SDH · Strategic Dialogue HypnotherapyAaron Ellis · Brisbane

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A voyage through the method

Answers don't change people.Questions do.

Nine modules. Eight question families. One discipline. Scroll, and travel.

The premise

A client handed an insight will politely agree — and keep the problem. A client who finds their own cannot un-see it.

Every problem stands like an arch — held up by a keystone. Everything ahead exists to find it.

Leg One · Module 0

Priming — setting the frame

Before a single question is asked, the room is prepared. The client learns three things without being told them: the pause is part of the work. The practitioner will not rescue their struggle. And whatever is found here will be theirs.

"Take all the time you need. I'm not going anywhere."

Leg Two · Module 1

History gathering — the discipline of restraint

The untrained instinct is to dive at the first interesting thing a client says. SDH trains the opposite: gather the surface, bank the ingredients, and wait.

"I've always been the strong one in the family…"

"It only really started after the move…"

"I don't know, it just feels heavy."

Leg Three · Modules 2–4

Investigation — the question constellation

Eight families across three disciplines — gather, excavate, test. A palette, not a sequence. The practitioner reads the moment and reaches for the star it calls for.

History gathering

"When did you first notice it?"

Reflective restatement

"You said 'heavy'. What kind of heavy?"

Present-experience

"What's happening for you right now, as you say that?"

Somatic tracking

"Where do you feel that in your body?"

Sequence mapping

"What happens just before that thought arrives?"

Exception mapping

"When is the problem not there?"

Meaning & consequence

"Now that you can see that — what does it mean?"

Resistance testing

"Try to bring the old feeling back. What happens?"

Restraint · gather Following · excavate Timing · test

Leg Four · Modules 5–6

The full arc — and knowing when it's done

The moment the old pattern collapses, the client says so themselves. Then the advanced discipline: no announcing the win, no rushing in with warmth. Down is not the same as settling. Movement means wait. Only once the new state is fully settled is it pressure-tested — then the client is brought safely home.

CollapseSettling — the waitTestedRe-oriented

Leg Five · Modules 7–8

Mastery — navigating by feel

Practitioners train with the full question wall visible. Then family names only. Then nothing — because by then the constellation lives in the practitioner, not on the wall. Mastery looks like restraint: fewer words, longer silences, questions that arrive at exactly the moment they're needed.

Stage one

The full wall — every family, every example, visible.

Stage two

Family names only.

Stage three

Nothing.

Answers don't change people. Questions do.

Strategic Dialogue Hypnotherapy is a question-led conversational method developed over seven years and more than 250 client sessions. Practitioner training runs as a live intensive, capped at ten seats.

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