The therapy session

        Although Somatic Hypnotherapy is a highly effective approach, the promise that you will experience a significant improvement in your condition at the end of your very first session is a bold one — and it is one I make deliberately.

In real life, you cannot expect extraordinary results by following ordinary paths. Your experience in Somatic Hypnotherapy will not be an ordinary experience, and it will probably not be what you expect — unless you have read this website and are already familiar with the approach. What I can tell you is this: if you come prepared and willing, this experience may well be one of the most extraordinary of your life.

Before your session

During your first visit, we will begin by discussing what is bothering you, your goals, and your expectations — to determine whether and how Somatic Hypnotherapy can help you achieve the changes you are seeking. What I need from you is not a detailed account of your life history, but a brief description of the wounds inflicted by past events — wounds that you still carry today. Since I cannot change the past, what really matters is where they are within you, and how they manifest now, not the precise circumstances of how they arose, how they appeared in the past, or how they evolved over time. Understanding them, analyzing them, reframing your perspective on past events — that is not my mission. I am a somatic hypnotherapist, not a psychologist.

Depending on the nature and extent of what you would like to address, as well as your background and curiosity, this preliminary conversation may take only a few minutes or extend over a significant portion of your appointment. I will make sure you understand that the purpose of the hypnotherapy session that follows is not to hypnotize you into sleepwalking through your problems — nor to teach you to live more comfortably with them. My approach aims to help you identify and uproot the feelings* behind your patterns of inappropriate emotional responses — patterns that are most likely the root cause of your difficulties — and in doing so, trigger your innate self-healing processes.

To ensure the smooth running of your therapy, I will also review with you the complex nature of human emotions as coherent mental, neuroendocrine, and sensory phenomena — covered by as many as 82 scientifically validated theories of behavior. This is why the therapeutic philosophies of psychiatry, psychology, and Somatic Hypnotherapy have little — if anything — in common, being grounded in significantly different behavioral models. For an emotion to fully manifest as a driving force for action, its three inseparable components — the mental, the neuroendocrine, and the somatic — must necessarily arise together. The main therapeutic approaches to emotions each target one of these three components to interrupt emotional coherence: psychiatry addresses the neuroendocrine system through psychoactive medication; psychological approaches work through understanding and thought patterns; Somatic Hypnotherapy works directly with the felt, somatic experience of emotional feelings* as the primary mental and behavioral modulator.

I will make sure you understand — through the example I use most often — 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 and rationally believes that spiders can harm or kill him. The distinction matters enormously, and it applies to every issue we might work on together.

Because my commitment is that you will experience a significant improvement at the end of your first session, I will not have the luxury of two or three preliminary assessment meetings. There is no treatment plan stretching over months or years, no open-ended series of sessions with no guaranteed outcome. In Somatic Hypnotherapy, your assessment and your first therapy session take place within the two to three hours reserved for your first appointment, and your complete treatment should not extend beyond three consecutive sessions. This is not a constraint — it is a feature of the approach, and a direct consequence of the "No Results — No Pay commitment?.

Unlike the psychoanalytic approach — which fosters change by helping you understand your past and assess how past events continue to affect you — Somatic Hypnotherapy does not require you to understand or identify the exact roots of your irrational or painful feelings in order to uproot them. Since this approach focuses on your feelings* rather than on what you think about your feelings*, the factual details of your past are not always essential to the therapeutic process. A fractured bone will heal the same, whether or not you understand exactly how it broke.

Somatic Hypnotherapy is a results-oriented approach — not one that rewards effort, good intentions, or the elaboration of a compelling personal narrative. I may not listen patiently to every detail of what you have been through. Respectfully, those details may not be relevant here — just as the precise circumstances of a fracture are irrelevant to the orthopedist treating it. That said, be assured: it is genuine empathy for those who are suffering that motivates this work. I may redirect you, but I will always ask for every detail that truly matters to the process.

This approach works best for those who are suffering and genuinely want to heal — who are willing to feel, to engage, and to allow change. It is less suited to those who are not yet in contact with what they feel, or to those who come primarily seeking to be understood rather than transformed. If your current beliefs and strategies had been sufficient, you would not be here. So come ready. Please take the time to read this website and familiarize yourself with the approach before we meet. Be proactive — put the chances of a remarkable change on your side.

Please allow 2.5 to 3 hours for your first appointment, although the therapy session itself should last no more than 60 to 90 minutes.

During your session

Once we have identified your concerns, defined your therapeutic goals, and clarified the conceptual basis of the approach, the session itself begins. Throughout, you remain comfortably seated, always in full control of yourself and master of your own state of mind.

Your session opens with a moment of relaxation and hypnotic induction. You will be inwardly focused and will remain aware throughout. Like any deep relaxation technique, Somatic Hypnosis lowers blood pressure, influences heart rate and its electromagnetic field, and modifies certain types of brain activity. Your conscious mind becomes less critical; your subconscious mind becomes more focused and accessible.

You assess your emotional feelings* through their cognitive component — what you recognize as "emotions" — and you feel them through their somatic component as felt bodily sensations, through interoception: the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within you. Your conscious mind reads, evaluates, and body-maps each of your emotional feelings*. The perception of these sensory experiences transcends cultural boundaries and is remarkably consistent around the world. This is why, based on your appraisal of your feelings before and after the session, you can assess its effectiveness directly and immediately. The goal is to experience the desired change — not necessarily to understand how it became possible.

Emotional and behavioral responses are rooted in automatic, biologically hardwired processes involving the amygdala, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, conditioned responses, and survival-driven mechanisms — regardless of consciousness state. Stress- and anxiety-driven emotional responses manifest in essentially the same way whether you are fully awake, asleep, or in a hypnotic state, with consistent sensory experiences and physiological reactions. Your emotional responses to a traumatic memory will therefore be similar whether you revisit it while awake before the session, during the hypnotic trance, or after hypnosis — unless the trauma has already healed during the therapeutic process and your emotional reality has changed.

We will interact continuously throughout. You will talk almost as much as I do. My role is primarily to induce and maintain your hypnotic state and to guide you through the Somatic Hypnotherapy process. The trance helps you identify and body-map your feelings* and to gain the clear inner vision needed to assess the nature of your unpleasant, disturbing, or painful feelings*. Although we will likely be working on complex emotional territory, we will use simple, direct language that your subconscious mind understands clearly — deconstructing complex emotions into the basic feelings* that the subconscious can recognize and release.

I will then guide you to selectively release the somatic component — the felt sensory experience — of the stress, anxiety, trauma, pain, and other accumulated negative feelings* that have been weighing on you. This process is highly personalized. While neuro-linguistic modulation remains the primary therapeutic tool of Somatic Hypnotherapy, the process integrates elements of Traditional Hypnotherapy, Transpersonal Psychology, and ritual healing drawn from Ritual Healing Theory.

After your session

At the close of the session, we will reassess your emotional responses — to verify that you remain emotionally neutral when mentally revisiting the memories we worked on. This is how you will know that what occurred during the session has triggered the desired change. You will feel that something within you has already shifted, or is about to shift, in the way you had hoped and allowed. The issues you came to address will feel simply resolved. You will retain full memory of everything that happened, was said, and was exchanged during your session.

Because your mind continuously seeks coherence between what your subconscious believes and the reality you experience, you will begin thinking, feeling, and behaving in accordance with your new emotional reality — as soon as the changes have been accepted and integrated by your consciousness. The painful or negative feelings* we identified at the start will most likely feel as though they have simply disappeared. After the session, I will provide explanations to help you better understand what has taken place and what, if anything, remains to be addressed.

Once relieved of the issues that brought you here, learning to listen to your feelings* and expressing gratitude for your change are the most powerful ways to protect and deepen your ongoing healing. Each day spent in ingratitude, denial, disbelief, or doubt of what you experienced could gradually weaken your results. Somatic Hypnotherapy does not, however, interfere with your future capacity to feel new emotions or new pain — your emotional life remains fully intact and alive.

A final word on safety: hypnosis is safe. The hypnotherapist has no control over you. Under hypnosis, you will not do anything against your values or your will. The clarity that comes from releasing what has been weighing on you will help you understand your past with greater equanimity — and face your future with greater freedom.

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.

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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" are often used interchangeably and refer to sensory experiences perceived onto or within the body, assessed, interpreted, and integrated through interoception and conceptualized by the rational mind as "emotions" - consistent with their traditional, biological and medical meanings, but differing considerably from the term 'feeling' in cognitive psychology.

**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, in the West Island of Montreal.