Welcome to my website, for prospective clients, hypnosis students, and colleagues
Many men and women eventually find themselves navigating the second half of life. Retirement decisions, changing health, the loss of contemporaries, shifting identity, and questions of meaning and legacy can bring both reflection and unease. This stage is not simply about decline. It is about integration, discernment, and redefining purpose. At a certain point, most of life’s great ambitions have been accomplished. What remains becomes more intentional: creating meaningful moments, tending relationships, and shaping memories that will be carried forward. Experienced therapists and helping professionals often face a parallel reckoning. Despite competence and dedication, burnout, existential fatigue, or private self-doubt can surface. Competence does not shield anyone from transition. The work here is thoughtful, depth-oriented, and grounded in respect for the complexity of a life fully lived. I provide individual psychotherapy for adults age 18 and older, integrating evidence-based treatment with advanced clinical hypnotherapy to support emotional healing, personal growth, and mind-body wellness.
My areas of interest and specialization include:
• Psychotherapy enhanced by the study and practice of hypnosis
• The therapeutic use of film to illuminate life themes and promote insight
• Grief, loss, and the process of emotional acceptance
• Aging with resilience, meaning, and grace
• Understanding how modern culture shapes relationships and emotional well-being
In addition to my clinical practice, I have trained clinicians and wellness professionals in hypnosis for many years, emphasizing ethical practice, experiential learning, and immediately usable skills.
James M. Hislop, LCSW-
R
NYS Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Board-Certified Hypnotherapist and Hypnotherapy Instructor
I provide psychotherapy and clinical hypnotherapy for adults, integrating evidence-based treatment with advanced hypnosis to support emotional healing, personal growth, and mind-body well-being. My work is thoughtful, collaborative, and grounded in many years of clinical practice.
Areas of focus include grief and loss, emotional regulation, life transitions, stress-related concerns, and aging with resilience, meaning, and dignity. I work with individuals seeking deeper understanding, relief from long-standing patterns, and a more integrated relationship with themselves.
In addition to my clinical practice, I offer professional training and consultation in hypnosis for clinicians and helping professionals.
I am available for in-person psychotherapy sessions as well as secure telephone and audio-visual consultations. Sessions may be conducted from the location where you feel most comfortable and safe.
To inquire about services, please call my private office line at 518-577-8367 and leave a message with your name, phone number, and preferred availability. Email jmh@jameshislop.com. I make every effort to return calls by the next business day.
If you are experiencing a psychiatric emergency, please contact your local emergency room or emergency services.
In March 2025, three new Certified Consulting Hypnotists successfully completed this program.
ABOUT THE HYPNOSIS CERTIFICATION PROGRAM
The course begins with the fundamentals of hypnosis, including induction, deepening, suggestion, imagery, and reorientation, and gradually moves toward more sophisticated applications.
Participants explore hypnosis for anxiety and emotional regulation, habits and behavior change, confidence and performance, pain and health concerns, trauma-informed work, grief, resistance and ambivalence, creativity, and personal growth. Some enhance current professional skills and some proceed to become professional hypnotists for a new career.
Throughout the training, participants:
• Experience hypnosis themselves and practice extensively with partners
• Learn and practice inductions, deepening, suggestion, imagery, ego-strengthening, and other hypnotic procedures
• Observe demonstrations and discuss what makes an intervention effective
• Receive individualized feedback within a small, supportive professional cohort
• Learn to adapt hypnosis to the professional skills and interests they already possess
• Develop confidence and flexibility rather than simply memorizing scripts
• Earn hypnosis certification upon successful completion of the program
The goal is not simply to learn about hypnosis. It is to become comfortable doing it.
WHO THIS TRAINING IS FOR
The program is designed for mental health professionals, social workers, counselors, nurses, physicians, and experienced healing or wellness practitioners seeking a practical and professionally grounded approach to hypnosis.
Previous experience with hypnosis is not required. Curiosity, willingness to participate, and an interest in learning through direct experience are more important.
Format: 100 hours over five alternate weekends
Next Cohort: 2027
Tuition: $2,000
Deposit: $500, with the remaining $1,500 due before training begins
Enrollment: Maximum six participants
Admission: Brief screening conversation required
“It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames. We all do things, both awake and asleep, which surprise us. Perhaps we have co-tenants in this house we live in…”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, quoted in The Myth of Sanity, by Martha Stout, PhD
“We humans are anatomically and behaviorally two different people, in constant conflict...”
— Stephen Wolinsky, PhD., Trances People Live
Hypnosis is an especially effective influence technology that is at the heart of advertising, religion, politics, courtship, and psychotherapy.
Consulting hypnotists are non-licensed professionals who offer important client services, including smoking cessation, weight management, and stress reduction to individuals, groups and corporations. Other services include attention training, self-hypnosis, theatre techniques, confidence building, public speaking, spirituality, and many others.
Hypnotherapists, [MSW, PhD, RN, LMHC, MD], as licensed therapists, may use the same hypnosis theory and techniques for diagnostically appropriate mental health services including age-regression, parts therapy, Gestalt therapy, and other techniques.
“The job of the hypnotist was no longer to induce a trance, but rather to dehypnotize the individual out of the trance he/she was already experiencing...”
— Stephen Wolinsky, PhD., Trances People Live