Credentials

Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, American Council of Hypnotist Examiners. Certified Master Trainer with the International Association of Counselors and Therapists, and IACT Educator of the Year, 2016. Career Partner with the Newton Institute. Trained coast to coast with Gil Boyne, Ormond McGill, Michael Newton, Dolores Cannon, David Quigley, Paul Aurand and George Bien. And underneath all of it, a second generation hypnotherapist carrying his father's work forward.

Where It Began

A Legacy That Began at Home

Mark Johnson, Second Generation Hypnotherapist My father was a medical doctor in Charleston, South Carolina, a general practitioner who studied clinical hypnosis with Dave Elman and Milton Erickson themselves. He began delivering babies using hypnosis for pain control in the 1950s, more than 1,500 of them over his career. When my students learn the Elman induction in my classes today, they are learning it from me, and I learned it from the man Elman taught.

Some of my earliest memories are of my parents' Saturday night parties. My mother would let my brother and me sit quietly in the corner of the living room while my dad hypnotized the neighbors. As a teenager I refused to let him hypnotize me, convinced he would use it as a truth serum to find out what I had been up to. That is how normal this work was in our house: I was not afraid it would not work. I was afraid it would.

The Long Way Around

Twelve Years of Music,
Twelve Years of Code

I did not go straight into hypnosis. Music called first, and I answered it fully: studies at Berklee College of Music, then a Master of Music degree at North Texas in Denton, where, fittingly, I used hypnosis to manage my own test anxiety. I spent twelve years teaching keyboard and piano classes, and then a second career pulled at me, and I spent the next twelve as a software programmer, including four years writing code for match.com.

At the time, those felt like detours. They were the training. A dozen years of teaching taught me how to break a complex skill into steps a person can actually learn, and how to sit patiently with someone while they struggle toward it. A dozen years of programming taught me how systems behave, and the subconscious mind is the most powerful system there is. So much of what we do every day runs on programs we never consciously chose. I had spent twenty four years, without realizing it, preparing to work at exactly that level.

The Turn

2003, the Year
Everything Changed

In 2003 my mother passed away, and her loss set something in motion that I could not ignore. I threw myself into the study of hypnosis, every book and recording I could find, and then went and did it properly: my first hypnotherapy certification, a formal 500 hour program, in 2004. The timing had its own sense of humor. My IT company was running layoffs and gave us ten weeks of paid notice, so while my colleagues went to job interviews, I quietly spent those weeks in nine day a month intensive training blocks.

My father was still alive for six more years, and following in his footsteps gave us a bond in that season of life I would not trade for anything. I built my practice the way I now teach my students to build theirs: as a weekend warrior, seeing clients on evenings and weekends while the corporate job paid the bills, until 2010, when the last layoff came and I realized I did not need the safety net anymore. I left corporate life and never looked back.

The Craft

Trained by the Masters,
Then Handed the Chalk

After my initial certification I kept going, because in this field the education never really ends. In 2007 I traveled to Chicago to study Life Between Lives regression directly under Michael Newton, eventually becoming an instructor and lead trainer for his institute. In 2008 I began studying with Dolores Cannon in Arkansas, returning every year for five years for her advanced classes, and in 2014 I studied with David Quigley. Along the way my studies took me coast to coast with Gil Boyne, Ormond McGill, Paul Aurand and George Bien, and the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners awarded me the Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist designation.

I completed my teacher training in 2011 and began teaching my own classes in 2012, certifying students through the International Association of Counselors and Therapists. In 2016, IACT presented me the Educator of the Year Award, in recognition of excellence in communication and outstanding performance. Then March 2020 arrived with in person classes scheduled in Dallas and Atlanta, and lockdowns coming fast. My students asked one question: can we try it online? I merged the two classes, took the whole training onto Zoom, and discovered what my students have been proving ever since, that a live, interactive, supervised class online teaches every bit as deeply as the room did. The training has been live online ever since, and it is better for it.

  • Second Generation Hypnotherapist
  • Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, ACHE
  • Certified Master Trainer, IACT
  • IACT Educator of the Year, 2016
  • Career Partner, the Newton Institute

The Work Now

From a Country Home
in East Texas

These days I run the training and see clients from our home on four and a half acres in East Texas, where the commute is a walk past the chickens. The classroom reaches further than it ever did when I was on airplanes: students join live from across the country and around the world, and I still teach every class myself, the same way my father taught me this work matters, one real person at a time.

More than twenty years in, I am still learning every single day from the minds that sit in my chair. That is the honest secret of this profession, and it is the first thing I hand my students.

Hypnotherapy Training

5 Star Google Review

I was looking for a hypnotherapy class and referred to Mark by a board member of Michael Newton Institute. We had a 1:1 session. Mark was very nice and friendly. I was impressed with his life story and how he ended up to be a hypnotherapist. I got motivated since I also had come from engineering world to hypnosis world. During his class, I found him a very experienced and reliable person. Everyone in our class learned a lot and enjoyed very much. Mark is not only a professional hypnotherapist, but also has served the society by training many hypnotherapists. I like his consistent support of his students by providing resources and advice when needed. I hope this testimony help people who want to work with him as prospective student or as client.

Navid·Albuquerque

The Next Step

Curious Where Your Story Goes?

Whether you are exploring the hypnotherapy certification training or wondering what a private session could do for you, the next step is the same relaxed conversation. About 20 minutes, every question answered, no pressure and no obligation.

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Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

No degree, no prior clinical background and no previous experience with hypnosis. That surprises people, and it is worth being clear about why it is true. The field is self regulated, so the qualification that carries weight is certification through a recognized professional body rather than a university credential.

What you actually need is the training itself. In this program that means 110 hours of live class, 110 hours of self directed study, at least five complete sessions with people outside of class, a written assignment, an exam we prepare for together, a short ethics course through IACT and one recorded session you submit. Complete those and you hold certification through the International Association of Counselors and Therapists, recognized worldwide, with your first year of membership included. If you already have a clinical license or a coaching practice, this stacks on top of it rather than replacing it.

You sit with one person and help them change something they have not been able to change by willpower alone.

A session usually opens with a conversation. The presenting problem and the actual problem are often two different things, and finding the gap between them is most of the skill. Then you guide the person into a focused, relaxed state where the analytical part of the mind stops arguing. From there you work with what is underneath. The moment a fear was learned. The belief holding a habit in place. The part of them that has been protecting something long after the danger passed.

You are not performing anything and you are not putting anyone under your control. You are a guide, and the person stays aware and in charge the entire time.

In practice the work covers fears and phobias, stress and anxiety, habits including smoking and eating, confidence and performance, sleep, and grief. Sessions run about an hour to ninety minutes, and most people need a handful rather than years.

Yes, and most of my students do. The schedule was built around that. Three modules of four days, Thursday through Sunday, every other week, which for someone on a standard work week means six days of time off rather than three straight weeks away from your life. The self directed hours happen on your own schedule. Plenty of people have come through this program while holding a full time job, raising a family, or running another practice.

You do not need a quiet mind to put someone else into trance, and the two have almost nothing to do with each other. Some of my best students have said almost exactly that to me. My mind runs a hundred thousand miles an hour. I have too much mental clutter. Here is the first thing to understand: hypnosis is not meditation. You do not need to silence your thoughts or go unconscious to reach a deep trance. It is a state of focused attention, and analytical minds often make excellent subjects once you know how to work with them. I will teach you a whole set of clinical backup plans built for exactly this. One of them has the client pick a color for their relaxation and a different color for their chattering conscious mind, then breathe the second one out. Busy brains tend to drop straight down once they are given something to do.

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