How my journey began

Hypnosis is the tool you don’t think you need until you recognize how profound the change in your inner dialogue can be. 

“If you want to change the world, start with yourself.” — Mahatma Gandhi

I found hypnosis during a difficult time in my life when I was struggling with a lot of health issues.

One way or another we are constantly being shown signs from the universe, that push us towards healing our wounds in order to uncover our best selves.  These signs never show up as comfortable experiences.  Sometimes they appear as triggering people, difficult life events, or health problems. Sometimes, they make us feel like we’ve hit “rock bottom” where everything is falling apart, forcing us to examine our entire lives, attachments, and belief systems.  The biggest of my ground-shaking events came in the form of a physical illness.

At that time, I was working in the fashion industry, in the part of this field I knew deep down wasn’t contributing to the kind of world I wanted to be a part of. Even though I knew this, I felt deep shame over wanting to change the trajectory of my life. I felt shame over disappointing others if I were to leave.  I experienced even deeper shame over not doing enough with the privileges I’d been afforded.  In fact, I was doing the opposite: contributing to an industry – a world – I didn’t feel good about.  Maybe you can relate? 

As a coping mechanism, I poured myself into a series of hobbies that took up all of my attention.  I became obsessed with training my physical body, pushing its limits.  I started competing in weightlifting (as well as training other fun fitness modalities) which eventually lead me to have an unhealthy relationship with my body.   Looking back, through this experience, I learned a lot about forcing a physical outcome and why I was so preoccupied with making my evolution so visible.  I am grateful for those activities – they added color into my life – and I have continued to practice different aspects of them to this day.  They taught me discipline, patience, and self-trust.  By breaking myself repeatedly (through injuries and disordered eating), I was forced to learn how to put myself back together, even if in a slightly less significant way than my authentic soul was craving.  That big change of figuring out my life purpose, changing careers, being willing to lose the respect of family, altering my relationships with others, and my relationship with myself… that change was too big to even imagine at that time.  I didn’t know it’s what I was looking for. 

We learn the lessons we need anyway, and none of our detours are a waste of time.  I was deeply unsettled and unhappy with one part of my experience, and life was trying to show me what wasn’t working.  It was too intimidating to change this much (I didn’t even know what would make me happy instead), so the universe offered me some of those positive lessons in smaller doses.  I wasn’t ready to trust my inner intelligence yet.  I wasn’t ready for a bigger life purpose, but I was gathering my resources all along.  Inner trust, dedication.  Making mistakes, getting injured, picking myself back up, learning techniques to overcome, to get stronger than before.  Resilience. 

Eventually, the stress of my life in the fashion industry piled up high enough – the universe essentially saying: ok, you’ve delayed long enough – and my physical health started to deteriorate at a fast pace.  Nothing had changed leading up to the onset of my symptoms, but the compounded effects of years and years of background shame and stress finally expressed themselves.    

By the time I found hypnotherapy, I had already seen many doctors.  Most had told me I was imagining my symptoms, and that I was “perfectly healthy”, maybe just tired, and getting older.  Finally, after doing much of my own research and self-advocating, I was diagnosed with a “mild” case of an autoimmune condition (even though the list of symptoms at that point was anything but mild). 

It wasn’t until I had my first hypnotherapy session with my teacher Shauna (not my first hypnosis experience, but the first one with a guide that clicked for me) that I was able to see and feel myself in a different way.  In that trance, I fully experienced a different version of myself, with all of my senses.  Not only a healthy, thriving me, but the me who was also helping other people to become a better, more resourceful version of themselves.  I saw a version of myself who had a purpose! I left that first session feeling really good, and then would daydream about what I had seen in that trance.  Whenever I felt down, or unsure about myself, my health, my career, I would remember that version of me, and be able to tap into that feeling of relief.  In some ways, I was escaping into the world that I had seen in the trance.  Eventually, my body started healing, and it felt like my normal life was coming back.  I could eat more foods, I started training again, and discovered a passion for a new sport.  Honestly, I didn’t think that much about the hypnosis itself, except as a fond memory of a cool experience that gave me a really vivid “future memory” to reach towards, to look forward to. 

It wasn’t until years later, after leaving my career in fashion, and learning hypnotherapy from the practitioner’s perspective, that I see the importance of that emotionally charged session.  By fully experiencing something that hadn’t happened yet, my body already believed it was possible.  I had a memory of it.  A memory as real, as if that thing had actually occurred in real life.  I saw myself as a kind of healer, a change worker.  I could feel the cool air on my skin, smell the clean scent in the room.  I saw the face of my client and remembered the conversation we had had.  I was healthy and confident, and I helped my client to become healthy and confident as well.  In my mind’s eye, that thing had actually happened. 

As far as our unconscious mind is concerned, anything we show it, is as real as anything else it has witnessed.  So long as we experience a truly powerful thing, with all of our senses…  see it, feel it, hear it, smell, and taste it… that’s a real experience.  So now, knowing the science behind the power a single positive memory can hold, I absolutely believe that hypnosis played a huge role in my healing.   

That first session was key to giving me the drive, and confidence to slowly start changing my life.  That was big-picture visioning, which is so important to being a change worker of any type, following a passion, and creating a better future for ourselves and the generations that follow.   Since then, I’ve utilized hypnosis to unblock and reprogram old, unresourceful patterns picked up in my childhood, as well as at every stage along my journey to today.  Because this rewiring process works on the subconscious, hypnosis is both gentle, and powerful.  It can be used to target very specific behavior patterns (including our negative self-talk, impulses, how we respond to specific triggers, among so many others).  And the most fascinating thing is – we are all completely in charge of each of the changes we end up manifesting. 

Your therapist, as your guide, can show you where the patterns originated, give you the tools to access those outdated beliefs, and take you into the experience as it’s remembered in your mind.  But what you take away from the session, and how you utilize the knowledge, is 100% in your hands.  You can choose to change your psyche, just as you choose to change the world around you.  Think of how much more you can achieve, if you didn’t believe that you couldn’t.   

Food for thought:

What are you obsessed about, and how is it serving your higher purpose?

Do you know who you want to be, in the next five, the next ten years?

Is there anything holding you back from being the most authentic, inspired version of yourself?

Hypnosis can help you answer these questions.  Let it.