The Time is Now
As is traditional for me after our annual conference, I am enjoying some R&R. This time in Greece whether the weather is most agreeable and the staff are some of the best I have ever encountered. As I sit in the pool bar drinking my Greek Coffee (Medium Sweet) and my brandy and ginger ale, I have read the report from the NCH Chairman Tracey Grist. What I read was a very positive document which shows how the National Council for Hypnotherapy has weathered the events of the past year. Having read this, I have been inspired to speak again on the future of the hypnotherapy profession and its regulation.
Becoming an accredited register with the Profssional Standards Authority is the only way forward. Statutory Regulation has been taken off the table and I do not believe I will ever see it reach its fruition in my lifetime. Hypnotherapy is currently represented in this arena via the Complementary and Natural Healtcare Council. Whilst I believe that this was a good idea at the beginning, I am not convinced that it is not the way forward for our profession.
In the first instance, hypnotherapy is pretty much keeping the CNHC afloat financially. Yet, even when two members of the profession were on the board of directors it was clear that there was no appetite to appropriately regulate the hypnotherapy profession. It calls itself a regulator, yet there have been several occasions where the board cried off from taking action in the interests of an easy life. This is not good enough for our profession.
In the second place, hypnotherapy is a separate and distinct profession and can quite easily stand on its own two feet. The time has come for us to do just that. No longer aligning itself with complementary medicine but rather embracing our most unique position transcending, orthodox and complementary medicine, psychology, and the trans personal.
In order to take this further an organisation needs to take the lead. A solvent, stable organisation with the expertise to lead by example. To have a corporate structure which does not benefit the few but the many, and whose history shows it at the forefront of all major professional initiatives for the better part of 40 years.
That organisation is the National Council for Hypnotherapy. I urge the membership to put away the bickering and get behind the Executive and give it a mandate to take the profession forward. It is too late to make this a motion to the AGM, but please if you think what I am saying makes sense, support the Executive, write to them, tell them you want it to be at the forefront of the profession and lead it to its rightful professional place, not an industry, but a profession one to be proud of.
