Review
'If anyone is skeptical about the therapeutic power of hypnosis, this book will remove all doubts. It is an impressive work and I highly recommend it!' - Dr Walter E. Jacobson, M.D. Psychiatrist, and author of #1 Best-Seller 'Forgive To Win!'
'An important new approach to mental and emotional healing. Should be required reading for every therapist and anyone contemplating therapy.' - Dr F. S. Starr, MD. FAACAP, BCIA Psychiatrist
'Peter Field writes with rare insight into the human condition, yet does so in a way that will resonate with both reader and clinician. The Chi of Change is a major contribution to the field of hypnotherapy and indeed, psychotherapy as a whole. This work deserves a place in every therapist's library.' - Antoine Matarasso, President, Australian Hypnotherapists Association
'A genuinely ground-breaking book that will change forever the way you think about your feelings and emotions. Destined to become a classic.' - William Broom, Chief Executive, U.K. General Hypnotherapy Standards Council
'Full of insight and inspiration. It's rare for a book to impress me these days, but this one did it! A most extraordinary book.' - Terrence Watts, Chairman, The Association for Professional Hypnosis & Psychotherapy. Author of 'Warriors, Settlers and Nomads'
'Synthesizes Eastern and Western insights to help people liberate themselves from profound challenges. 'The Chi of Change' combines psychological understandings with compassion and supercharged hypnotherapy. I highly recommend this book!' - Jack Elias, Director, American Institute for Therapeutic Learning. Author, 'Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy/NLP'
'A valuable source of information for the experienced hypnotherapist, and highly recommended for any practitioner of hypnosis and/or NLP who wants a better success rate for clients.' - Roy Hunter, Best Selling Author of 'The Art of Hypnotherapy'
'A wealth of knowledge that strides seamlessly through the extraordinary. This book is a treasure for anyone interested in the mind.' - Dr Marie Cheour, Neuropsychologist
From the Inside Flap
As a psychiatrist, it is hard to ignore the abysmal failure of the mental health system in its contemporary form. In so many ways it has become a self-obsessed industry overflowing with diagnoses, labels and medications.
Sadly, mental health has evolved into an industry that is more and more detached from people and their environment, something clinically distanced from the individual's own unique life journey. Little wonder that, so often, our standard treatments simply end in failure.
In so much of psychiatry, as it is largely practiced today, there does not seem to be any emphasis on real and lasting change--merely on the treatment of symptoms. As doctors, we are confronted with an endless barrage of advertising designed to promote the newest medication, the latest chemical solution.
In psychology, too, almost every other day there seems to be a new spin on therapy, a different method of improving a person's life. Yet still people remain stuck, firmly entrenched in the problems and difficulties that have led them to the doctor, the psychiatrist, and the therapist.
Your local bookstore is literally teeming with books about losing weight, getting the relationship you want, ending depression, and changing your brain. Yet self-help books are so often directed at your pocketbook and not really at your mind, body, or spirit.
The Chi of Change is different. Here is a book that is genuinely concerned with and directed at the human mind and spirit. It is a book about people and for people, one that addresses the multifaceted individual and his or her many planes of existence.
The author, Peter Field, writes from the perspective of a world traveler and keen observer of human psychology. In the spirit of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, he has studied the teachings and understandings of foreign cultures in order to broaden and deepen his understanding of the human psyche. It is this understanding that he brings to the therapy he practices, to the process of change, and to life.
According to The Chi of Change, healthy living can be accomplished through harmony with your chi--the 'life force' based on energy and information that is inherent in all that lives and which is manifested in those things that we human beings call 'feelings'.
This book explains how the events in our lives that affect--and to such a large extent determine--our 'reality' get encoded deep down in our memory systems where they are not usually accessible by ordinary therapeutic means. Because this encoding happens at the subconscious level of the mind, we simply cannot access this material in our normal, waking state.
In The Chi of Change Peter Field confronts the disturbing issues in mental health today and draws original conclusions and practical observations, both from his work and from his own life, providing an innovative and useful strategy for engaging with the forces (or chi) of change. In so doing he provides us with an important new approach to mental and emotional healing.
The best therapists I have met are able to transcend their training. These therapists are willing to constantly learn, grow, and update their craft. It is rare to find a therapist who has fine-tuned their craft to the degree that they can relate that knowledge in a clear and approachable manner. Peter Field has done this. In The Chi of Change you will read about how people can rebound from lives filled with such disturbing states as anxiety, panic, depression, addiction, and over-eating. You will learn how even your most difficult feelings and emotions can be used in order to move forward in a much more balanced, meaningful, and human manner.
As brain-imaging technology and developments in pharmacology continue to vie for and receive media attention and money, the blessed act of assisting an individual through his or her stages of change is becoming a lost art. Medication is predicated on the idea that you are a victim of your genes, a product of your biology; that you are the way you are and if you add this chemical to your own mixture of chemicals, then you will behave 'properly' and feel better. As more and more people are learning, psychiatric medication is essentially an endless turnstile of chemical after chemical, drugs administered in the hope that by luck or chance the right one might just do the trick. Often times, though, this is a practice and a strategy that can so easily lose sight of the individual.
One thing is clear: The author of this book never loses sight of the fact that we are all individuals, that we are all persons in the process of becoming what we were meant to be--balanced and healthy in mind, body, and spirit.
In addition to being well researched and beautifully written, The Chi of Change is a book authored by someone who has lived. It is a work full of compassion and one that reflects a love for humanity. In my opinion, it is a book that should be required reading for every therapist and for anyone contemplating therapy.
Dr F. S. Starr, MD. FAACAP, BCIA
Psychiatrist
From the Back Cover
Is there a way out of anxiety, depression, overeating, fear, phobias, addiction, insomnia, trauma, and low self-esteem--without taking pills?
Is there really an alternative to Prozac and anti-depressants?
Can you really recapture the simple joy of living?
The answer to all theses questions is YES!
This book will show you:
* How your subconscious mind has been programmed to make you feel the way you feel
* How these programs can be rapidly changed through the right kind of hypnotherapy
* How even your most difficult feelings and emotions can help you change your life for the better
* How you can live a balanced, meaningful life and move forward in confidence and harmony with yourself and your world
About the Author
Peter Field is a leading voice in British hypnotherapy and an internationally recognized authority on psychotherapy, hypnosis and health. He has appeared on TV and radio, is a regular BBC contributor, and his expertise has been featured in The Times, the popular press, and prestigious journals on both sides of the Atlantic. For more than 30 years he has helped people from all over the world to deal with life's difficulties in a balanced, more meaningful way. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Health.
As a young man, Peter found himself completely lost, homeless, alcoholic and drug addicted, sleeping in shop doorways and under bridges. Today he is considered a leader in his field, a respected hypno-psychotherapist and author who has helped countless others to find their own path.
Known as 'The therapists' Therapist', Peter's clients are drawn from all over the U.K. as well as overseas and include psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors and other hypnotherapists, as well as celebrities from the world of entertainment and sport.
Peter is also a Board Certified hypnotherapist and Certified Instructor with the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH), and teaches advanced hypnotherapy training to therapists internationally. The NGH is the largest and oldest professional hypnosis organization in the world.
