The Horizon Center School of Hypnotherapy

05/01/2026

04/29/2026

"I want to do hypnotherapy but I'm scared of what might come up."

I hear this one a lot. And I want to address it honestly because it deserves a real answer, not just reassurance.

Yes, sometimes things come up in hypnosis. Memories. Emotions. Connections between the past and the present that the conscious mind hadn't made yet.

That is actually part of what makes this work so effective. The subconscious holds a lot and when we create the right conditions it will surface what needs to be addressed.

But here's what I want you to know.

You are in control the entire time. You are not unconscious. You are not vulnerable in the way people imagine. You can open your eyes and end the session at any moment.

Also, it is not like we open Pandora’s box and all your “stuff” comes pouring out. The subconscious will not show you more than you are ready to handle. In my experience it is actually quite wise about pacing. It tends to surface things gradually, in a way that feels manageable, because it is not trying to overwhelm you. It is trying to help you.

And you will not be alone in it. A skilled hypnotherapist is with you every step of the way, watching, listening, adjusting, making sure you feel safe and supported throughout.

The things that come up in hypnosis are not there to frighten you. They are there because they have been waiting to be understood. And when they finally are, most people describe it as a relief rather than a trauma.

The fear of what might come up is almost always worse than what actually does.

🎓 50% off until May 1st. Three hours of private mentoring included.

Limited-time hypnotherapy offers, live events, and special trainings from The Horizon Center. Explore short-duration opportunities to learn, experience, or deepen your work with hypnotherapy.

04/29/2026

For several years I did regular segments on CFAX 1070 radio in Victoria.

Over 50 segments. Different topics every time. The subconscious mind, habits, phobias, relationships, emotional regulation, how the brain responds to stress.
Whatever was relevant, whatever people were curious about, whatever I thought needed to be said.

I loved it. Not because I enjoy the sound of my own voice, but because it gave me a chance to take complex ideas about how the mind works and make them accessible to people who had never thought about any of it before.

That is actually what I love most about this work. Not just doing it but explaining it. Breaking it down. Helping people understand what is happening inside their own minds in a way that makes them feel less crazy and more capable.

I think that comes from being a teacher first. Before I was a hypnotherapist I was a high school drama teacher. And that background shaped everything about how I approach this work. I am always thinking about how to explain something so it actually lands. How to sequence information so it builds on itself. How to make someone feel safe enough to be curious and receptive.

That is what I bring to my training program. Not just 25 years of clinical experience but 25 years of figuring out how to teach this in a way that actually makes sense.

My students don't just learn what to do. They learn why it works. And that why is what gives them the confidence to walk into a session with any client and know they have what they need.

🎓 50% off until May 1st. Three hours of private mentoring included.

04/29/2026

Not everyone experiences hypnosis the same way.
And understanding that is one of the things that separates a good hypnotherapist from a great one.

There is a concept I teach in my training called emotional and physical suggestibility. And once you understand it, you start seeing it everywhere.

Some people are what we call physically suggestible. They respond readily to direct suggestions. Tell them their arm is getting heavy and it gets heavy. Suggest they are feeling deeply relaxed and they sink into the chair. These clients tend to go deeply into hypnosis relatively easily and respond well to straightforward suggestion work. These are the people who gap during the session and afterward dont recall much of what was said. They are also the personality type that ends up on stage with a stage hypnotist— life of the party, uninhibited, happy to be the entertainment.

Then there are emotionally suggestible clients. These are the analytical ones. The thinkers. The people who are listening to everything you say and quietly evaluating it while you say it. They tend to stay lighter in hypnosis. They need to understand what is happening and why before they can fully let go. Direct suggestions often bounce right off them because the conscious mind is still very much in the room, assessing everything.

Most hypnotherapy training teaches you to work with physically suggestible clients. The ones who go deep, follow suggestions easily, and respond predictably.

But in my experience the majority of people who seek out hypnotherapy are emotionally suggestible. They are the overthinkers, the self aware, the ones who have already tried everything else and need something that meets them where they actually are.

Whole Brain Hypnotherapy was built for exactly these clients.
When you understand how to work with both types, you stop dreading the analytical client. You stop worrying when someone stays light. You have the tools to reach anyone who sits down in front of you.

And that changes everything about how confident you feel in your practice.

🎓 50% off until May 1st. Three hours of private mentoring included.

Limited-time hypnotherapy offers, live events, and special trainings from The Horizon Center. Explore short-duration opportunities to learn, experience, or deepen your work with hypnotherapy.

04/29/2026

Early in my career a client came to see me for weight loss.
She wanted to lose about thirty pounds. Reasonable goal, clear motivation, ready to do the work. We started our sessions and I gave her suggestions around making healthier choices, feeling satisfied with less, moving her body more.

She came back having gained weight.

We tried again. More sessions, more suggestions, more carefully crafted content delivered while she was in hypnosis.

She kept gaining.

I was baffled. And frustrated. And in a moment of complete honesty while she was in hypnosis I said out loud: there must be some reason why you're not following my suggestions.

She started talking.
What came out had nothing to do with food or portion control or any of the things I had been carefully scripting for her.

She told me about being seven years old, visiting her grandmother in hospice over and over again. Not really understanding what was happening. Just watching her grandmother get thinner and thinner and thinner until one day she was gone.

Her subconscious had made a connection that her conscious mind had never considered.
Thin meant dying.

Every suggestion I had given her about losing weight was landing on a subconscious that believed with complete conviction that getting smaller could kill her. It wasn't ignoring me. It was protecting her. Fiercely, loyally, and with absolute certainty that it was doing the right thing.

That was the day I threw out every script I had ever written.

Because no script in the world could have anticipated that. No generic suggestion could have reached it. The only thing that could help her was understanding what her subconscious actually believed and speaking directly to that.

Once we addressed it, once her subconscious understood that her grandmother's thinness was about illness and not about weight, everything changed.

The subconscious is always trying to keep you safe. Even when it looks like it's working against you, it is running the best program it has.

Your job is to find out what that program is.

🎓 This is what I teach inside Whole Brain Hypnotherapy Training. 50% off until May 1st, bringing your investment to just $948 plus applicable taxes. Three hours of private mentoring with me included.

Limited-time hypnotherapy offers, live events, and special trainings from The Horizon Center. Explore short-duration opportunities to learn, experience, or deepen your work with hypnotherapy.

04/29/2026

Here is something that might make you look at your patterns a little differently.

Some of what you are carrying may not have started with you.

There is a growing body of research around epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. What it tells us is that the experiences of our parents and grandparents can actually influence how our own nervous system responds to the world. Patterns of fear, scarcity, hypervigilance, and survival can be passed down through generations not just through behavior and modeling but through biology.

In other words you might be responding to something that happened before you were born. Running a program that was never yours to begin with.

I have seen this show up in sessions more times than I can count. A client with no obvious trauma in their own history who carries an inexplicable sense of dread. A person who grew up in abundance but cannot shake a bone deep fear of not having enough. Someone who has never experienced a significant loss but lives with a grief that seems to have no origin.

When we ask the subconscious where something comes from, sometimes it doesn't go to this lifetime at all.

This is one of the reasons I believe so strongly that we can never assume we know what is behind a client's symptoms. The subconscious holds more than we can see on the surface. Our job is to stay curious, follow where it leads, and trust that it will show us what needs to be addressed.

The answers are always there. Sometimes they just go back further than we expected.

04/29/2026

Before you choose a hypnotherapy training program, there is one question I think matters more than any other.

Do you actually like the person teaching it?

I don't mean do you find them impressive or credentialed or well reviewed. I mean do you feel comfortable with them. Does the way they explain things resonate with you. Does their approach to people feel grounded and respectful. Does something about how they show up make you feel safe enough to be open.

This matters more than most people realize when they are shopping for training.
Hypnotherapy is built on trust, safety and rapport. You cannot learn to create those things in a room with a client if you have never experienced them yourself as a student. The environment you learn in shapes the practitioner you become.

You are not just absorbing techniques in a training program. You are absorbing a way of thinking. A way of listening. A way of being with people when they are vulnerable and trusting you with something real.

That means the person teaching you is not just delivering content. They are modeling something. And what they model is what you will carry into your own work.

So before you look at curriculum, before you compare prices, before you read the list of what is covered, spend some time with the person teaching it. Watch how they explain things. Notice how they talk about their clients. Pay attention to whether you feel seen and respected in how they communicate.

If something feels off, trust that. It usually shows up early for a reason.
And if something feels right, trust that too.

🎓 If you'd like to get a feel for how I teach before you commit to anything, you can take the first two units of my training completely free.
🔗 https://www.horizoncenterhypnotherapy.com/free-trial

And if you're ready to go all in, the 50% off flash sale runs until May 1st.
🔗 https://www.horizoncenterhypnotherapy.com/limited-time-offer

Limited-time hypnotherapy offers, live events, and special trainings from The Horizon Center. Explore short-duration opportunities to learn, experience, or deepen your work with hypnotherapy.

04/29/2026

A client came to see me who was terrified of kittens.
Everyone in her life thought it was hilarious. They sent videos. They tagged her in memes. Someone gave her a stuffed kitten for Christmas as a joke. She knew it made no logical sense. Kittens are supposed to be adorable. But the fear was completely real and she couldn't explain it.

So I did what I always do. I asked her subconscious where it came from.
What came back was shocking, and sad… but made perfect sense when you understand how the mind works.

When she was a child a stray cat had followed her home. She wanted to keep it. Her dad didn’t want cats. The cat was pregnant and when the kittens were born her father flushed them down the toilet.
As a child she could not wrap her head around how her father could do that to something so small and vulnerable. To accept that felt like too much. So her subconscious did what it always does when something is too painful to hold. It rewrote the story.
The kittens must have been dangerous. The kittens must have been bad. Her father was protecting her.
It was the only version of events her young mind could survive. And her subconscious had been loyally running that story ever since.

Once we addressed what was really going on, once her subconscious understood it was never about the kittens, the fear dissolved.

This is what I mean when I say there is always a reason. Always a positive intention underneath even the most baffling behavior. The subconscious is not random. It is not broken. It’s not trying to mess with you or ruin your life. It is doing the best it can with what it learned.

Your job as a hypnotherapist is not to judge the symptom. It is to get curious about it.

🎓 This is how I teach you to think inside Whole Brain Hypnotherapy Training. 50% off until May 1st, bringing your investment to just $948 plus applicable taxes. Three hours of private mentoring with me included

04/29/2026

Two people can go through the exact same experience and come out of it completely differently.
Same event. Same circumstances. Completely different impact.

I have seen this hundreds of times in my practice. Two siblings who grew up in the same household, with the same parents, through the same difficult years. One of them carries deep self doubt into adulthood. The other seems largely unaffected.

Same childhood. Different meaning.

This is one of the foundational principles I teach in my hypnotherapy training and one of the most important things I have learned in 25 years of working with the subconscious mind.
It is not the events in our lives that cause us our problems. It is the meaning we attach to them.

The subconscious takes in everything that happens to us and files it under safe or dangerous, good or bad. But that filing system is built by a child, or a teenager, or a person in crisis, using the understanding they had available to them at that moment. And sometimes the meaning they attached to an event was the only one that made sense at the time, but it is not the only meaning available.

A child who was criticized constantly might decide I am not good enough. Another child in the same situation might decide my parent has a problem. Same experience. Completely different meaning. Completely different impact on the rest of their life.

When we work with the subconscious we are not changing what happened. We cannot do that. What we can do is revisit the meaning that was attached to it and offer the subconscious a more accurate, more compassionate, more useful interpretation.
And when the meaning changes, the behavior changes with it.