What is it?
The experience of hypnosis is singular and particular to each of us. For some of us it’s a state of altered consciousness, for some it’s comparable to a state between wakefulness and lucidity, for others it can be like the feeling of coming back to a simple and constructive psycho-physical state.
The person that is in trance or goes into a hypnotic state, is able to either perceive, see or feel and obtain an objective perspective on what is important and in what way, in this specific moment of his/her life, and what is not. Hypnosis is a tool with which we can resuscitate specific emotions, give a clearer frame to our past memories and become consciously objective towards a certain behaviour pattern or our reaction to a given situation.
How does Hypnosis at Verziere Sanctum work?
In our practice we believe that each individual has the best resources and answers within themselves and that hypnosis is an instrument that can help us find these answers.
Our subconscious is the part we use during hours of sleep, during our moments of complete relaxation. It represents our creative imagination and inner mythologies, themes, and emotional baggage, and is the deepest resource to our memories. It conditions and acts in our lives, but it isn’t capable of distinguishing or giving the specific judgment required between recognizing right from wrong. It will always search and find the most adaptable solution for us to face the situation presented in that moment.
By getting in touch with our subconscious mind, we permit ourselves to make decisions and choices and come to understandings that are based on a more objective and lucid point of view. Our subconscious has an extraordinary power to understand what is useful for us at that moment not only to feel better, but also to live in the best way, with a sense of inner equilibrium.
Through the techniques of guided relaxation the person is accompanied into a deeper state of rest. We suggest that your body and your emotions let go and relax as much as it is possible for you. Asking your mind to let go, after having acknowledged the thoughts that are flying around in your head, we ask if it’s possible to put them aside for the present moment and to get back to these thoughts once the session has ended.
A hypnosis session is created by working on multiple aspects not only with the subconscious mind. We learn to collaborate with our conscious mind, so even if it’s constantly active we surpass the ‘protection’ to connect even deeper within, creating a perspective from a broader point of view and understanding. After having worked with hypnosis the person reemerges into a state of conscious wakefulness with insights and solutions.
The focus in a hypnosis session is always about creating a pathway to integrate the creative qualities of subconscious and conscious minds in a way that the session brings the participant the possibility of discovering the best way forward.
What kinds of people can undergo hypnosis?
Different people from all backgrounds and life experiences come to us to work with hypnosis and other techniques. Very often we have proof that remembering an event in a detached manner, to gain an objective perspective and lesson, can be highly useful. It’s not necessary to relive the memory, but it is useful to understand objectively what happened, how we felt about it in that moment and what was our reaction to the event. Sometimes it can be simply more productive to feel an emotion that has been missing from our day to day life.
Finding peace again, tranquility, vitality and serenity, even if just for a moment, is an excellent starting point to then work on ourselves and bring these sensations with us in our everyday life experience.
Hypnosis is also a way to discover and rediscover aspects of ourselves, our identity and the direction we are going towards. We are able to understand our true inner roots and that will make it easier to understand why we get mixed up in certain situations and why we have certain action and reaction patterns. It’s a way through which we can understand our relation to others, understand the dynamics we have built, our inner patterns, and needs. A way to shed light and have transparency and objectivity towards ourselves, how we live our lives, our work, our relationships, our dreams, our desires and our needs.
It is also important to be continually reinforcing the inner equilibrium of your client, building a trust together and a session based on an awareness of their current life situation where they are emotionally and how stable they are. If someone is in an extremely traumatic situation or out of balance we must factor these things in and choose how to create a session based on the responsibility of a prepared and aware hypnotherapist who also knows when it will not be constructive to follow certain pathways.
What is the duration of the therapy?
The treatment with Hypnotherapy varies based on the reason that led the person to seek a session. In our practice we believe a person shouldn’t be in therapy for years, what we have found is that one can come for a session or more, in the arch of time of one or two months and then they come back for a session after six months, to integrate and reinforce the work done so far, or to work on a new theme that has emerged. Each situation requires a different rhythm and structure. It is not always the miracle that shifts things but that the client discovers the tools and the methods in how to transform, heal or change.
Some people that come from distant areas, given their geographic situation, decide to work with us for consecutive days, giving them more time and space to gain perspective and integrate. In general our appointments last from 90 minutes up to 3 hours, depending on the reason for the session and the kind of hypnosis with which you decide to work with.
Dream Work and Traveling in your mind
There are many levels and layers of trance and waking state and there are many ways to get to a peaceful place deep inside yourself to discover your own unique resources and how to work with them. While releasing the need of whether a memory or experience is real, yet looking at how it serves, we find that exploring dreams, active imagination, active dreaming and mind traveling through various levels of trance to create greater healing, living, and being, is like stepping into an ability to use a bow to shoot an arrow using your third eye.
In current times we use meditation and trance work to bring alive the active dreaming process. Active Dreaming for example, is a process whereby the therapist gives the dreamer a suggestion of where to either re-enter a sleep dream or create a new dream and where the dreamer opens to a trance-like state through the exercise by use of drum beats, music or pure suggestion. It enables the dreamer to be fully of this world while maintaining constant contact with the world beyond. This process is a synthesis of contemporary dream work and ancient shamanic methods of journeying.
Active Imagination is a voyage into the mind to consider what might have been, what has been, and what could be. Even just a metaphorical experience brings forth insight and healing. Living alternative experiences brings forth insight, perception, and sometimes hope and creativity about how to build a frame for the next steps to resolve challenges and create new pathways to follow.
What is Hypno-dreaming and traveling in your mind?
There are many levels and layers of trance, dream states, day-dreaming, night dreaming and meditation that allow us to connect to our higher knowledge and the world around us. Hypno-dreaming is a healing method that explores dreams, active imagination, meditation and hypnosis. The dreamer is guided into a dream, memory or reverie by the therapist using a variety of hypnosis and Active Dreaming techniques.
Hypno-dreaming includes variations of many forms of stepping into trance to create a bridge that permits us to re-enter into a dream of the present, of a past life, of an active dream or a lucid dream utilising a relaxation technique or a guided visualisation in four steps. It also enables you to learn how to use dreaming as a tool, meandering in memory and creating access to the archives of your mind.
The exercises and experiences of Active Dreaming, Guided Relaxation and Active Imagination creates a basis for living our lives, guiding ourselves, guiding others, dreaming and becoming our dreams.
How Does it Work?
The process serves to deepen the connection within and offers new perspectives by discovering resources and inspiration. This technique follows protocols to guide participants through transpersonal hypnosis, regression, active dreamwork, guided meditations and active imagination sequences combined with suggestions.
The foundation is based on exploring the ranges of in-depth hypnosis (closed eyes, active imagination) and day-dreaming with eyes open. Each step of this technique allows you to honour your own rhythm and learn how to access your higher wisdom and soul connection. The activation of this connection brings greater clarity into daily life.
Building self trust is a process. Each person develops at their own pace which feels comfortable and safe. Knowing self can bring resolution to repair earlier experiences of overwhelm and trauma. When inner wisdom guides, inner resources can be developed.
What Can You Expect?
After an initial in-depth dialogue in which we define some of the main goals, we begin by guiding you towards a particular interior state, exploring and looking for the most appropriate and useful levels for your individual introspective journey in the present.
This journey can bring you to discover: a portal, a memory, an image, a meeting with someone, a perspective or a geographical location that might be important or even the unexpected. Then, depending on your individual goals, we help you, with time, tools, and different abilities to work on yourself in a unique and personal way. This way you or your client can also continue developing on their own, supplementing their session work and even stepping into autonomy when their therapeutic or regression process is complete.
This work can be therapeutic, inspirational, motivational and nourishing. It can also be used to work through many kinds of challenges such as fears, phobia, trauma, and can bring deep evolution.
What is it?
Life between Lives (LBL) Hypnotherapy is a hypnotic experience where you arrive to a deeper level within yourself connecting to a higher consciousness where you can gain perspectives on your life today.
You may uncover the themes your soul is working on to evolve, learn about lessons you have planned, and soul contracts in relationships and with yourself. You can renegotiate these contracts or perceive their value and course correct your perspective and perception of how to live your life. In understanding and discovering your next steps, your own soul can advise you to follow along with other high guidance you may receive, it can be a key in living your own life in the way that you are truly following your heart.
This experience is used as a tool for therapy as well as gaining insight and perspective. It is important to know that everyone has a completely different experience.
How long does a session of LBL take?
Usually between 3 to 5 hours, plus the intake before the hypnosis and the debrief after the hypnosis. Although we work with time as a friend, what is important is to have the day free of commitments if possible, so that your focus is on preparing before, being in session and afterwards taking the necessary time to integrate everything you experienced. Staying with the experience, contemplating the feelings and insights, allowing them to settle, naturally leads towards clarity for your next steps.
What are the prerequisites to have an LBL?
To be open to receive what you need, not what you believe you need, and to try to release any preconceived notions about what a session will bring. You must have experienced a comprehensive Past Life Regression (PLR) session and be able to trust and feel comfortable in the process. This will help to make the journey more in-depth for you, and discover more about how to create accessible next steps so that you can better integrate the experience into your life. During the PLR session it may appear that you first need to work on current life issues before connecting to the larger perspective of an LBL. In this event we work with what is needed beforehand and use that for your LBL session after.
What are the steps that consist of an LBL?
An LBL session begins once you make the appointment. From there you may find yourself more open to dreaming, experiences, and encounters that are preparing you for your LBL session. You might even notice themes, challenges and priorities to work on. The session itself usually begins with a first intake talk, which creates the space to define your intentions, to create a trusting environment, and to explore the questions you will bring to ask during the hypnosis; for example what you wish to learn, or understand about your life from this experience.
After which, you are guided to interconnect within yourself via a hypnosis induction session. You and your therapist will create an environment together where you can relax and get comfortable in a prepared space, then you will be induced into a deep state of trance. You will be taken back to a past life, where you may be able to see or feel within your mind’s eye.
What comes to surface is then explored in the session, sometimes via different life memories, or even current ones, and the different parts of history you have participated in. You are then brought into the spirit realm to access healing and transformative perceptions. These encounters may come in many forms through various experiences. At the end you are brought out of the hypnosis through a count out. Then your therapist will facilitate a debrief to help you integrate your experience and together with you, create next step plans and discover how to take action in creating life changes.
What kind of things does a client typically experience after they have had an LBL?
Each experience is unique and personal. For some people a session or series of sessions jump starts their life into action, for some it can bring a broader perspective and insight, it depends on what they see or experience and what they choose to do with it. Sometimes an LBL can confirm what we have always perceived of ourselves. One thing that usually happens is that a session creates a reframe of how we perceive both, other people that are a part of our lives who we are now able to see through a higher perspective, as well as ourselves. We develop a more complete picture. And sometimes things gradually unfold and we suddenly notice we are on the track where we have been wanting to be, moving along and in the direction we have wanted and chosen to go.
What is the difference for someone that has experienced Past Life Regression before, but not an LBL?
It is a longer and more intricate process. With LBL you go deeper, and feel deeply, you feel completely in the spirit realm, because you are seeing your journey through spirit, the whole picture. There are even more levels from which to perceive, more specific insights and resources and a larger view of how we are living our lives, what we really want and what we are really working with.
What can a client do to further prepare themselves for an LBL experience?
The most important thing is to have no preconceived ideas, have an intention, but to have no expectations, to relax as much as possible beforehand, and trust in the process of your own journey. Being open to discuss what you need, and even to deepen your connection with your intentions by noticing what is occurring around you before the session both in dreaming and everyday life situations where experiences may arrive pre-session to remind you of areas you want to work with. The pre-talk with your therapists enables you to notice areas you find important to learn from and deepen your connection to your understanding of your intention and why you are here today.
What is it?
Conscious, or Non-Violent Communication is a method to define objective consensus reality, define emotions, discern needs and work towards voluntarily getting them met. It is a method and therapy which can be used for specific conflicts or practised in everyday life. It helps us, as Marshall Rosenberg the creator of Non-Violent Communication would say, “to make life wonderful and stop playing the game of who is right and who is wrong”.
It is a method to define objective consensus reality, which is finding common ground which all can agree on. In common parlance this would be "coming to terms'', meaning coming to terminology/words that all can agree on. For example:
"He gave me an evil look and then angrily screamed at my friend before slamming the door and furiously driving off".
This statement could equally be seen from another perspective:
"He looked carefully at her, squinting to make out her face, it was as if he recogised her and then suddenly as if he had seen a ghost jumped in his car and sped off".
Or again, this time from his point of view :
"I could feel another attack of diarrhea coming on, all I remember was thinking I have to get home quickly before I exploded, their were a couple of girls I knew who were messing around but I was too embarrassed to say what was happening so I asked one to move so I could get my car out."
After some work to define objective consensus reality, the description all parties could agree on would be something like:
John's behaviour changed quickly, he looked at Cindy and in a raised voice said "Can you get out of the way please?", he then drove out of the parking spot slightly screeching the tyres and drove off quicker than most.
This first step of defining an objective consensus reality is important in that all parties would be able to agree, from this foundation each party can explain their emotional response be it: surprise, fear, anger, disappointment, etc., which leads to the next step.
The word “emotion” means to stir up or to agitate. Imagine a stormy sea while below the surface, the deep water remains calm. I’m sure you have noticed how emotions feed off one another; anger breeds anger just as violence breeds violence. This method takes you beneath the surface of the emotion to a place of connection resulting in a powerful calming effect.
We always have a choice whether to react to an emotion or respond to an emotion. When we react, situations get psychologically violent very quickly due to moralistic judgements, evaluations, and diagnoses which we often make in haste due to thinking in terms of right and wrong in the heat of the moment. Instead of reacting, when we respond, we transform situations into comprehension and human connection; we become able to negotiate in order to voluntarily get each other’s needs met or make the necessary, sometimes difficult changes for a more wonderful life.
What to expect
Conscious Communication begins with an objective description of an emotional episode or a recurring pattern that ignites in a relationship or troubling life situation. The second step is to look at what you experience subjectively, how you feel in this relationship or troubling life situation. Then, using your emotion as a guide, we begin to identify why you are experiencing that emotion. The emotion is always connected to a universal human need. Once the need has been identified, you can begin to adjust how to communicate your need either to others or how to adjust your own behavior. This method helps you to understand the chronic conflictual situations in which you find yourself and discover paths to resolution through compassion and empathy for yourself and others.
A story which is attributed to the Buddha tells of an episode where a local guru approached the Buddha and angrily spoke in a raised voice, “You are stealing all the devotees!” “We are going out of business!” The Buddha thanked the guru for his gift of anger but politely refused it. If he had accepted the “gift” an argument would have ensued and the Buddha too would have experienced the disturbance of anger rather than remaining unaffected in joy and serenity.
Non-violent communication takes you deep beneath the surface emotion to a place of connection and it is here that the magic can begin; peaceful outcomes to violent wars, decades-long marital conflicts dissolved in minutes or simply being able to recognise more clearly your own needs and how to strategise in order to get them met.
What is it?
Past Life Regression is a therapy method that takes you to past lives, with the intention of healing traumatic experiences, clearing out energies, and bringing awareness to lessons and situations that are repeating themselves in your life today, and discovering more about who you are, why you are here and what lessons you are learning.
Through hypnosis you have access to see, hear or feel as if you were another person, a past life relevant to an issue that you wish to work on. It is one way to reach the initial sensitising event of a recurring pattern, situation or problem that just doesn't go away, no matter how long you think about it, no matter how much you rationalise it. Seeing and becoming aware of the initial sensitising event, where it all started, helps gain clarity and shifts that which would be impossible for your brain and mind alone to resolve. You can also review memories, whether in your current life today, or past lives in metaphorical states.
How does it work?
The client comes with an intention of what they wish to work on, explore, and ultimately change, and release any expectations or outcomes as best they can. We explore the intention together because sometimes there is an intention beneath the intention. When the hypnosis begins, the client is induced into a hypnotic state. The rational and conscious mind is asked to step aside, let go and simply observe the session. From there we have the client tune into their inner universe, going to a safe place. Onwards from there, through a process, we delve into the past life (or lives) that is most relevant to the client's intention.
What can I expect?
Past Life Regressions are uniquely individual journeys that follow the flow of what will ultimately be beneficial for the client’s intention. You can expect the therapist to be there for every step of this journey of discovery. Trusting in the process that you have decided to undertake, letting go, allowing things to unfold, relinquishing predetermined ideas, can paradoxically lead to more solid and lasting results, than trying to control every aspect of your healing.
More often than not, the problem is not the problem, but rather the problem is the way we see the problem. For even when you cannot change the outcome, shifting your perspective completely, kickstarts a massive impact and change in your life.
What is it?
Shadow alchemy is about pulling everything out and even more from one particular experience to understand how the shadow archetypes are operating within us and condition us to repeat the same experiences over and over.
Feelings and thoughts, lead to other feelings, thoughts, belief systems, and patterns that the client is not willing or could not see or feel or become aware of fully. Committing to seeing fully this shadow allows the process to unfold and get to the bottom of the reality behind it.
Once everything from that specific experience has been explored, the therapist assists the client with honing in on the specific archetypes and personalised phrases, feelings, and belief systems. In Shadow Alchemy, telling and explaining the story of the experience takes a secondary role, to seeing and realising the shadow patterns and mechanisms that we are operating in.
Once work and realisation has been uncovered on the specific story, and all the archetypes have been explored, the client then writes out the truth rant, committing to the light archetypes that are the exact opposite of the previous ones.
What can I expect?
At the beginning of the session, we sit down and expand on the topic and reason you wish to work on and ultimately resolve. Afterwards you will be asked to write down an episode of your choice, only one, relevant to a moment in which you directly experienced the situation at hand. We then dig deep down very fast and exact, to see and experience the background operating reality that you are bringing to that situation.
This can be an episode where you were involved with someone else (for example a relationship partner, a family member, a close friend, a work colleague) or your own (involved in a project, a job, a hobby, some free time). Once we’ve activated consciously the deeper feelings, ways and means, the clues lead to understanding fully the mechanisms within you that were previously hidden from sight.
By experiencing and understanding your reality through the four archetype pillars, you shift yourself, and new space is created within you through a truth rant, in which you commit to the new you — the real individual who has been hidden underneath the layers and barriers that you previously put up. Each session is unique and different from any other.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it, and it becomes undesirable to keep acting the way you were previously. With this method, change and shift is instantaneous. Often challenging, it creates new outcomes to the next daily interactions in your life, bringing out new ideas as well, new concepts, new patterns, more in line and closer to who you really are as a person, beyond the clutter, the fear, the doubt, that rule a certain aspect of your life.
The ideas of Archetypes were first recorded by Carl Gustav Jung, and further developed by Caroline Myss and later on by Lorna Gabriel.
The Transformation Game is a board game created by the Findhorn Foundation.
The game helps you to connect to your true Self, to gain insight into what is truly going on in your life, to realise the things that are holding you back, challenging, or frustrating you, and to discover potential solutions that work for you. It is an opportunity to gain some deeper knowing, some higher wisdom, some practical guidance to help you with your life and to understand where a particular block might be and how to overcome it. When played in a group setting it is highly cooperative and synergistic in nature, engendering both mutual insight and support.
How to play
Before the play begins each player honours the game by setting an intention which they wish to work on, as well as the offering of a skill or gift which they intend to contribute. With the questions and group feedback the players learn to clarify their intentions. The facilitators and other players may help each person form or finalise their intention.
This board game brings into awareness another dimension of life. Each of the patterns on the board represent a life path. The game starts where you are yet to incarnate into your human form. Holding true to your intention, you select some cards that go into your personal Unconscious Envelope. You are then born and go through the physical level, the emotional level, the intellectual level, and the spiritual level. In our style of facilitating the game, we have added the rebirth level, the love level, and the energy level, all of which are optional and available as needed as per individual case. Depending on where the insights and awareness arrive during the game, you might skim through or spend more time on one particular level.
The cards are a fundamental part in guiding the process, there are six kinds:
• The Angel cards: Higher energy and archetype wisdom.
• Insights: Represent ideas and ways of moving forward.
• Setbacks: A way of looking into a problem or situation.
• Awareness: Tokens with single words which reflect back a player's growing consciousness and progress in the game.
• Universal Feedback: Cards which mirror the universe in relation to the individual player. It is amazing to experience feedback in the game and work with it, emulating how to cope with feedback in life. It helps you understand another point of view.
• Blessings: Tokens to help you move up faster and clear away pain.
The path of progress around the board is a beautifully shaped series of squares, each of which allows for scope and interpretation of one's intention.
The game can be challenging and fun at the same time, the variety of possibilities and ways of responding are both gentle and voluntary.
Activities that a player may choose to partake in during the game are: sharing, elaborating, exploring, being in nature, singing, dancing or simply doing nothing.
The game then ends when you have progressed through your Unconscious Envelope and completed the levels that you have chosen to undertake, or when you arrive to an agreed timeframe, as you can then take any remaining cards as next step guidance and you learn how you can work with those post game.
Some features:
• You are encouraged to simply be yourself, and if you feel like it, help and support others to do the same.
• To explore through the cards and general game to play the meanings and relevance of your intention in the here and now.
• Release what you have been holding back and continue forward in your next steps in life.
Healing experience length: Three consecutive days.
Next steps are created in post game dialogue so you have practical solutions to implement what you have learned.