Although Somatic Hypnotherapy is a very effective approach, the promise that you will experience a significant improvement in your condition at the end of your first session is bold.

In real life you cannot expect extraordinary results by following ordinary paths. Therefore, your experience in Somatic Hypnotherapy will not be an ordinary experience and probably will not be what you think it should be. Hopefully, this experience will exceed your expectations so much that you will perceive it as one of the most extraordinary experiences of your entire life.

During your first visit, we will discuss what is bothering you, your goals, and your expectations - to determine if and how Somatic Hypnotherapy could help you achieve the desired changes. Most likely, what is prompting you to seek help are not mere memories of the past, but rather involuntary projections into everyday reality of your troubling and unhealed past experiences. Whether you call this unpleasant reality stress, anxiety, trauma, pain, or other disturbing feelings, I can only help you to the extent that, in your case, what bothers you most is what you experience inside you, your emotional feelings, and not the mental reading of your feelings.

Depending on the nature and extent of the problems you would like to address in Somatic Hypnotherapy, as well as on your background and your curiosity, this explanatory part may only take a few minutes or extend over a good part of the time reserved to your session. I'll make sure you understand the purpose of your ensuing hypnotherapy session is not to hypnotize you and make you sleep-walk for the rest of your life as if your problems were not real, nor to teach you how to better live with them. My approach is more about helping you identify and uproot the deep causal roots of your issues and trigger thus your innate self-healing processes.

Then, to ensure the smooth running of your therapy, I will review with you and make sure you understand the complex nature of human emotions as coherent mental, neuroendocrine, and sensory phenomena covered by as many as 82 scientifically validated theories. This is why the philosophies of problem-solving approaches in psychiatry, psychology, and hypnotherapy have little – if anything – in common, being based on significantly different behavioral models. I'll ensure you understand that I can help someone who is terrified of spiders, only if and to the extent that he overreacts because he feels terrified of spiders, not if he sincerely believes that spiders can harm or kill him.

While emotions are complex and coherent mental, neuroendocrine, and sensory experiences, for an emotion to fully manifest, the three inter-conditioned experiences must manifest concomitantly! Thus, the main therapeutic approaches to emotions and behavior aim to break emotional coherence, by controlling one of the three coherent emotional experiences. While psychiatry targets the neuroendocrine system with psychoactive medications and psychological approaches focus on understanding and thought patterns, Somatic Hypnotherapy focuses on the experience of emotional feelings as emotional, mental, and behavioral modulators.

Since my promise is that you will experience a significant improvement at the end of your first session, I will unfortunately not have the privilege of two or three assessment meetings during which I will listen carefully to the story of your life, at the end of which I will define and propose a treatment plan that can extend over several months. Therefore, in Somatic Hypnotherapy, your assessment, and your first therapy session must occure during the two to three hours reserved for your first appointment, and your entire therapy must not extend over more than three consecutive sessions.

So, better get ready for it! Please take the time to read my website and familiarize yourself with all of these topics before our meeting. Please note that Somatic Hypnotherapy is not the approach of choice for "snowflakes". This is the approach of choice for those that suffer, whatever the nature of their pain. Unfortunately, the dynamics of my approach and the limited time allocated to my sessions do not recommend it to those who do not know what is bothering them, nor to those who believe that emotional feelings are nothing more than philosophical or intellectual thoughts crossing their brain. Be proactive in this teamwork and put the chances of a spectacular change on your side.

Once we have identified your problems, defined your therapeutic goals, and clarified the conceptual basis of my approach, the therapy session can begin. Throughout the session, you remain seated in a chair, always in control of yourself and master of your state of mind. Your Somatic Hypnotherapy session begins with a moment of relaxation and hypnotic induction. You will be inwardly focused, and you'll remain aware for the duration of the session. Like any other relaxation technique, somatic hypnosis lowers blood pressure and heart rate and changes certain types of brainwave activity. Your conscious mind becomes less critical and your subconscious mind more focused.

Unlike the psychoanalytic approach that aims to foster change by helping you understand your past and assess the extent to which past events might affect you now, in Somatic Hypnotherapy, you do not necessarily need to understand or know the exact roots of your irrational negative feelings to be able to uproot them. Furthermore, since Somatic Hypnotherapy focuses on your feelings and not on what you think about your feelings, the factual details of your past are not necessarily of interest to a somatic hypnotherapist, as they are not essential to the process of healing. For, with proper care, a fractured bone will heal the same way, whether or not you understand how it broke.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system and the emotional response mechanism always respond to stressors, whether you are awake, dreaming, or under hypnosis. During your therapy session, your mind will be wide awake; you'll always be in control of the situation, master of your state of mind. We will interact the whole time, and you'll talk almost as much as I do. My role is primarily to guide and assist you. Although we'll likely work on complex emotional issues, we'll use simple language that your subconscious mind understands well. Thus, we'll deconstruct complex emotions and concepts to basic feelings that the subconscious mind understands clearly. 

Your hypnotic trance will help you identify and body map your feelings and gain the clear vision needed to assess the nature of your unpleasant, disturbing, or painful feelings. Then I will guide you to selectively release the somatic component (the sensory experience) of most of your stress, anxiety, trauma, pain, and other negative feelings you have accumulated over time. The whole process of removing unwanted emotional and painful feelings is highly personalized. While still using neuro-linguistic modulation as Somatic Hypnotherapy primary tool, the therapeutic process integrates various elements of traditional hypnotherapy and ritual healing metaphors.

You assess your emotional feelings through the cognitive component as "emotions," and you feel them through the somatic component as emotional "feelings" in your body. Your body reflects your feelings like a mirror; this is how you can identify and body-map each of your emotional feelings. The perceptions of these sensations transcend cultural boundaries and are consistently similar all around the world. Thus, based on the appraisal of your negative feelings before and after your therapy session, you can assess the effectiveness of each of your sessions. Please keep in mind that the goal of your session is to experience the desired change, not to understand how it was possible.

At the end of your therapy session, we will reassess your emotional responses to ensure that you are still emotionally neutral while mentally walking through the once-disturbing memories we have worked on. This is how you will know that what you experienced during hypnosis has triggered the desired change. You'll feel that something inside of you has already changed or is about to change in the way you've wanted and allowed. You'll feel like the issues you've come to work on in therapy are gone! You will keep memories of all that has happened, been said, and exchanged during your session of Somatic Hypnotherapy.

Since your mind tends to create coherence between what your subconscious mind believes and the living reality you experience, you’ll start thinking, feeling, and behaving according to your new reality as soon as the wished changes have been accepted and integrated by your consciousness. You'll most likely feel that the painful or negative feelings we've previously identified have disappeared! After the therapy, you'll be issued explanations that help you better understand what has happened and what remains to be done.

Once relieved of your issues, learning to listen to your feelings and expressing gratitude for your change are the best ways to protect your ongoing healing. Each day spent in ingratitude, denial, disbelief, or doubt of your extraordinary experience in Somatic Hypnotherapy could weaken your good results. However, Somatic Hypnotherapy does not interfere with your future ability to feel new pain or any other emotion.

Hypnosis is safe! The hypnotherapist has no control over you. While under hypnosis, a person will never do things against their values and will. Hopefully, your session in Somatic Hypnotherapy will be one of the most extraordinary experiences of your life.

The clear vision you will get after eliminating most of the things that have poisoned your life and kept you trapped in your past will help you better understand the past and foresee the best decision in the future.

Please allow 2.5-3 hours for our first meeting, although the therapy session per se should be at most 60-90 minutes.

The "No Results - No Pay" principle guarantees my integrity and applies to all my therapies.

Contact me and book your appointment today! Let this be the most exciting experience of your life, and I will be happy to help you on your journey.

You can reach me by filling out the contact form below.

Disclaimer: The above article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author. It is intended for general informational purposes and does not constitute psychological or medical professional advice. I don't diagnose medical conditions, nor do I interfere with any treatments given by your medical professional.

If you already are under the care of a doctor or under medical treatment, follow the advice and treatment recommended by your doctor. For any medical emergency, call the Info-Santé service by dialing 8-1-1

*The results may vary from person to person.

Somatic Hypnotherapy - 186 Sutton Pl, suite 104, Beaconsfield, Montréal, Qc, H9W5S3