Hypnotherapy Techniques

LEARN ABOUT THE VARIETY OF TECHNIQUES AND MODALITIES  AVAILABLE

Just as every client is an individual with a unique set of experiences, issues, and goals, each of my private sessions is exclusively tailored to provide the best results. I have a wide range of techniques available and I choose those that will best fit the needs and goals of my client.

 

Hypnotherapy

A RELAXED AND RECEPTIVE STATE OF MIND

Hypnosis is a pleasurable state of focused relaxation that catalyzes expanded perspectives and a connection to higher levels of awareness. Through the trance state of hypnotherapy, the conscious mind has greater access to the wisdom and memories stored in the subconscious mind. It’s like a meditation on steroids. Hypnotherapy provides a “container” within which to discover patterns, choices, relationships, past lives, soul purpose, and much more.

You may be surprised to learn that hypnotherapy is very different from what you might see on television. There are no slumped bodies, clucking like chickens, or other entertaining (and embarrassing) antics. That is “stage hypnosis.” In reality, hypnotherapy is a different field, a healing art, although some of the same induction techniques may be applied.

Using one of a number of gentle induction techniques, you’ll find yourself relaxing into a wonderfully peaceful state. Once there, you’ll begin to explore memories, perceptions, relationships, patterns, and other pertinent perspectives. The result is the development of new, more useful, patterns, behaviors, and attitudes, and the resolution of trauma, addiction, and self-sabotage.

In the LaBay Method of Hypnotherapy, once you’ve entered into the ‘hypnotic envelope’, a personally-curated set of techniques are applied to reach the stated goal for the session. At the end of the session, the client emerges from trance and resumes normal wakeful functioning, remembering all that they have explored and discovered.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

RAPID HEALING MODALITIES

These techniques are mind-boggling! Originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP has grown in popularity as a method of catalyzing rapid change. In its pure form, NLP is conducted without hypnotherapy, simply open-eyed, and in everyday conscious awareness.

The LaBay Method of Integrative Hypnotherapy combines the focused trance state of the ‘hypnotic envelope’ with the powerful techniques of NLP, creating a profound and rapid pathway to self-awareness, desired change, and sustainable well-being.

TERMS USED IN HYPNOTHERAPY AND NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING:

  • Induction: Have you ever tried to stop in the middle of a busy day and clear your mind to meditate? It isn’t easy, is it? An induction is a gentle guided visualization that grounds, centers, and focuses your mind so you can relax and explore.
  • Guided Imagery: A narrator (or therapist) tells an imaginative, descriptive story to guide you into relaxation, a safe space, or a metaphor useful to your session.
  • Safe Space: An imaginary place you create that brings you a sense of relaxation, protection, and freedom to be yourself.
  • Empowerment Symbol: This is magical! Technically, it’s an anchoring technique I developed that’s a gift given by your higher consciousness to bring you specific energy and character traits to assist you throughout the session and your life moving forward. It’s like a Harry Potter magical tool that really works!
  • Regression: This is a journey backward along your timeline from the present to various important moments in your history to discover the event that initiated a habit or emotional response.
  • Secondary Gains: You’ll love this if you want to discover the underlying pros and cons that are associated with any behaviors or conditions that may sabotage your life, goals, or efforts to change.
  • Parts Therapy: If you struggle with decisions or experience inner conflict (we all do), this technique rapidly brings clarity and resolves these issues.
  • Inner Child Work: I’ve created an effective version of this psychology tool that heals childhood traumas without having to relive any of the details. That younger you will be done having a tantrum and will be ready to go out and play.
  • Object Imagery: Perfect for sensations of pain or blocks, you’ll create an image that delivers its message along with a pathway for resolving it to healthier functionality.
  • Reverse Metaphor: I originated this technique, which allows the client’s subconscious mind to reveal its secrets and perspectives to the conscious mind through storytelling. This technique can be utilized for any issue, allows you to become your own psychic, and is also useful in dream interpretation.
  • Desensitization: Trauma, PTSD, fears, and phobias, oh my! It’s frightening to think about facing your fears. This technique allows you to gracefully and calmly resolve the fear with calm and courage.
  • Chair Therapy: Relationships, oy vey! They are the best and the worst. They bring us endless opportunities to learn and grow. This technique is applied when resolving relationship issues between family members, colleagues, friends, and others, as well as supporting the grief process and creating closure. Interesting fact: a high percentage of people report that after their session, the other person has also changed! Proof that we can telepathically communicate? You know I’m a believer!
  • Swish: This is a dizzying whirlwind of a process, but it works rapidly on many levels to resolve unwanted habits, anchoring new responses to troublesome stimuli.
  • Role Model: Why wait to try on your new results? Step right in and experience a new, improved version of yourself to anchor fresh perspectives and behaviors.
  • Future Pacing: Once you’ve achieved your new perspectives and behaviors, carry them into the future along your personal timeline to strengthen sustainability over time.

My experience and skill set allow me to hold the space, lend additional energy, and choose the specific tools to reach your goals. It is a beautiful and life-changing experience!

Past Life Regression

FOUNDATIONAL TO SELF-DISCOVERY AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Ah, my favorite!

I know many people are still considering whether past lives exist, but how will you really know unless you open your mind to the experience of past life regression and try it out? You can also rely on the testimonies of millions of people who have recalled their other lifetimes.

Not only do you have countless other lives, but recalling them is fundamental to self-knowledge and any serious spiritual growth.

As a specialist in past life regression therapy for nearly 40 years, I’ve been a forerunner in innovative ways to facilitate these sessions. With so many techniques available at my disposal, my clients are always successful in retrieving memories of other lifetimes and the experiences between lives.

Beyond reviewing the events of another lifetime, it is possible to do so much more:

  • Understand your soul purpose and life purpose
  • Gain insights into relationships
  • Resolve karmic issues and cycles of behavior
  • Heal otherwise unexplained illnesses, diseases, personality quirks, addictions, phobias, and fears
  • Remember hard-earned wisdom, skills, and talents acquired in other lifetimes
  • Communicate with your past life aspect to share wisdom, lend support, and suggest options
  • Experience the time between lives to reduce the fear of dying, gain insights into the death experience, communicate with spirit guides and helpers, learn about your intention and purpose for this incarnation
  • Explore your role in history and how historical events affect you today
  • Access clues to your soul’s purpose

Past life exploration not only deepens your self-awareness but aids in enhancing your memory and expanding your consciousness.

Personal Coaching, Gestalt,

and the GROW Model

EFFECTIVE COACHING TECHNIQUES

Sometimes, it’s more beneficial to discuss your plans and decisions without using the trance state. My coaching techniques allow you to clarify your thoughts, expand your choices, pinpoint your true desires and goals, and set a course of action to move forward in your life.

At the client’s request, many sessions include a combination of coaching and hypnotherapy for the best results in attaining the stated goals.

My philosophy is that our bodies are precise instruments of communication between the conscious and the subconscious minds. If we pay attention to what is happening on all levels—body, mind, emotions, and energy—we can have all the information needed to make corrections and adjustments, to create sustainable happiness and wellness.

Gestalt Therapy, developed by Fritz Perls and others, is a practice of acute mindfulness applied within the therapy setting.

Throughout the session, awareness is drawn to the present experience, both for the client and for the therapist, on all levels mentioned above.  As the discussion continues around the chosen topic, the participants engage in “high noticing” of the internal responses experienced.

When combined with hypnotherapy, this is a powerful protocol for responding immediately to the signals produced by the wisdom of the subconscious mind—and making the desired changes and corrections.

The GROW Model is an effective tool that is recommended by the International Coaching Federation. Composed of four steps, it guides the client through

  • Goal – set a specific achievable outcome
  • Reality – explore the present state of the issue
  • Options – outline opportunities and choices available to the client
  • Will – create a plan for action steps the client agrees to put in place

This is a rapid method for shining a light on any quandary and quickly moving to resolution.

Sacred Journeys in Counseling

ACCESS WISDOM FROM THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

Turn on your innate psychic abilities! Tune into your inner wisdom, meet your spirit guides, spirit animals, and totems, and receive guidance and wisdom concerning your past, present, and future.

A shamanic journey traditionally involves a shaman guiding a participant through a visionary world to collect pertinent information, guidance, and wisdom.

Shamans are the “medicine people” of indigenous tribes around the world. They are known to have the ability to access the spirit world while in a state of altered consciousness.

In my private practice, I’ve created a modified version of such a journey I call a Sacred Journey, useful in opening communication with spirit guides as well as with the participant’s higher self or subconscious mind. In my version, the practitioner and client stay in dialogue to provide an enhanced experience of personalized feedback, support, and guidance.

The Sacred Journey is a fascinating adventure through the landscape of the participant’s higher consciousness, lush with wisdom and awareness, and opening the gateway to access the spiritual realms, including guidance from spirit guides and other supporters.

Specific goals are often set in mind as the participant enters the Journey, such as resolving an issue, gaining an understanding of a decision at hand, or peering into the future of their life path to see what lies ahead. Their subconscious mind is also allowed the freedom to reveal an unexpected, yet vital, message.

Soul Retrieval in Counseling

REGAIN WHOLENESS AND EMPOWERMENT

If you’ve ever experienced trauma, fright, or given away your power in a situation, it caused a loss of soul fragments (energy) or character traits (such as innocence, trust, independence, creativity). The Soul Retrieval technique, modified from shamanic style traditions, gives you the opportunity to locate and reintegrate that soul fragment into your life.

In traditional versions of this technique, the shaman travels through the “worlds” to locate and retrieve the missing fragment. The shaman completes the work, and the participant may not have any awareness of what has occurred.

Shamans are the “medicine people” of indigenous tribes around the world. They are typically those who can access the spirit world while in a state of altered consciousness.

My modified version of Soul Retrieval involves my client relaxing into a trance, regressing to an earlier age (or previous lifetime) to locate a trait or part of the personality, soul, energy field, or consciousness that has been left behind. Clients have stated a loss of a sense of innocence, trust, spontaneity, independence, joy, power, creativity, and so forth. Most likely, these traits are still present but have become inaccessible to them. These parts of the personality or soul have simply been fragmented, hidden, taken away, blocked, forgotten, given away, or discarded.

Once the fragment is located, the circumstances of the loss are explored and therapy techniques are applied to strengthen and correct the problem so it is unlikely to happen again.

Once the client is prepared, they can reintegrate the soul fragment in a manner of their choosing.

It is a beautiful and gratifying protocol that empowers you on many levels.

Spirit Guide Communication

GUIDANCE AND MESSAGE FROM BEYOND

Spirit Guides are our “unseen” helpers. Although many titles have been used to refer to them, such as angel, guardian angel, guards, a true spirit guide is a being whose role is to guide you on your journey, encouraging, inspiring, challenging, and lending wisdom for the sole purpose of your spiritual growth.

When you have a true spirit guide, they are present with you for your benefit and spiritual growth. They do not have to make it easier on you, although they frequently lend assistance. If they deem it more beneficial to make things harder, for a course correction or soul growth, they may take that route.

Imagine the doors that will open when you can receive clear messages from your spiritual helpers. Establishing your relationship with your spirit guide is truly gratifying and will bring life-long guidance and assistance.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

RETURN TO BALANCED EMOTIONS

EFT is a fascinating and easy tool that provides rapid relief from negative emotions. It involves a series of self-administered taps on the head, hands, and body that relate to specific meridian points. Meridians are the lines of energy that run through the body and are often associated with acupuncture procedures.

I’ve witnessed remarkable results with clients who have improved their golf game, removed headaches, released pain, obsessions, and negative emotions, and so much more.

After this technique is used in a session, I offer you a diagram and instructions so you can continue to practice this technique whenever it is needed in your life moving forward.

Eye Movement Therapy

ANCHORING NEW RESPONSES

There is a theory that memories are stored in the brain through sensory channels, most notably visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. There is a correlation between these sensory accessing modalities and the direction in which the eyes move. For instance, when we are attempting to remember something that has been stored in our visual channel, we tend to look upward. When we recall something we heard, we tend to look to the side, in the direction of our ears. While remembering something we felt, we tend to look downward.

When disturbing memories are being processed, moving the eyes from right to left while looking up, looking straight ahead, and looking downward can dislodge the intensity of that event. Likewise, when new feelings and perspectives are accessed, eye movement therapy may help to anchor them.

In my practice, eye movement is occasionally applied in context with other techniques as needed.

Applied Kinesiology

MUSCLE TEST FOR ANSWERS

Also known as muscle testing, this technique may be used to ask the subconscious mind to respond to yes-and-no questions. By using a distinct connection between a person’s thoughts and the strength of their muscles, the body reveals what the higher consciousness already knows.

While used only occasionally in a hypnotherapy or coaching session, muscle testing is a powerful tool that can be incorporated when warranted.

This is an alternative therapy process. It is not used in my sessions for diagnosis, evaluation, or prescribing but rather to explore and broaden options when the client is feeling stuck or answers are not readily available.

Further, when a client has strong abreaction—a severe and sustained emotional response such as uncontrollable crying—a variation of applied kinesiology is effectively used to calm and desensitize that particular emotional trigger.

Astrology in the Therapy Session

INSIGHTS IN THE STARS

Your natal astrology chart provides a cornucopia of information that can be used as a stand-alone reading or aptly applied to coaching and therapy sessions. The chart provides a type of roadmap of the personality and insightful directions for a productive hypnotherapy or coaching session.

Prior to our session, I’ll use a computer program to access your natal astrological information, using the natal chart alone and combined with the current planetary transits.

By consulting the chart, I get a glimpse into the personality and tendencies of my client that otherwise may take a long discussion.

Tarot Readings in the Coaching Session

REVELATIONS IN THE CARDS

Tarot cards are one of the most versatile, portable, and illuminating tools available for gaining perspective, wisdom, and insight into the past, the present, and the future.

They reveal deeper knowledge about relationships, finances, career choices, health, dream interpretations, communication from guides—any topic at all. By properly framing questions, you can learn about hidden and unexpected details, confirmation of known facts, the motivation of the people involved, past life influences and events, alternative and creative perspectives, guidance, outcomes of choices, the path ahead, and so much more.

Tarot readings can be incorporated into any counseling or coaching session, or booked as a stand-alone session.