By the time clients come to me for their first hypnosis session to stop smoking, they know what time of day they need the cigarette, where they are, and what conditionsgo along with that cigarette (frustration, a meal, etc.). It all varies, but the person addicted to smoking has a detailed plan figured out for most cigarettes of the day. One client said it was like having a chain around her neck that was attached to one cigarette. And yet that cigarette is a faithful friend. It’s always there as a relief from stress and pressure, helping to get through rough times. It’s there to celebrate and ..read more

This is an invitation to people whose weight has become a barrier to life. I want to reach out to those who suffer reminders on a daily basis that they don’t fit in the available spaces in the room. Despite the daily misery, they find themselves dependent on food to satisfy emotional needs that are so much more powerful than the need to fit in. I think about surgery as an alternative. While it has helped many people lose the necessary weight, their lives become forever changed in ways that are not life-giving. After surgery, choices of food are determined by what won’t make them sick, not what ..read more

The power of the average person to heal through mental intention has been demonstrated in the past 30 years with advances in technology. In The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart describes experiment after experiment that demonstrates how the mind has a detectable and recordable energy that we send and receive constantly. From these experiments, we’ve learned that our thoughts are also physical. In 1999 Stanford University physicist William Tiller created a device that measured mental energy in pulses. In an experiment that was conducted over 1,000 times, ordinary volunteers increased the p ..read more

The ancient Greeks had pretty wacky ways to explain catastrophes. Their explanations might include a clever hot-headed mortal named Odysseus who escaped a sticky situation by blinding a one-eyed giant. (I won’t go into detail, even though the poet Homer had a whale of a time describing it in The Odyssey.) Turns out, the giant’s father was the god of the sea and announced he would get revenge. Odysseus then suffered a nasty voyage across the Mediterranean Sea, with encounters like a many-headed monster gobbling up most of his men— a serious loss since they were the ones who rowed the boat. &nbs ..read more