As a physician, caregiver, or healthcare professional, your influence is significant. Bedside manner and compassion are a foundation, but they are not enough to improve your patients' health and healing.

Your words, mood, and authority shape your patients’ physical reality. This course guides you to use that influence intentionally for healing.

What You Will Learn

Each module in this 15-hour, self-paced course equips you with practical tools for healing communication. By the end of the course, you will directly enhance patient care and outcomes.

Foundations & Waking Suggestion: You will learn the evidence-based definition of medical hypnosis, how clinical communication influences health and healing, and how to transform everyday patient interactions, including greetings, goodbyes, informed consent, and the delivery of difficult news, into therapeutic acts.

Clinical Application of Waking Suggestion & Trance: You will gain a deeper understanding of medical hypnosis, including waking suggestion, hypnotic trance, and induction, applied directly to clinical contexts, including infertility and cancer care.

The Worry Protocol: You will learn the clinically tested four-step protocol that eliminates the worry habit, along with the science behind it and recorded patient demonstrations.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of the course, you will gain:

• A working understanding of noetic medicine and its relationship to medical hypnosis and mind-body medicine.
• A clear definition of the four pillars of the clinical hypnotic method and how it differs from stage hypnosis.
• Practical language tools you can deploy in your next patient encounter.
• Real-world applicable techniques for developing therapeutic rapport across clinical settings, including greetings and goodbyes, painless injections, informed consent, delivering difficult news, pre-surgical preparation, and emergency situations.
• An advanced understanding of the role of trance in clinical care and when to use it.
• Proficiency in the Worry Protocol and the ability to deliver the four-step method for to eliminate the worry habit to patients.
• Confidence applying waking suggestion in exam rooms, the ED, difficult diagnoses, and phone consultations.

The Framework

Dr. Steve Bierman has spent his medical and research career in pursuit of a single insight: the ideas we express or imply can produce physical responses. This is especially important in the exchange between a caregiver and a patient, where words can become prescriptive.

The philosophy that ideas, communication, and mind medicine can influence health and healing is known as Noetic Medicine. In 2024, Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Steve Bierman founded the Noetic Medicine Initiative to expand research and training in healthcare.

Every Interaction Is an Intervention

When a clinician says, “This is going to hurt,” that is not information — it is a suggestion. When a physician says, “I’m not sure there’s anything more we can do,” that is, however unintentionally, known in Noetic Medicine as a curse. Words influence patient outcomes. This course teaches you to choose them accordingly.

The foundation of Dr. Bierman’s approach rests on one principle: every caregiver-patient interaction is either therapeutic or anti-therapeutic. There is no neutral ground. This is a documented, clinical observation visible every day in the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, and in every exchange between a physician or care provider and a patient.

In this course, you will learn to recognize the power of your words and gain tools to use them consciously in clinical settings. You will learn the definitions of clinical curses and healing suggestions, and how these are not a substitute for medical treatment but can meaningfully affect patient outcomes.

From the Emergency Department to Clinical Research & Training

Dr. Bierman discovered in the Emergency Department that both hypnosis and waking suggestion could support patients. The key was using language purposefully in the patient relationship.

These principles are embedded throughout the course. You will learn how to use clinical hypnosis, hypnotic trance, and waking suggestion in exam rooms, emergency departments, and phone consultations. The setting changes. The principles do not.

Course Methodology

This is a self-paced, on-demand video course designed to fit into the schedules of working clinicians. Learners can expect to invest approximately 15 hours completing the full curriculum.

The course is organized into four modules: an introduction to mind medicine and clinical hypnosis; clinical application across a range of real-world settings; the Worry Protocol; and a concluding wrap-up. Each module builds on the previous one, moving from foundational concepts to direct clinical application.

Dr. Bierman teaches through direct lectures, recorded patient demonstrations, and clinical-scenario walkthroughs, giving learners the opportunity to observe the principles in action before applying them independently. Downloadable materials are included to support learning and future reference.

Knowledge assessments are embedded throughout the course to reinforce key concepts. Upon completing all coursework and the course evaluation, a certificate of completion is available for download.

Target Audience

This course is designed for physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, physician assistants, psychologists, psychiatrists, and licensed therapists across all specialties, as well as any healthcare professional interested in an integrative approach to healing.

About the Instructor

Dr. Steve Bierman is a physician, educator, and pioneer in the clinical application of medical hypnosis and noetic medicine. With decades of practice spanning emergency medicine and integrative care, Dr. Bierman has developed a methodology that is both scientifically grounded and immediately applicable, regardless of specialty or setting.

Curriculum

Introduction

• Introduction to Mind Medicine and Clinical Hypnosis
• Hypnotic Method: Authority & Rapport Patterns
• Hypnotic Method: Language & Linkage
• Hypnotic Method: Clarifications & Wrap-up

Application of Mind Medicine and Clinical Hypnosis

• Greetings and Goodbyes
• Painless Injections
• Informed Consent
• Delivering Bad News
• Trance Induction
• Pre-Surgery
• Other Skills and Refinements

The Worry Protocol

• Worry Protocol Overview
• Worry Protocol Demonstration
• Worry Protocol: Post-Demo Review & Instructions

Wrap-Up

• Concluding Thoughts
• Introductory Noetic Medicine Evaluation

Completion Requirements & Certificate

Complete all coursework and the course evaluation. Upon successful completion, a link to your certificate of completion will be available for download at any time from “My Account.”

Course Time Investment: Learners can expect to spend 15.25 hours completing this course.

This course was made possible through the generous support of Mr. Al Assad and Mr. Gabriel Wisdom.

Disclaimer: This course does not constitute medical advice. Healthcare providers should exercise their own independent medical judgment.