that (another big similarity to Duval's formatting
her international coaching organization, Equilibrio).

What is in the book? What does Judith offer? As a quick summary, she
offers the following:

• Marketing materials and advice, including a Brochure you can use on the WHY program A format of 8 sessions for weight reduction with complete details on each session.
• Suggestions for how to package and sell the value of the program.
  Complete hypnotic scripts of the 8 sessions along with instructions
  on how to incorporate the trance or hypnotherapy into the process.
• Copies of all of the paperwork necessary for creating a successful
  business including disclosure statements and checklists.
  Action plans for tasking the client week by week and checklists for
  your own records.
• Processes for getting a full commitment to the client to make the
  program as successful as possible.
• How to facilitate and enable a client to understand and use trance
  in the process.
• How to facilitate self-hypnosis after the program.
• How to get testimonies from clients.

And if that wasn't enough, there's even more. The book presents the goals,outcomes, trouble areas in each of the 8 sessions and then moves on to describing a "stuck" client and what to do, how to use NLP and Meta-State patterns (Meta-Yes, Mind-to-Muscle, Genius, the Itinerary of Change by Denis Bridoux, etc.). She provides dozens and dozens of great questions using the Meta-Model and the Mind-Lines models. She identifies the key meta-programs in over-weight clients and relates how to use the meta-program distinctions in communicating and working with them.

She offers a chapter on the use of hypnosis, how to teach and induce trance, and provides an appendix on 16 ways to induce a hypnotic state. She even has a chapter on commonly asked questions about the WHY program that you can use when being interviewed on radio or television or when presenting the program in an Introductory Evening in your community. The book ends with an extensive list of research on the use of hypnotherapy for weight reduction and weight loss in general.

And there's even more. She has also created an entire workbook (The Weight, Hypnotherapy and YOU Weight Reduction Program - Client Workbook) which goes along with this book. This workbook then becomes the 8-week learning manual for the client! In it she provides the reading materials for the client, worksheets for the daily tasking assignments, and supporting material so that the client walks away with a very useful resource in hand and which can be used to sustain the changes over time. How about that?

So with all of that, is there anything that I didn't like regarding the
book? Yes, in fact, there was. While she listed Games Fit and Slim People Play in the bibliography, there's not a single reference to in the entire text especially when she describes in session five how obese and over-weight people tend to eat for emotional reasons. That would have been a great place to mention the neuro-semantics of eating and the psycho-logics of psycho-eating. But alas, that is not mentioned. Also, in describing the Itinerary of Change pattern by Denis Bridoux, there's no mention that Denis developed that pattern from the Mind-to-Muscle pattern which I created. It would be nice to mention the source on that one.

Beside those little flaws, this is a great book and one that I cannot
recommend too highly. If you are a Coach, Therapist, or NLP Practitioner and you want to create a highly successful and commercially viable business working with weight reduction as your chosen niche- this book is an absolute must! You can use it as almost as a business plan for how to run your business and what to do in your business. The book incorporates the Neuro-Semantic principle of "apply to self" as Judith invites the person working in this area to apply the processes and principles to self in order to create credibility.

In writing this I have also been privileged to write a blurb for the book. This is what I wrote for CHP (Crown House Publications) as they bring this book to the public:

The WHY program that Judith Pearson, Ph.D. has created offers a
comprehensive approach in using NLP, Neuro-Semantics (Meta-States), and
Hypnotherapy to coach a client to succeed in losing weight and gaining
fitness and health. Yet she offers more, far more. In her book, Dr.
Pearson has created an exceptionally well-designed program for a coach,
therapist, or practitioner to run a commercially viable business in weight reduction with these tools and models. I highly recommend this book and this program. There's nothing like it on the market that has the critical success factors embedded in a frame of high integrity.
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Dr. L. Michael Hall is an internationally recognized NLP trainer and the founder of Neuro-Semantics. He has written numerous books on NLP for practitioners and the general public. He developed and teaches the Meta-Coaching program for coaches. To learn more about his work, go to www.neuro-semantics.com.