The Hardest Thing Hypnosis Helped Me Work On

My journey into hypnosis was all about becoming a better coach. It was about developing the skills to help people on a deep level. The more I learned about it, the less fearful I was.

I embraced hypnosis as a tool for generative change. But when people in my faith community found out I was studying hypnosis, that’s when relationships that I thought were solid began to fracture.

The first person to call me out for being a Christian hypnotist was my sister. She doesn’t even live near me, nor does she attend my church. She called me out because “hypnosis is named after the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.” I later learned that was true, but the practice is ancient going all the way back to biblical times. It wasn’t called hypnosis until the late 1800s when James Braid, a surgeon, coined the term.

Next, one of the church leaders texted me about a Facebook post where I openly shared about hypnosis and invited people to try it out. He basically said hypnosis was sorcery.

When I went to a marriage conference, two of the speakers used the metaphor of “putting it on the shelf,” with regards to any issues they needed to discuss but purposed to put off until they were both ready to broach the subject. This is classic NLP, which was born out of family therapy, gestalt therapy, and you guessed it…hypnosis. I thought, I can talk to them about that technique. Was I wrong. As soon as I pointed out it was a hypnotic technique, the female minister reached out to caution me about hypnosis.

Soon, I received a text message from the worship team leader, which had a link to a video and an article about how hypnosis is of the devil.

Finally, my pastor confronted me about a TikTok post. I made the post because I realized the biggest trance inducer right now is the mobile phone and social media. When people get trapped in the doom scroll of TikTok, they are in a trance. I thought, what if I could leverage that trance to help them feel better about themselves?

Pastor saw the post and admonished me. He said, “Hypnosis is like a mind-altering drug,” and warned me like others to be careful. He asked if I had a verse to support the work I did with that post, and reminded me that I am not qualified to do hypnosis because I did not possess a degree in psychology.

At first, I shook it off. But not long after, on his podcast, he made the statement, “I don’t believe in hypnosis.” That stung.

I began to feel like the faith community that once embraced me was now rejecting me.

The hypocrisy! The church does hypnosis all the time, whether they realize it or not. They induce trances through praise and worship. They prepare the atmosphere, collect offerings, and then preach the word of God with numerous embedded commands. And I’m unqualified?!

I maintain that hypnosis is everywhere. It is in every conversation between two or more people, especially where one is attempting to persuade another to their thinking. You’ll find it in sales, marketing, and in books and media.

The most dangerous hypnotist to beware of are the ones who do it without knowing they do it.

I eventually found scriptures to support my practice. Although hypnosis is unused in scripture, the word trance appears several times and among notable figures. But that’s a post for a different day.

When I felt rejected by the church, I stopped going. I didn’t quit God. I excused myself from a group of people who could not and would not embrace me.

That rejection caused me to doubt my abilities. I cancelled all social media accounts and started over from scratch. And the hurt I carried was really unforgiveness in my heart. And because I carried that within me, I was chained and unable to show up in a powerful way for my clients.

I had to work on me. I had to deal with the rejection and the unforgiveness so that I could heal myself first.

When I reached the point where I no longer wanted to carry that anymore, I was in a practice room at Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy with my study partner Lee Kesler.

We were practicing an NLP technique called Timelines. For that session, I decided the choice point I wanted to change was how I felt about all the people who threw me away because of hypnosis. And if I’m being honest, it was really my pastor, a friend and guide who had once trusted me.

In Timelines, I changed the way that event showed up on my timeline. I shrank it down and pushed it so far away that it couldn’t affect me anymore.

And now, I’m going back to church. I’m still a hypnotist. And I am being received more openly by the people there. They ask questions, and they trust me enough to support them even when they don’t fully understand what hypnosis is.

The other day, I had a conversation with a brother at church that changed his mind in under 20 minutes. That’s when he confessed that I was an answer to his prayer.

I show up different because I am different. I’m different because I released the pain instead of remaining stuck by it. That pain wanted to protect me, putting up a shield where no one could receive my gift. But when I let it go, I was free to show up as I am.