Cameron Bradley

Great work on buried memories and for creativity

Cameron did great work for me on buried experiences that had been causing me anxiety for years. It was not a traumatic experience to do so with him although the past experiences were quite traumatic and were fully recalled. Some aspects of the experience had been completely buried and I'd forgotten them totally before working on them with Cameron. I can say they were resolved without too much difficulty under Cameron's guidance and with his help. This has resulted in a reduction in my personal anxiety and has helped my relationship with my family.

In a subsequent session Cameron worked using hypnosis to help me with my creative goals and ambitions. Cameron has a great ability for hypnosis and I found he was able to guide the session in an extremely effective way that continues to work on my conscious and subconscious desire to access that hard-to-achieve "flow state" when working on creative projects.

I found Cameron and extremely calm presence and effective therapist for me in these two quite separate areas, and recommend him as a practitioner highly.

A review by Terry H Elston

Cameron is an amazing person, who is also an amazing Practitioner of NLP. What strikes me first is his understanding and application of the fundamental aspects of NLP. He's not someone who simply performs acts of transformation with others - he's the guy that uncovers the truths that his client really wanted to find. And then real change can begin.

He's also an avid reader and in his ability to work with others, it's as if the story of their life unfolds before him like an open book. Then he's ready to write the new chapter, in the knowledge this old verse has been returned to the past.


Terry Elston, NLP Trainer, Trainer of Time Based Techniques and Clinical Hypnotherapy.

This might be the only book you need.

Reviewing: Counselling Adolescents

Counselling Adolescents is a comprehensive and assiduously organised book.

Divided into four parts, the first two provide introductory and foundational grounding on the subject matter for the remaining parts to then focus on the ‘proactive’ approaches thereon out. Reading is supported in this text with many figures, highlighted key points, several tables, a chapter on counselling micro-skills and suggested further readings that all help to activate the easy understanding of the processes and strategies of proactive counselling with young people. Three notable chapters lay-out symbolic, creative and psycho-educational strategies with a thorough methodology. I found the sections on metaphor insightful as well as the use of symbols for potentially accessing ‘material from the unconscious,’ with the compact case studies at the end of these chapters providing further consolidation. The book concludes with two fully scripted case studies split into two columns, one of the session text and the other being the skills and strategies used by the counsellor so the reader can examine their application in the field in a real in-time context.

With this book the three co-authors have streamlined their combined decades of experience using completely disentangled language to fashion a tome of maximum use-vale for this field and it shines with excellence. It is also excellent value for money. So much so it is fair to say that this book will get continual use by anyone starting out in counselling with young people and revisited throughout ones career for its speedy reference functionality and accessibility of content. Such user friendliness makes it the ideal purchase for students as the book not only provides online resources for students but also downloadable PDFs that support a twelve session counselling training programme for lecturers also.

Music Therapy Is Straightforwardly Indispensible

Reviewing: The Music in Music Therapy

To put it plainly: this book is complex. Indeed, one imagines that it would prove a challenging read for musical experts. Complexity aside: this cutting-edge book is truly indispensable.

Music as a form of therapy is something most of us have experienced to varying levels throughout life. Music is, for instance, of viewed as a means of escape – when we are lost in or caught up in music, we get a sense of ourselves through music coming from outside ourselves that is also felt internally. In a nutshell, this place or sense, according to music therapists, is the “bio-grammar” (where experience is felt and thinking begins), and furthermore the “form giving” exchange between therapist and patient occurring through listening to music or via musical improvisation is “psychodynamic” in nature.

This is where things start to get a little complicated. In musical psychotherapeutic practice, this place is identified by a kind of “rhythmic pulsing”, and this pulsing is described as a proto-structure having a relational matrix with a flexible and fluctuating organic movement (analogous to a heartbeat), which creates an anticipatory space for something – for something not yet there. And it is here, where this pulsing invites the psychotic or autistic patient to join in (who has no internal metre, no pulsing), because this space at which thinking can emerge is also the edge of, and basis for, symbolising; which has now been given space to potentially exist for the patient. Very straightforward.

This book has fourteen varied and fascinating clinical/research perspectives from across Europe to give this field serious multifaceted depth and is essential equipment for those interested in this field.

A No Brainer Buy

Reviewing: The User's Manual for the Brain Vol 1: Complete Manual for Neuro-linguistic Programming Practitioner Certification

The User’s Manual for the Brain: The Complete Manual For Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner Certification by Bob G. Bodenhamer, D.Min. and L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. has a thorough lay-out and is written in a useful and focused style. This allows for the wealth of information within to percolate clearly into the mind of the reader; it is also a testament to the wealth of experience distilled by the authors into this reference book.

The content contained in this user’s manual is cutting-edge, with diagrams and illustrations that strengthen the book’s systematics – frequent quotes from major figures in NLP and other fields support the observations contained within, as do useful summaries of key points and glosses on terminology.

By way of illustration, Chapter 8, on the Meta-model, is particularly impressive: I am certain that I would have saved significant time if I had had access it when I started-out. The chapters focusing on “Submodalities and Anchoring Management Neurology” are similarly useful. Indeed, they provide readers with a fresh conceptual vantage point on tried and tested topics..

After completing this book, one will be happy to hold onto it for the rest of one’s career. The sheer comprehensiveness on display is impressive: this alone would surely warrant its inclusion on one’s bookshelf. Further to that, the fresh and clear transmission of knowledge the tome imparts ensures that the work, which has been designed as a beginner’s manual, ensures that it will be of great benefit for those striving to become certified practitioners; those readers who aspire to become a Trainer of NLP will also find that the book is an excellent teaching reference text as well. Furthermore, chapters like “Satir Categories” and “Advanced Modelling” will appeal to not only beginners but refresher seasoned practitioners also.

30 Years in 13 Hours

Reviewing: The Wisdom of Milton H Erickson

The Wisdom of Milton H. Erickson is a gift to therapists. Ronald A. Havens’ has distilled the thought of Erickson from over 140 publications into titles and subtitles that grant practitioner’s direct and specific access to Erickson’s writing and, like a sorting machine, can take the reader to almost whatever topic they may require—or at least within close proximity to it. This is the closest and certainly most affordable way for a professional to have the next best thing to the man himself as a guide. Those new to Erickson’s academic writing and/or the profession will want to have this book on their shelf, and seasoned practitioners will also enjoy the layout of this book, for its speedy reference value alone.
The book is divided into three sections. These sections are comprised of thirteen chapters –these chapters encompass over 130 subheadings. The book is, in a word, comprehensive. One of Erickson’s great achievements was his ability to present complex ideas in plain and pleasant language. And this is why this book is so important: it affords readers the opportunity to get to grips with, to borrow from Havens’ title, Erickson’s wisdom. Under the subheading Patients Can and Must Do the Therapy, Erickson remarks that “In a learning situation you have to do your own learning. I want you to learn a lot faster than I did, it took me about 30 years to learn, and there is no sense in that” (p107). This book will undoubtedly help with his wish and indeed with one’s own learning

A Categorical Resource for Hypnosis with Children

Reviewing: Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents – Second Edition

Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents (Crown House Publishing) has a wide enough scope to give the reader referable resources for years to come. If one were to work with children and/or adolescents this comprehensive co-edited collection, would undoubtedly show the condition of recurrent use compared to others on the shelf: this book provides basic forecasts for to prepare those starting out with the diversity of “psychological application” (which the second section of the book generously accords). Hypnosis applied to habit and behavioural disorders, depression, childhood trauma and anxiety in children are examined and examples and clinical vignettes are fully provided for—this section alone justifies the books price-tag. The introductory first part of the book is thorough and includes induction and intensification techniques. The third part of the book explores the medical implications for professionals operating in acute medical and clinical settings. Part three enters a higher level of specificity and diagnostic focus that may, at first glance, appear to preclude the non-clinician unacquainted to the emergency department or hospital bedside. But this is not the case. Indeed, there is much to be learned from these chapters. It can be argued that a non-medical hypnotherapist working with children and adolescents will likely in their career come across something that intersects with perioperative needs, recurring pain, chronic disease, elimination disorders and even palliative care. This book would prove invaluable, should such a situation arise.

The Book that Compounds Value your Whole Career in Hypnosis and NLP.

Reviewing: Ericksonian Approaches - Second Edition

First of all, hats off to Crown House Publishing for printing this book—Ericksonian Approaches: A comprehensive Manual Second Edition by Rubin Battino, MS and Thomas L. South, PHD is a magisterial work. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find anything of equivalent value. One can even argue that it contains everything that a beginner would need. Assuredly, whatever a hypnosis/NLP Practitioner chooses to put into this book will be rewarded in spades.
The book is organised into twenty-three chapters which are in turn methodically broken down into smaller parts. It opens with the history of hypnosis before moving onto to chapters on basic and advanced metaphor, as well as other chapters on hypnotherapy with special populations, substance abuse and ethical and legal concerns. One especially fascinating chapter, which concerns the psychobiology of gene expression and mind body, warrants special mention. Significantly, this book does not require reading from cover to cover (somewhat exhaustive at 600 pages)—the chapters are self-contained. Furthermore, the logical way the chapters are structured allows for easy consumption, while at the same time the authors champion the reader to take time out from whatever page they are on to go and practice the stuff, with suggested guidelines, like a professional training course would; again I stress, what the reader chooses to put it will pay out in kind.
Another part of this books excellence is the conscientious writing style which unceasingly converts anything seemingly complicated into clear comprehension. This book has been, simply put, designed to help as much as it possibly can. This crowning achievement is best thought of as the life’s work of not one, but two: that is, two lives in continual dialogue, inspiring each other at each and every turn, and succeeding in their shared goal.

Agent of Change Hits the Mark (most of the time).

Reviewing: Experiencing Reality

Cathey’s introduction to Experiencing Reality states that the purpose of his book is not to provide a technical manual but rather a series of stories for the reader to freely interpret for themselves. All stories begin with a quote, and most end with a paragraph (or sentence) how the experience relates to Cathey’s varying approaches to work as an agent of change.

I found most of the stories provoking thought in a pleasantly straightforward way and but a few falling short due to insufficient content which, in these moments, pressed the narrative into producing a somewhat moralising tone. These stories came across in need of further polishing to not be described as simply stating bog-standard common sense. But on the whole, Cathey’s earnest and uncomplicated writing embodies his competence as an agent of change for young people and the reader will get the most out of these stories if they are interested in working in similar areas. It is through the more spontaneous situations in his stories that Cathey actually goes into some basic level of practical technique (despite his earlier saying otherwise) and this is where he is obviously at his best—and the book at its most applicable. "Working Within People’s Capabilities" was a stand-out story for me in this regard as was "Stacking Firewood".

This book could be considered as a useful primer for people starting out in the field of change work and a handy reference tome for the years to follow.