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 extra-ordinary 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 – unless you have read my website and are familiar with my approach. 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 can help you achieve the desired changes. It is very likely that what is prompting you to seek help are not mere memories of the past, but rather involuntary projections into everyday reality of your inadequate emotional responses to your unpleasant 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 you understand that 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 aims to help you identify and uproot the feelings behind your patterns of inappropriate emotional responses that are most likely the root cause of your issues and thus, trigger 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 as a driving-for-action force, the three inter-conditioned experiences must necessarily 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 or years. I am an old man and with such an approach of endless sessions and no guarantees, I may never see the end of your therapies. In Somatic Hypnotherapy, your assessment and first therapy session must take place during the two to three hours reserved for your first appointment, and your entire treatment should not extend over more than three consecutive sessions.

Somatic Hypnotherapy is a results-oriented approach, not one focused on rewarding effort and good intentions, which can change the dynamics of your session. I may not even listen patiently until you tell the whole story. Respectfully, the details of your mishaps may not be relevant in this approach. Similarly, the details of the circumstances of a broken bone are irrelevant to the care provided by the orthopedist. Yet, he will likely listen to the whole story because he knows we are conditioned to value empathy, and intention, not just results, and because he is paid to do so. Rest assured, as a retiree, it is empathy for those who are suffering that motivates me in my mission. I may not have time to listen to your story, but don't worry, I will ask for all the necessary details.

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 the emotionally numb, nor for "snowflakes" or those who want to be right; it is the approach of choice for those who are suffering and want to heal. Be reasonable! If your beliefs were correct, you were already cured, and you weren't knocking on my door looking for a solution. 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 bothers them, nor to those who believe that thoughts, feelings (emotional feelings) and emotions are interchangeable terms. 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 comfortably seated, 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, influences heart rate and its electromagnetic field, and modifies certain types of brain activity. Your conscious mind becomes less critical and your subconscious mind more focused.

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 conscious mind reads evaluates, reflects (mirrors), and thus body-maps each of your emotional feelings. The perception of these sensory experiences transcends cultural boundaries and are consistently similar all around the world. Thus, based on the appraisal of your 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. 

Emotional and behavioral responses are rooted in automatic, biologically hardwired processes involving the amygdala, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, conditioned responses, and survival-driven mechanisms, regardless of consciousness state. The stress and anxiety-driven emotional responses do manifest similarly whether you are awakened, asleep, or in a hypnotic state - with consistent sensory experiences and physiological reactions. Therefore, your emotional responses to your traumatic memories are expected to be similar whether you review them while you are still awake before your session, in a hypnotic trance during your hypnotherapy session, or after hypnosis—unless your trauma has healed during the therapeutic process and your emotional reality has already changed.

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 triggering your healing. For, with proper care, a fractured bone will heal the same, whether or not you understand how it broke.

We will interact continously, and you'll talk almost as much as I do. My role is primarily to induce and maintain your hypnotic state, and to guide you throughout the Somatic Hypnotherapy process. 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. 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. 

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, Morphic Field Theory and ritual healing metaphors drawn from the Ritual Healing Theory.

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 shifted or is about to change the way you've wanted and allowed. You'll feel like the issues you've come to work on in therapy are just 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 life reality you experience, you’ll start thinking, feeling, and behaving according to your new emotional 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 simply 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 new 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. 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 to better plan 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. Hopefully, your session in Somatic Hypnotherapy will be one of the most extraordinary experiences of your life.

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 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. 

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

*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!

Somatic Hypnotherapy - 186 Sutton Pl, suite 104, Beaconsfield, Montréal, Qc, H9W5S.