What is Somatic Hypnotherapy?

            Hypnosis is the process of inducing a state of deep bodily relaxation and focused mental attention — commonly known as a hypnotic trance. According to Milton Erickson, it is a means of communication aimed at eliciting psychological and physiological responses that are not mediated by the conscious mind.

Hypnosis becomes hypnotherapy when the context and the participants are oriented toward therapeutic change (D. Flemons, 2002). In other words, the use of hypnosis for therapeutic purposes — to facilitate lasting shifts in perceptions, feelings*, and emotional response patterns — is called hypnotherapy.

Somatic Hypnotherapy is a particular form of hypnotherapy: a contemporary, science-informed approach that evolved from ancestral Eastern European feelings-centred healing arts. It aims to alter emotional experience by acting directly on bodily feelings — the sensory substrate from which emotions arise through interoception — in a state of somatic hypnosis marked by enhanced interoceptive access and reduced cognitive overlay, so unresolved patterns can be released at their somatic source.

Additive hypnotherapy vs ablative hypnotherapy — two different approaches

In hypnotherapy, emotional change is facilitated through two fundamentally different approaches. The generative, or additive approach — specific to the vast majority of Ericksonian and New Age methods — is about adding new states of mind, new feelings, or new behaviors on top of existing ones. The subtractive, or ablative approach — specific to Somatic Hypnotherapy — is about easing, mitigating, or releasing whatever bothersome feelings, states of mind, or behaviors tend to poison one's life. In additive models, the poison remains in the glass and water is added to dilute it. In Somatic Hypnotherapy, one empties the glass of its poison.

While conventional hypnotherapy approaches aim to facilitate change by inducing new layers of emotional feelings* through "reprogramming the mind," Somatic Hypnotherapy changes this paradigm — bringing the desired changes by "deprogramming the subconscious" of unwanted emotional response patterns through alleviating or completely releasing the associated feelings. Instead of convincing you that spiders are not dangerous, or that a traumatic event is in the past and you should put it behind you — what you most likely already know — this approach helps you reset the irrational, fearful feelings of spiders, or the feelings driving your overreaction to traumatic memories.

More than an evolution of traditional methods, Somatic Hypnotherapy is a reorientation of emotional healing. Its core ancestral intuition — that what is felt in the body is primary, and that release at that level changes thought and behaviour — is consistent with contemporary work in neuroscience, interoception, constructed emotion, phenomenology, and the theory of structured ritual healing. Without necessarily challenging the conventional paradigm which assumes that "thinking differently leads to feeling differently," this approach proposes a reversed paradigm: that "feeling differently leads to thinking and reacting differently" — a principle scientifically coherent with what is known about bodily feeling and automatic emotional patterns. Its practical outcome is that when the felt charge of a memory dissipates, the rest of the system reorganizes around that new inner climate.

Since the above postulate reverses over a century of cognitive-dominated therapeutic paradigms, it represents a paradigm shift that — by emphasizing the primacy of bodily feelings in emotional regulation and the predominance of interoceptive processes over cognition during emotional distress — aligns Somatic Hypnotherapy with contemporary neuroscience. This approach is a game changer, not because it targets emotions - in terms of mental constructs - in an original way, but because it targets the roots of emotional experience: the feelings themselves.

When negative bodily feelings dissolve, the whole system reorganizes itself. Physiology calms, thoughts follow, behaviors adapt, and the emotional meaning shifts. In this approach, emotional healing is not explicitly suggested nor imposed — it unfolds as a natural neurophysiological process. Emotional and physical burdens that felt immovable for years can shift as if by magic. Traumatic imprints dissolve. Chronic stress- and anxiety-related tension releases at a depth that clients did not believe possible. The outstanding outcomes are not rare exceptions. They are the norm.

From ancestral roots to modern practice — a living lineage

The holistic concept of healing the human being as a whole — rather than treating individual diseases — is ancient. What is now called "hypnotherapy" has been known to exist in almost all ancient societies. Although the term "hypnosis" has only been used since the 1840s, priests, shamans, healers, and medicine men began using this technique, or some form of it, centuries earlier. There are written records of hypnosis dating back 5,000 years in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and 2,500 years in ancient China and Greece.

This practice has been kept alive by many traditional healers, priests, and shamans, as well as by famous practitioners such as the Persian physician Avicenna, the Swiss physician Paracelsus, the charismatic Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, and Dr. Milton Erickson — the founder of Ericksonian Hypnotherapy — and by many other distinguished doctors and hypnosis pioneers such as Dr. John Elliotson, Dr. James Esdaile, and Dr. James Braid — who coined the term "hypnosis" in 1843 and described Traditional Hypnotherapy as a holistic empirical medical approach.

The practice of Somatic Hypnotherapy emerged from Traditional Hypnotherapy, from which it inherits an ancestral pragmatic approach to wellness and health — an approach whose core principles have found correspondence in several contemporary scientific models of human behavior. The most relevant of these are Prof. Dr. Antonio Damasio's Somatic Markers Hypothesis, Prof. Dr. Joseph LeDoux's work on defensive circuits and the bodily basis of fear, the concept of coordinated changes across somatic, physiological, and behavioral response systems known as emotional coherence, and the Theory of Ritual Healing. 

How Somatic Hypnotherapy works — the science

Somatic Hypnotherapy is a holistic approach that uses hypnosis to facilitate the release of unresolved trauma, stress, anxiety, anger, pain, and many other unsettling sensory experiences encoded as interoceptive signals and manifesting as trapped feelings* within you. These signals, perceived as body-mapped raw sensations — such as tension, knots, a lump in the stomach, pressure, heaviness, trembling, burning, or pain — constitute the biological substrate of emotional experience. Emotions are subsequently constructed when the conscious mind reads, interprets, and integrates these bodily signals with memories, meaning, and narrative — contextualizing them into fully formed emotions. Somatic Hypnotherapy intervenes at the level of these fundamental signals, allowing access to processing and safe release of trapped feelings* at their source — without requiring an understanding of causal relationships or in-depth cognitive analysis.

This approach is grounded in a set of well-established presumptions, paradigms, and scientific facts:

• Living systems naturally tend toward balance, health, and well-being. Just as your body knows how to heal a wound or mend a broken bone without conscious effort, your subconscious mind has an innate capacity to restore emotional balance and inner stability when the right conditions are present. The role of any holistic therapeutic approach is not to force change, but to support and reactivate these natural self-healing processes.
• As long as a person is calm and not overwhelmed by strong sensations, they tend to think clearly, make rational decisions, and behave in ways that serve their long-term well-being. When intense or persistent feelings* such as fear, stress, anxiety, pain, or emotional tension arise, they tend to temporarily disrupt the rational mind and take over attention, decision-making, and behavior. This is not a weakness of character or a lack of willpower — it is a built-in survival mechanism. Strong feelings* exist to signal that something needs attention and resolution.
• When the body is physically injured, it automatically deploys protective responses. A person will limp without thinking about it — not because they choose to, but because the body instinctively limits movement to prevent further damage and allow healing. The limping does not stop when the person understands the injury intellectually, nor when they try to ignore it. It stops only when the injury heals. Emotional injuries operate in much the same way. Persistent anxiety, fear, or emotional pain are signs of unresolved emotional wounds — not of faulty thinking.
• Numbing emotional pain, denying it, or suppressing it may reduce discomfort temporarily, but it does not heal the underlying issue. Just as painkillers can mask physical pain without repairing tissue damage, emotional suppression can hide distress without resolving its cause. As long as the emotional wound remains unhealed, the body and nervous system continue to react as if the danger or threat were still present.
• Emotional response patterns are learned once and then managed automatically by the subconscious mind — much like learned skills. You only need to learn to ride a bike once; afterward, the skill runs on its own. In the same way, emotional reactions formed during stressful or traumatic experiences can persist long after the original event has passed. These reactions are not deliberate choices. They are automatic responses rooted in the past and projected into present-day life.
• For this reason, unresolved emotional experiences often resurface as anxiety, overreactions, intrusive thoughts, or chronic emotional or physical tension. They are not sustained by intentional thought, but by patterns of emotional responses stored as feelings* trapped within — whether you call that space your body, your soul, your spirit, or your nervous system. As these underlying feelings* are released, associated patterns and emotional memory naturally reorganize, leading to lasting emotional regulation and persistent physiological relief.
• Somatic Hypnotherapy works by addressing emotions at the level where they actually operate: as bodily and sensory experiences. Thoughts are mental processes, but feelings* are physical sensations perceived within the body. Emotions emerge from how the conscious mind interprets these sensations. While thoughts can influence perspective, they cannot, by sheer intention alone, create or erase emotional or bodily feelings*. This is why "thinking positively" or trying harder rarely produces lasting emotional change.
• By focusing on emotional and somatic feelings* directly, Somatic Hypnotherapy disrupts the automatic emotional patterns that sustain distress. Because emotions function as coherent systems — linking bodily sensations, physiological responses, thoughts, and behavior — changing the somatic component reorganizes the entire emotional experience. When the body no longer reacts as if the past were still happening, thoughts and behaviors naturally follow.

While the cerebral cortex governs intentional thought, feelings and emotions recruit a wider system: the limbic circuitry, the peripheral nervous system, and the body’s visceral and interoceptive pathways. 

While the cerebral cortex governs intentional thought, feelings and emotions recruit a wider system: the limbic system (LS), the peripheral nervous system (PNS), and the body's visceral and interoceptive pathways. Whether an emotion is expressed (smiling, laughing, crying, screaming), lived as sensorial experience (blushing, heartbeat, nausea, tightness, pain), or recognized as a named state (happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, disgust), these non-intentional processes are essential. The brain's ability to command them by sheer will is limited. Understanding their coherent nature - body, physiology, and meaning moving together - is the practical key to coping with the disruptive emotions you wish to overcome.

Of course, when you mentally review emotionally significant life experiences, your thoughts can shift your "state of mind" by triggering/reactivating feelings* already linked to those memories. Some models also hold that from a calm, neutral, and cognitively available state of mind, thought and appraisal can intensify, or even construct an emotion. That is not in dispute. However, among these 82 known behavioral models, only a few postulate that lasting change occurs primarily through intentional thought or willpower alone — a view that overlooks the inner reality of our feelings, which interoceptively shape the perception of our life experiences and, in turn, determine our emotional and behavioural patterns. Even though emotions are mental experiences, neither happiness nor misery is created by intentional thought alone. It is important to understand that by any linguistic or scientific standard, feelings*, thoughts, and emotions are concepts with substantially different meanings.

Because feelings* are at the origin of emotions, and pain remains a painful feeling* whether described as physical, emotional, or idiopathic — anything that can be felt, located, modulated, or released becomes a reliable path to healing. Add to this the power of language and ritual as coherent semiotic systems, and the ability of neuro-linguistic modulation to shape not only perception and behavior but also somatic and physiological phenomena, and you will understand how this approach not only covers a wide range of issues but consistently delivers results and often succeeds where other methods fall short.

If you have a different view on any of the above, do not feel offended — you may well be right. Human beings are not all the same. And by definition, science is always open to question, verifiable, and falsifiable. What is promoted as indisputable truth is probably just dogma fuelled by ignorance and epistemic capture.

What this means for you

Your patterns of emotional responses are not only the most significant ingredient of your identity and a major aspect of your quality of life — they are the most undeniable proof that you are not a soulless, heartless, and purposeless biochemical machine, but a sentient human being in search of meaning, purpose, and happiness. Even if through willpower you manage to control, to some extent, the behavior induced by your emotions, willpower alone cannot put an end to pain or anxiety. Your feelings*, long-term memory, and emotional patterns are processed and regulated by the limbic system — a part of your brain that evades the control of your conscious mind. If you are in doubt, try to erase the sensation of hunger, thirst, or pain — or try to selectively erase a disturbing memory — and see how far willpower alone takes you.

Since this approach is nothing like what you might assume, it is only by reading this website that you can truly understand what Somatic Hypnotherapy is and what to expect during a session. As an interactive and highly personalized holistic process, it is a coherent ritual healing process carried out in a very particular, hypnotically induced state of mind called "somatic hypnosis." Your therapist will not simply wait to see what comes up under hypnosis — he follows a precise plan and knows at all times where he is heading, because this approach is grounded in well-established presumptions, paradigms, and scientific facts.

Although Somatic Hypnotherapy uses verbal cues as a specific tool, it does not rely on the hypnotist's speaking ability alone — but on his understanding of how the subconscious mind works. Somatic hypnosis has nothing to do with stage hypnosis, nor is it a magic trick. Those who practice it have no supernatural power over you. Their only "magic" is that they know how to put their techniques, talent, and passion at your disposal — to allow you to access and use the immense resources of your own subconscious mind.

The hallmark of Somatic Hypnotherapy is a process of neuro-linguistic modulation — a very particular way of speaking to your subconscious using metaphorical language that appears to be regular conversation: clearly understandable, yet very precise in its healing intentions. This therapy works with your world model and involves you actively in the process — so that changes are easily accepted and long-lasting.

The results of this approach rely on the experience and talent of the practitioner, but are largely determined by his solid understanding of human nature and of how the human mind works. The hypnotherapist cannot take credit for your healing — he is not the one who heals you. His work consists of guiding you to activate your own inner self-healing resources. Besides skills, it is talent and passion that make the difference between endless therapy and a brief professional engagement with consistently good results. Negotiating with your subconscious the changes you want to experience is more of an art than an exact science.

Whatever your fear, pain, or other difficulties may be — you do not have to remain there.

As stress and anxiety are most likely at the root of your difficulties, before submitting an appointment request, you are invited to self-assess your anxiety online and make an informed choice.

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

You can reach me by filling out the contact form on my "Contact & Fees" web page.

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For any medical emergency, call the Info-Santé service by dialing 811.

* In Somatic Hypnotherapy, the terms "feelings" and "emotional feelings" refer to sensory experiences perceived on or "within" the body, from which the rational mind constructs "emotions," through a well-documented process called interoception – which is consistent with their traditional, biological and medical meanings. This differs considerably from cognitive psychology, where the terms "feelings" and "emotions" are often used interchangeably. In certain contexts, "feeling(s)" may refer to their somatic (physical) component alone — see: Thoughts, Feelings, Emotions.pdf

**The results may vary from person to person.

***In other words, if at the end of your session you don't see any improvement in the issues addressed in therapy, I won't accept your money!

Disclaimer: The content of this page reflects the opinion of its author, is provided for educational and general informational purposes only, and does not constitute medical, psychological, or professional advice. I do not make any diagnoses according to recognized classifications (DSM-5, ICD-10) and I do not interfere in any way with ongoing treatments.

If you are already under medical care or treatment, follow their advice and treatment. I am not a doctor or licensed psychologist in Quebec; therefore, I cannot establish or continue a treatment based on your diagnosis. If you decide to consult me, be prepared to tell me what is bothering you and how you feel about it.

Somatic Hypnotherapy is an emotional health and wellness practice rooted in ancestral traditions and modern neuroscience insights. It does not constitute psychotherapy, medical treatment, diagnosis, or management of mental disorders, and is not intended to replace professional psychological or medical care.

On this website, the use of the masculine to designate people aims to ensure the fluidity of the reading and has no discriminatory intent.

Somatic Hypnotherapy - 186 Sutton Place, suite 104, Beaconsfield, Quebec H9W 5S3, Montreal.