What Is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a natural state of focused attention and heightened awareness.

Despite what movies and stage performers would have us believe, hypnosis is not mind control, sleep via a snap of the fingers, or surrendering your will to another person. In fact, you've likely experienced hypnotic states many times throughout your life:

• Becoming so completely absorbed in a book that hours go by without you realizing it.

• Driving a familiar route and arriving at your destination without remembering a single turn or stoplight.

• Losing track of time while creating art, writing, gardening, or daydreaming.

• Becoming so immersed in a movie that your body reacts emotionally to what you're watching.

Hypnosis simply allows us to intentionally access this focused state so that we can communicate more directly with the subconscious mind. The part of us responsible for habits, emotional responses, beliefs, memories, imagination, and much of our inner experience.

You remain aware, in control, and capable of ending the experience at any time.

What Hypnosis Is Not

You Cannot Be Controlled

Hypnosis is not mind control.

You cannot be forced to reveal secrets, violate your values, or do anything against your will. You remain aware of who you are and what is happening throughout the experience.

You Will Not Get "Stuck"

People sometimes worry that they might become trapped in hypnosis.

This cannot happen.

Hypnosis is a naturally occurring state. Even if a session were interrupted, you would simply return to ordinary awareness or drift into a normal state of relaxation.

There Are No Clucking Chickens

Stage hypnosis is entertainment.

The volunteers selected for stage performances are typically highly responsive individuals who willingly participate in creating a fun experience for an audience.

Therapeutic hypnosis is entirely different. It is a collaborative process designed to help you access your own inner resources, insights, and healing capacities.

Unless you have a deep desire to tap into primal animal energy, I will most definitely not be asking you to bark, dance, cluck like a chicken, or forget your name.

How Hypnosis Works

The conscious mind is excellent at analyzing, questioning, and protecting us.

The subconscious mind stores beliefs, emotional patterns, memories, habits, and learned responses.

Sometimes insight alone isn't enough to create change.

Visualize your lap top or desktop, even your iPad or phone, and think about what you use it for. How you use it. Now, imagine that device as your mind.

Some programs and apps were pre-installed. We're born knowing how to breathe, blink, yawn; our heart beats without having to be told by us, and our bodies perform countless other automatic functions without ever thinking about them.

Your conscious mind is like the desktop and internet browser. It's where your attention lives right now. Every thought, worry, memory, conversation, and to-do list is another tab open on the screen. Sometimes there are only a few tabs running. Other times, there are so many that everything begins to slow down. The mind feels overwhelmed, distracted, or exhausted simply trying to keep up.

If the conscious mind is the browser, the subconscious is the operating system. It's where the programming lives. It's where years of experiences, beliefs, habits, emotional responses, and learned patterns quietly run in the background, often without us even realizing it.

Every life experience writes a little more code.

A loving teacher might install a belief that says, I'm capable.

A painful betrayal might install another that whispers, I can’t trust anyone.

A childhood filled with criticism might create a program that constantly searches for mistakes before you've even spoken.

These programs aren't flaws; they're adaptations. At one point, they were trying to protect you.

But sometimes the operating system is still running code that was written decades ago, even though your life has changed.

This is where hypnotherapy becomes so powerful.

Rather than working with all of the busy tabs on the screen, hypnosis allows us to access the deeper programming underneath. Together, we can identify outdated beliefs, emotional patterns, and automatic responses that are no longer serving you.

We aren't erasing your past.

We're updating the software.

We can debug old programs, install healthier responses, and rewrite the beliefs that shape how you experience yourself and the world. The events themselves remain part of your story, but the meaning your nervous system has attached to them doesn't have to remain the same.

How I Use Hypnosis

My approach combines hypnosis with counseling, guided visualization, storytelling, symbolism, mindfulness, and somatic awareness.

Depending on your needs, hypnosis may be used for:

Deep Relaxation

To calm the nervous system, reduce overwhelm, and create a sense of safety and rest.

Anxiety and Stress Relief

To quiet racing thoughts, reduce emotional reactivity, and strengthen internal resources during difficult seasons of life.

Embodiment and Integration

After emotionally intense counseling sessions, hypnosis can help the body catch up with the insight that has already emerged.

Many clients understand something intellectually long before they truly feel it.

Hypnosis can help bridge that gap.

Pain Management

Hypnotic techniques have been used for decades to support comfort, reduce the perception of pain, and increase feelings of control during physical challenges.

Building Confidence and Self-Trust

To strengthen inner resilience, challenge limiting beliefs, and reconnect with your own wisdom and intuition.

Grief and Life Transitions

To support individuals moving through loss, identity shifts, endings, beginnings, and major thresholds of life.

Mythic and Symbolic Exploration

One of my favorite ways to work.

Through guided journeys and hypnotic visualization, clients may explore inner landscapes, symbolic imagery, archetypes, crossroads, forgotten parts of themselves, meet with spirit guides, ancestors, chat with our Higher Selves, and hopefully, reconnect with personal stories seeking to be understood.

These experiences are not about predicting the future or receiving external answers.

They are opportunities to engage with the rich symbolic language of the subconscious mind and discover meaning, insight, and self-understanding.