Janice Russell

NLP Portugal

I have just returned from the NLP practitioner course that was delivered by Dr Janice Russell. We covered an enormous amount over the week and I finished with a huge sense of achievement.

Thank you Janice for knowing what was needed at every step of the way to motivate and support our group. I appreciated your thorough teaching and look forward to more courses in the future.

Kindest regards
Louise Gray

Excellent NLP Course - I didn't want it to end!

Wonderful diploma course with Jan Russell. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and looked forward to each session. Jan is an excellent teacher and ensured the sessions were engaging with a good mix of practical exercises, didactic and discussions. Grateful for the extra tools I now have in my toolbox, I can see how invaluable they are going to be. Really recommend Jan's teaching style and format. Excellent all the way.

Janice Russell Review

Jan has been my NLP tutor for the last 3 years, supporting my NLP journey to Mastery. I have loved every minute of working with Jan, she is a fantastic tutor, and I couldn't have reached my NLP Masters level without Jan. I would recommend Jan to anyone wishing to develop their NLP learning and skills. Thank you Jan

Using NLP on our Website

Whilst redesigning our company website we called upon the services of Jan Russell to help us with the language and content within the site.
Jan made a huge difference by re-wording technical jargon and creating a much softer approach. Having a third party view of someone who does not work in our industry helped tremendously, allowing us to write content in a much more reader friendly way.
Jan was very efficient and thorough and came up with some brilliant ideas, drawing upon her vast NLP knowledge and expertise. She also communicated well with us throughout the whole process so we kept to time schedules.
We are so pleased we sought Jan's services and would highly recommend using her!

A review by Thanasis Mamalis

Instead of finding a course in Denmark – the land of education – I followed my intuition and participated at Jan’s practitioner course in Portugal. And I discovered Jan! Not sure if she really knows about the amount of inspiration that she provides her participants with. Her story telling, her metaphors, her experience and knowledge – her self! Thank you for an intense and wonderful week!

A review by Elaine Clowes

Jan is the type of trainer that only comes along occasionally; that special trainer who lives and breathes their subject; who relaxes and enjoys every session; who goes with the flow of the people in the room. It has been a great pleasure to learn from her throughout the practitioner and masters; the way Jan delivers, even if you only ever use it to master yourself it's worth every penny and more. Thank you Jan.

A review by Danielle Nelson 1

I have trained with Jan twice now and I'm not exaggerating when I say both experiences were life changing, what I have taken away has helped me astronomically both personally and professionally. She is a master at what she does and is a joy to learn from, excellent trainer.

A review by Natalie Holmes 1

I have had the fortune of being Jans delegate for over 6 years, becoming an NLP master practitioner most recently. Jans knowledge and skill show in everything she facilitates. Her style and ethos makes her training real and adaptable. Her ethical approach has allowed me access to high quality training,which I am forever grateful for. Thoroughly recommended! Life Changing!

A review by Maxine Morley 1

I had the great pleasure of having both NLP diploma and practitioner training with Jan. She provided an incredibly supportive and safe space to be in and very ethicallly minded. Kept our focus on learning and being the best we could be. Demonstrated great knowledge and practical examples which gave us great learning. I wouldn't hesitate to highly recommended her

A light accessible dip in book full of interesting ideas and resources for health and wellbeing without obsession.

Reviewing: Imperfectly Natural Woman: Getting Life Right the Natural Way

An interesting book by Janey Lee Grace, who writes in a warm, straight-talking tone, with a consistent attitude to physical and mental health as integrated circuitry.

I was drawn to the title, ‘imperfect’ and ‘natural’ are values which speak to me. The book fulfils two intentions. One, to pack in information on natural resources for health and energetic treatments, and two, to assert that it’s okay not to get everything absolutely ‘right’, or be purist. The result is a compendium of non-judgmental recommendations for women which support health and wellbeing.

Janey Lee promises recommendations we can trust, and references for more information, and keeps her promise. There are lots of references, website addresses, recommendations of places to go in order to buy particular foodstuffs/remedies/resources. It’s well organised into sections, and easy to explore particular themes.

I enjoyed the full and interesting section on ‘feminine care’, speaking freely and openly about periods, cups, period pain, contraception, and HRT, it is upfront and empowering. I liked the hormone replacement therapy cake recipe – cooking as we speak! It's good to hear frank discussion and useful resources concerning the female reproductive system, and no doubt there is updating to be done here.

The limitation of the book is that it will only suit some demographics. Great recommendations on products, treatments and restaurants assume a certain geographical locality, agility, and budget. The skin and hair sections are fairly limited to caucasian needs and practices.
There are some interesting cameos of other people's lifestyles, fun, easy to read and inspiring, diverse in range and cost.

I really enjoyed Janey Lee Grace's accomplishment and intention in this book, she is a great model of determination and ethical awareness, and I like her knowledge and attitude. I wonder if she might update this book, a friendly resource.

Hypnosis is so good for you!

Reviewing: Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents – Second Edition

Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents Sugarman, L & Wester, W. (eds) 2014 2nd edition Crown House Publishing ISBN 13: 9781845908737

This was an illuminating read, not only on working with children and adolescents, also on the theme of hypnosis generally. I offered to write the review as I train social workers who want to take a more coaching approach to working with young people. I’m also a certified trainer of NLP, not specifically trained in hypnosis. These are my perspectives.

Like the first edition, this is eminently readable, and extremely thorough, drawing on a wide range of expertise and illustration. I found myself reading it almost as a novel, while inevitably spending longer in some parts than others. It is stimulating and comprehensible.

The editors introduce the book by relating the theme to context, suggesting that children are eminently open to suggestive work as they are often naturally entranced, and, unfettered, tend to have the capacity of vivid imagination. Sugarman & Wester suggest that trance is a `neurodevelopmental imperative that occurs without hypnosis’ (p.7) and they are keen to differentiate it from hypnosis. They offer an operational definition of the latter as
`the purposeful utilisation of these unconscious processes called trance for an expressed purpose with or without conscious awareness ‘p.7.

Given that children are in constant process of psycho-physiological change, they are often open to hypnosis when the practitioner is skilled enough to create the utilisation.

The authors locate the whole practice within an ethical and professional matrix where it is the hypnotist who needs to work on putting him/herself in the appropriate state to create a working alliance. Purposeful hypnosis is located within a matrix of communication skills, strategies, and purpose.

Sugarman and Wester emphasise that this purpose be patient centred, and offer a welcome developmental framework of hypnosis. They contrast the `vessel’ approach to hypnosis, where the patient is `put under’, with the more elegant and ethical means of pacing and leading so wonderfully pioneered by Erikson, utilising the patient’s own resources and frameworks. Thus whatever the patient brings to the work is both essential and sufficient for change. Having picked up fallout from inept `vessel’ type hypnosis, where clients have made hasty decisions after one `regressive session’, I welcome this emphasis. This book is all about the engagement and empowerment model, how to playfully work with the subconscious with creativity and innovation.

Part One proceeds with elegant offerings of induction approaches and hypnotic techniques which furthers the above propositions. It is straightforward, outlining the changing nature of the form of imagination through a lifetime, moving through the childish notion of the imaginary friend, to reliving childhood memories, creating sexual fantasies, planning our futures, planning for retirement. I like how this stimulates ideas for where the client’s imagination might be focused at particular points, not as a constraining protocol, more as a reminder to think widely of what fantasy and imagination might mean.
Part Two focuses on contexts within which hypnosis has been used with children and young people, ranging from chronic illness, war trauma, developmental issues, anxiety management, acute pain management, you name it, it’s there and there are copious well written case histories, careful admission of where there is not yet evidence, a very honest and informative approach.

I was particularly struck by the pragmatic consideration on working with those who are labelled within our statutory systems, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder. Taylor & Sugarman propose that we need to use language which `assigns maximum positivity (p.297). They propose the term `difforder’ rather than disorder, a term which recognises difference rather than judges as lacking. Currently, there is a danger of associating children who are finding difficulty in their worlds with very negative connotations. They suggest `(the) essence of therapeutic communication is the expression of greater faith in others than they may have in themselves’ (ibid). This blend of the simplest rules of effective communication, the principle of ethical respect, alongside the more detailed case histories and deeper inductive work is blindingly refreshing. There is a very exciting suggestion regarding how hypnosis might help work with Conduct Disorder, a `condition’ which is increasingly thought to have an epigenetic element. There is an excellent case history illustrating how hypnosis helped a young girl, Lilly, on the Autism Spectrum, to reduce anxiety. There is the reminder that where we find `resistance’, we need simply to take it as a sign that something is being missed out.

What else might I say? I would recommend any student of hypnosis who is working with children and young people to read this book. It is theoretically and practically evidenced and inspiring, and an excellent resource. I leave you with the final thoughts from contributors Kane & Liness, that hypnosis can and does violate physiological knowledge, in other words can defy what we think we know.

`That’s why hypnosis is so good for you. Once you…set aside your assumptions that you know how the world works, then it opens a great many things to you as a person, in order to believe in the things that other people can do.’ Kane & Liness (2004), p. 323.