The Blade of Grass in the Desert
Forgotten Medicine for healing the Soul A Story of 100 Storys for Counseling and Therapy
The book reveals through 100 stories, how storytelling itself is the forgotten medicine for healing the soul.
The story begins with the King who is sad about the depression in his land and hopes that the adventure and mystery of storytelling can alleviate the misery. Following an idea of the king's wise men he calls out a conference of storytellers to be held at his court. The stories which are told at the kings court within the ten days of the conference represent ten major fields of storytelling as "partnership", "family life", "loss and berievement", "work" and "health". During the nights a second frame story containing further stories reveils the secrets of therapeutic storytelling.
There is a commentary to each story at the end of the book concerning its therapeutic use as well as a key word register and a detailed explanation for the therapist to understand the background and theory behind storytelling, linked to hypnotherapy, systemic therapy and NLP techniques.
Stefan Hammel works as a hypnotherapist and systemic therapist in Germany. He practices storytelling in his work and sees its timeless wisdom as a very powerful therapeutic method, which has proven extremely helpful to countless patients.
This book is a story of 100 stories and discusses their usefulness and adaptation by therapists to help alleviate the problems of their patients and help with their search for a fulfilled life.
"One should not talk about metaphors if one wants to achieve something with them. One must talk in and from them", says Stefan Hammel. This is what his book does from the first page on: it tells in stories how one can give impulses to make positive and significant life changes.
The 100 core stories are contained within a frame story, which leads, tongue-in-cheek, into the theme. Philosophically inquiring, therapeutically based, and repeatedly sprinkled with fine humour, the book covers the most important areas of counseling practice such as the world of work, partnership and family, health, the search for a fulfilled life, and coping with loss and death. Again and again, amazing insights emerge into the world of imagery in hypnotherapy.