 I recently started playing with Legos again. As a kid, Legos were more my brother's thing, though back then we mostly had generic colored blocks rather than themed sets. We'd build elaborate towns together, invent stories for the characters, and after our first trip to Disney, we even constructed our own Lego Disneyland. None of my kids really caught the Lego bug, but last year my son gave me a flower bouquet set for Mother's Day, and working on it together reminded me how genuinely satisfying it feels to build something with your hands. This year I got a couple more sets for my birthday. Something fun. Something analog. I've been craving that more and more lately: time away from screens. So much of my life is spent on the computer that my free time has increasingly become about finding ways to truly unplug: reading, coloring, crafting. For a while, though, I didn't realize that what I thought was "downtime" wasn't actually restoring me at all. I was scrolling. Watching reels. Consuming without creating. My brain was busy but not resting; stimulated, but not nourished. Sound familiar? When "Easy" Isn't the Point Here's what surprised me when I picked up those Lego sets: it wasn't easy. Lego instructions are entirely visual: no words, just photos of each step. And I am very much a multi-modal learner. I want the lecture, the book, and the notes all at once. Give me all the information. So a wordless picture book for assembling a complex structure? A little disorienting. More than once, I assembled a section incorrectly and had to take it apart and start over. In the past, that might have derailed me. The frustration could have spiraled: why can't I get this right, this is supposed to be fun, I'm making a mess of a children's toy. (You might be familiar with the inner voice I mean). But instead, something different happened. I felt a quiet, steady determination. A calm certainty that I could figure it out, and that starting over wasn't a failure. It was just part of the process. I've been thinking about why that felt different. And I think it comes back to the work I've been doing, both personally and professionally. Growing at the Edge of Your Comfort Zone I've been training in a modality called Metaphors of Movement, and working with it has required me to stretch in ways that don't always feel comfortable. Learning new approaches means sitting with confusion, experimenting, getting things slightly wrong, and staying curious anyway. The same has been true of IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy), another approach I use with clients. Both were developed by Andrew Austin, and he describes the distinction between them in a way I find beautifully clear: "When life has messed up the person (i.e. stuff happened to them) then IEMT is the model of choice. When it is the person who is messing up life (i.e. they are doing stuff to life) then MoM is a better choice." IEMT helps process what happened to you. Metaphors of Movement helps shift the patterns you're creating, the subtle, often invisible ways we get in our own way, limit our own lives, or repeat cycles we can't quite see from the inside. That distinction matters. Because many people arrive at therapy having done significant healing work. They've processed old wounds, made sense of their past, found their footing. And yet something still feels stuck. Life still isn't quite unfolding the way they'd hoped. That's often where Metaphors of Movement becomes remarkable. What This Means for You If you've ever felt like you've done the work: journaled, reflected, maybe even been in therapy before, and still find yourself running into the same walls, it may not be that you haven't healed enough. It may be that the next layer of change isn't about what happened to you. It's about discovering how you've been unconsciously shaping your experience since then. That's subtle, important work. And it doesn't require you to have it all figured out before it starts helping. Here's what struck me most in those Lego moments: the set got built. Even while I was confused, even while I backtracked, even while I checked the photos three times trying to figure out which piece went where, the thing came together. Piece by piece, step by step. Metaphors of Movement works the same way with clients. Even as I'm still deepening my own fluency with it, even when I pause to check my notes mid-session, the process does something. Change happens, often in ways that feel surprisingly gentle and surprisingly lasting. You don't have to wait until everything is perfectly understood to begin. You just have to be willing to sit with the process, and trust that starting over, or slowing down, or asking for help isn't failure. It's just part of building something worth keeping. Curious whether IEMT or Metaphors of Movement might be a fit for what you're working through? I'd love to connect.
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It's my 46th birthday this week. I thought about marking it the way people do on the internet, one of those "who's going to tell her?" photo roundups, the kind where you scroll through decades of yourself and cringe, laugh, or both. So I pulled out the old albums and started looking. What I found surprised me. The Girl in the Photos The baby photos and early childhood snapshots are sweet but distant. I can piece together the context: a birthday cake, a Christmas morning, a family holiday, but I can't feel myself inside those moments. That little girl is mine in the way a character in a beloved book is yours: familiar, but separate. The teenage years are different. My best friend and I were obsessed with taking photos, and those albums are full of laughter so vivid I can practically still hear it. And then: marriage. Motherhood. Young and fully in it. Being Someone's Mother for Half My Life Here's a number that stopped me in my tracks this year: I have officially been someone's mother for half of my life. Looking at those photos, my daughters with their impossibly chubby cheeks and boisterous smiles, my son, the apple of all of our eyes - there was a deep ache in my chest. The best kind of ache. The kind that means something mattered. I saw every version of myself in those images: someone's wife, someone's mom, pregnant again (and again, and again), single, then someone else's wife. Divorced again. Life, in all its beautiful, messy iterations. I saw my brother, young, tall, a genuinely hilarious uncle. I saw my sister, always beside me, always laughing. I honestly don't know how I would have raised my children without her. She is one of the greatest constants of my life. I saw my own mom, not much older than I am now, kneeling in garden photos and pulling kids onto her lap. What a gift my parents' involvement was. Weekends at Grandpa's house, visits to Grandma's, a steady undercurrent of love and support that my children grew up in. A Trip Down Memory Lane (Without the Grief) I was emotional going through those photos. But here's what was different: it wasn't sadness. It was joy. Pure, full-bodied joy. The kind that makes you think: I would take all of it back. Every hard, exhausting, beautiful moment of it. What once felt impossibly challenging, when viewed from here, looks like perseverance. Like growth. Like a life actually lived. And I know exactly why I was able to feel it that way. The Unexpected Side Effect of IEMT Nobody Talks About I'm an Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) practitioner, and I've experienced the work firsthand as a client. Most conversations about IEMT focus on its power to process difficult emotions: grief, frustration, fear, painful memories. But today I want to talk about a side effect that doesn't get nearly enough airtime. After doing IEMT work, I can look back at my entire life without judgement. Not through a lens of regret. Not with the urge to delete photos of an ex or cringe away from old versions of myself. Not with the heavy, complicated grief that so often colours nostalgia. Instead: gratitude. Appreciation. A genuine, settled love for every version of me that shows up in those photos: the young mom, the woman starting over, the girl who was just figuring it out. Could I have done some things differently? Of course. But for the first time in a long time, I don't need to armour myself against my own history to answer that honestly. That is an extraordinary thing. And it gives me real hope for the years ahead; that they can be even more joy-filled, now that I've made peace with the ones behind me. When Your Identity Gets Outgrown: The Transition Nobody Names Having my children young meant I arrived at a version of empty nest syndrome earlier than most. For a season, I had quietly forgotten something important: being a mother is not my identity. It's a part of who I am, one beautiful, defining piece of a much larger whole. The feelings that arrive when something you've devoted years of energy to becomes self-sustaining (or complete) are rarely discussed openly. But they are so common. I see it regularly with my own clients: not just in parenting transitions, but at graduation, retirement, after a long relationship ends, after a major career chapter closes. These are the quiet identity earthquakes. The "who am I now?" moments. They deserve far more space in the conversation. Change Is Slow, and Then All at Once I was speaking with someone recently about one of the more unexpected shifts I noticed after my own IEMT sessions: I could leave dirty dishes in the sink. I was laughing as I said: "maybe you can't relate, but if you know, you know" and she understood immediately. Because it's never really about the dishes. With subconscious modalities, change doesn't always announce itself. At first it can feel like nothing is shifting. And then one day, you pull out a box of old photos on your birthday, and you realize: everything has. 46, and Actually Looking Forward In many ways, I can't believe that 20 years have passed since some of those memories. It feels like yesterday and like another lifetime, both at once. But I'm not sitting here wishing I could go back. I'm sitting here grateful for all of it, for right now, and for what's still ahead. Happy birthday to me. I can't wait to see what comes next. If any of this resonated with you, whether you're navigating a big life transition, struggling to look back without regret, or simply curious about IEMT, I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly.
My February Pantry Challenge: A Holistic Approach to Mindful Eating and Intentional Living2/19/2026  A chicken and veggie soup: 100% homemade and 100% from my pantry! If you follow my work, you know I'm always talking about making conscious choices about what we put into our bodies, our homes, and our lives. This February, I decided to apply that same mindful approach to something a little unexpected: my grocery shopping.
Welcome to my February Minimum Food Shopping Challenge. Why I Started a Pantry Challenge One of my biggest personal goals this year is building financial wellness. I believe financial health is a pillar of holistic health. Chronic financial stress affects our cortisol levels, our sleep, our digestion, and our relationships. So this year I'm getting intentional about spending: shopping thrift stores, repairing instead of replacing, and using what I already have. That naturally led me to my pantry. Like so many of us, I had fallen into the habit of impulse buying at the grocery store: stocking up on ingredients for recipes I'd never get around to making, buying duplicates of things I already had, letting food slowly expire in the back of the cabinet. I used to navigate this kind of scarcity mindset as a young single mom, making do with what was available. Looking back, that season of my life actually taught me a lot about creativity, resourcefulness, and gratitude. This February, I'm bringing that energy back, not from a place of scarcity, but of a place of mindfullness. What the Challenge Actually Looks Like The rules are simple: eat through my pantry and freezer first. Each week I still purchase fresh produce and any true necessities, but I don't buy anything I already have at home or anything that's just for a new recipe I want to try. Before I started, I took a full inventory of my pantry and freezer and brainstormed a list of meal ideas. I plan for about 6 meals per week rather than 7, because leftovers are a built-in part of mindful, low-waste eating. (Plus, I don't want to cook every day!) As I complete each meal, I cross it off the list, which helps me stay focused on what I have rather than what I think I'm missing. Real Food, Real Nourishment: A Pantry Meal Example Here's what I made just this week: I had leftover pot roast in the freezer that needed to be used. Rather than let it go to waste, I simmered it down with a jar of pasta sauce and some fresh mushrooms into a rich, hearty meat sauce. Instead of reaching for dried spaghetti, I used a spaghetti squash sitting on my counter, which added extra fiber, more micronutrients, and made use of something perishable. The result? A nourishing, whole-food meal made entirely from what I already had. My February Pantry Challenge Meal Plan Here's where I stand with about 10 days left in the month. Bolded meals are already done! Pasta Nights
What This Challenge Is Teaching Me Beyond saving money, this challenge has been a genuine mindfulness practice. It's made me slow down and appreciate the abundance that was already right in front of me. It's reconnected me to the creativity and resourcefulness that good, nourishing cooking actually requires. As a health coach, I always encourage my clients to approach food with curiosity rather than rigidity. This challenge is a beautiful example of that. You don't need the trendiest superfoods or a perfectly curated pantry to eat well. You need awareness, intention, and a willingness to work with what you have. Want to Try Your Own Pantry Challenge? Here's how to start:
Enjoyed this post? Share it with a friend who could use a little more mindful eating inspiration this winter.  As a professional working with business owners, I've noticed a consistent pattern: achieving work life balance feels impossible. Between managing clients, marketing, payroll, and endless administrative tasks, finding time for yourself seems like a distant dream.
Meanwhile, personal responsibilities pile up at home. For many business owners with families, evenings blur into carpools, homework assistance, meal prep, and household management. Even with outsourcing options like cleaning services and food delivery, the struggle remains real. The Time Paradox Business Owners Face "I don't have enough time" is the most common phrase I hear from clients seeking stress relief. But what exactly is time, and why does it constantly elude us? Scientifically speaking, time is simply the progression of events from past to present to future. We measure its passage, yet we can't see, touch, or taste it. However, Einstein's theory of relativity teaches us something crucial: time is relative, depending entirely on the observer's frame of reference. Why Time Feels Different Interestingly, your brain's perception of time shifts based on neurochemistry. When you experience unexpected pleasure, dopamine floods your system, making your internal clock run faster. Accordingly, short intervals actually seem longer than they are. Yet the dopamine clock hypothesis reveals something counterintuitive: when things are enjoyable, your attention to time decreases. Therefore, intervals feel shorter (which explains why time flies when you're having fun). We've all experienced this phenomenon. Hours vanish during dinner with loved ones, while a boring meeting drags endlessly. Similarly, during my last flight from the UK, I checked the time repeatedly, only to discover mere minutes had passed. The Myth of "Making Time" People often say you make time for what matters. However, this phrase is technically impossible. We can't create time, only measure how we use it. Here's what I've observed: business owners struggling with work life balance claim they lack time for exercise, healthy cooking, therapy, or meditation. Yet these same individuals somehow find time to scroll social media, answer emails constantly, or binge-watch television. The difference? Priority and intentionality. Scheduling Yourself Into Your Own Life Most business owners already schedule personal appointments: haircuts, medical checkups, gym sessions, family dinners. Nevertheless, these activities represent obligations rather than genuine stress relief. When was the last time you scheduled purely enjoyable activities? Reading for pleasure? Taking an afternoon nap? Learning something new simply because it interests you? Sitting quietly with your thoughts? "Those things don't need scheduling," you might protest. Yet the average business owner I work with never does them. Why? Because they "don't have time." Redefining Productivity for Better Work Life Balance Business owners excel at making time for productive activities: work tasks, errands, networking events, health appointments. However, they rarely create space for "unproductive" moments: those essential periods of rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation. Notably, I'm not suggesting these activities for physical transformation or external validation. Instead, I'm advocating for joy, creative thinking, healthy boredom, and genuine restoration. The One Percent Solution for Stress Relief Here's the challenge I presented to a client this morning, and now I'm extending it to you: What if you dedicated just 14 minutes and 24 seconds daily to yourself? This specific number isn't random. It represents exactly one percent of your day. Just one percent of your 24 hours devoted entirely to you. Importantly, this time isn't for:
Instead, use this time to simply be. Rest without guilt. Enjoy an activity purely for pleasure. Experience something that brings you genuine joy. Making Work Life Balance Sustainable For business owners, sustainable stress relief doesn't require dramatic lifestyle overhauls. Rather, it starts with claiming one percent of your day for yourself. Furthermore, when you consistently prioritize this small investment in yourself, you'll likely notice improved focus, enhanced creativity, and greater resilience in managing your business responsibilities. Ultimately, achieving work life balance isn't about finding more hours in the day. It's about intentionally using the hours you have to nurture yourself alongside your business. Your Next Step Ready to reclaim your work life balance? Start today by blocking 14 minutes and 24 seconds in your calendar, just for you. Label it "personal time" or "stress relief" or simply "my 1%." Then protect it as fiercely as you'd protect your most important client meeting. What will you do with your one percent today? Share your commitment in the comments below, or contact me to discuss personalized strategies for achieving sustainable work life balance as a business owner. You don’t always say it out loud, but you feel it.
“I don’t feel like myself anymore.” You still show up. You still train. You still care (maybe more than ever). But something feels off. Your body feels tight instead of free. Your mind is loud when it used to be quiet. The game that once felt instinctive now feels effortful, like you’re thinking one step ahead and one step behind at the same time. And the worst part? You can’t point to one clear reason why. You’re trying. You know you’re trying. But the feedback doesn’t reflect that. Coaches want more. Teammates seem frustrated. Family members ask what’s wrong. So you push harder, analyze more, care more….and somehow perform worse. That disconnect messes with your head. Because now it’s not just about performance. It’s about who you are. When Performance Stops Being Personal Here’s what most people get wrong about this phase. They think you’ve lost confidence. They think you need a better mindset. They think you just need to “be aggressive” or “trust yourself.” But what’s actually happening runs deeper. At some point, maybe after a bad performance, an injury, a benching, or a stretch where nothing clicked, your focus shifted outward. You stopped playing for you and started playing to avoid disappointment. To avoid criticism. To avoid letting people down. Now every rep feels evaluated. Every mistake feels loaded. Every game feels like a test you might fail. Your mind isn’t focused on the play. It's scanning for danger. Don’t mess up. Don’t look weak. Don’t prove them right. That’s not a lack of discipline. That’s a nervous system in protection mode. Why Overthinking Kills the Zone (And It’s Not Your Fault) You know that feeling when you’re “in the zone”? When everything just flows and your body knows what to do before your mind gets involved? That state, often called flow, isn’t random. It happens when you’re clear, present, appropriately challenged, and free from internal threat. Fear breaks that instantly. Once your attention turns inward, toward worry, self-monitoring, or vague feedback like “you’re not confident enough”, your body tightens. You stop trusting muscle memory. You start trying to consciously control things that were never meant to be controlled. So you hesitate. You force. You overcorrect. And then come the labels:
The Identity Trap No One Talks About Here’s the part that really keeps athletes stuck. Those beliefs aren’t logical conclusions. They’re emotional memories. They’re tied to how you felt when you missed the shot. When you froze in a big moment. When you got hurt. When everything suddenly felt fragile. Your body remembers that fear, even when your mind wants to move on. That’s why positive affirmations fall flat. Why “just relax” makes you more tense. Why confidence feels impossible to force. You’re not arguing with thoughts. You’re responding to a nervous system that thinks the threat is still happening. So it does what it knows how to do: protect you (even if that protection costs you the game you love). The Shift That Changes Everything Here’s the hopeful part: You don’t have to convince yourself to be confident. You don’t have to fake belief. You don’t have to “get tougher.” When fear softens, focus returns naturally. When focus returns, identity stabilizes. Not because you tried harder, but because the internal threat signal quieted down. When that happens, you stop managing performance and start experiencing it again. The zone isn’t something you chase. It’s something you fall back into once fear is no longer running the show. A Permission You Might Need to Hear You’re allowed to admit this feels scary. You’re allowed to want your ease back. You’re allowed to want to feel like you again. Struggling doesn’t mean you’ve lost it. It means something inside you is asking for resolution, not pressure. And when fear changes, identity often follows. If this resonated, you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. Sometimes, being understood is the first step back to yourself. It’s not quite the Year of the Horse yet. In the Chinese calendar, the New Year follows the lunar cycle, which means the next new year begins on February 17, 2026. In Chinese culture, the Horse represents freedom, energy, and a lively spirit, while the Fire element adds passion and intensity. Together, they point to a year marked by rapid movement, bold transformation, and innovation.
By contrast, 2025 (the Year of the Snake) has been a time of shedding the old. The Snake symbolizes quiet transformation: letting go, releasing what no longer fits, and slowly outgrowing outdated skins. For many people, this has been a challenging year, and that weight may feel especially heavy in these final weeks. This moment offers an opportunity to take both literal and metaphorical inventory. What are you holding onto that no longer fits your life? This might include clothes from a former job, goal-weight items you no longer resonate with, or possessions kept out of guilt, perhaps because they were given by someone you care about. And beyond physical belongings, what emotional patterns or lingering guilt are you still carrying? You may notice old reactions resurfacing, responses you believed you had already moved beyond. Rather than seeing this as failure or regression, it can be helpful to view it as information: a signal that something is ready to be resolved at a deeper level. This is where approaches such as IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) and hypnosis can be particularly powerful. Both work beneath conscious thought, addressing the emotional imprints that keep certain reactions, beliefs, or feelings in place, often long after they are useful. IEMT focuses on how emotions are stored and triggered in the body, mind, and nervous system. Instead of endlessly revisiting the story of what happened, it works directly with the emotional response itself. By gently shifting how those emotions are encoded, people often find that old reactions lose their intensity or disappear altogether. The memory may still exist, but it no longer carries the same emotional charge. Hypnosis works in a complementary way by engaging the subconscious mind, the place where habits, beliefs, and emotional patterns are formed and maintained. In a deeply relaxed and focused state, it becomes easier to update outdated beliefs, release unconscious guilt, and create new emotional responses that feel more aligned with who you are now. Used together or separately, these methods allow for change without force or self-judgment. Rather than asking, “Why am I like this?” the question gently becomes, “How did I learn this response...and what would I like instead?” From that place, transformation feels less like effort and more like permission. As the Year of the Snake comes to a close, this kind of inner clearing creates space for the fiery momentum of the Horse. When emotional baggage is released, energy frees up naturally, making it easier to move forward with clarity, confidence, and a renewed sense of direction.  I’m not sure where the idea came from that hypnosis will make someone cluck like a chicken. Many misconceptions about hypnosis stem from stage shows, where people do hilarious things. (I personally love watching these!) But a stage show is carefully crafted for the audience’s entertainment. Those participants agreed to be part of a stage show and do goofy things for laughs.
I’ve been a hypnotherapist for seven years now, and I’ve yet to have anyone request chicken impersonations as their therapeutic goal. Why People Actually Seek Hypnotherapy A few people come to hypnosis because they’ve tried it before and had success. Some come because they’ve been recommended by a friend or medical professional. But most people come to hypnotherapy when they’re out of options, when they’ve tried “everything” and nothing has worked, or out of sheer desperation, with a thought of “Why not? I’ll give it a try.” Hypnosis can seem scary because we mostly see it portrayed as a loss of control: people doing silly things, dangerous things, or in many films, horrifying things. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Reality: Hypnosis Is a Natural State In fact, hypnosis is a natural state you experience multiple times every day: waking up, driving to work, watching a movie, falling asleep. The difference is that you’re usually entering these states unintentionally, rather than with purpose and direction. Hypnosis is a learning state, a focused state of attention where you can intentionally program your mind toward your goals. Think of it as a heightened state of concentration where your subconscious mind becomes more receptive to positive change. What Actually Happens in a Hypnotherapy Session Initial Discussion First, we’ll discuss your goals and what you hope to achieve through hypnosis. In initial sessions, I also explain how the mind works, how hypnosis works, and how you can expect to feel during a session. Most people feel physically relaxed, emotionally calm and comfortable, and mentally wide awake. This doesn’t mean you’ll catch every single word the hypnotist says. Your mind might wander, or you could find yourself thinking about other things. That’s completely normal and doesn’t diminish the effectiveness of the session. Progressive Relaxation Sessions typically move into a progressive relaxation to help your body relax and heighten your state of internal focus. You’ll be gently guided away from outside noises as you relax into a more dreamlike state. This feels very similar to meditation, prayer, or even savasana after a yoga class. Therapeutic Suggestions Once you’ve gone through the relaxation, your hypnotherapist will guide you through techniques to deepen the state, then offer what we call “suggestions.” We use this term because that’s exactly what they are: suggestions, not commands. You are always in control of your own mind, and you are always most suggestible to yourself. In my sessions, I usually add wording along the lines of “you’re open to suggestions that are comfortable and beneficial to you.” Your subconscious mind acts as a filter, accepting what serves you and disregarding what doesn’t. This is why you can’t be hypnotized to do something against your values or will. Your mind naturally protects you, even in this relaxed, focused state. Reorientation After about 15 to 20 minutes for first sessions (a bit longer for experienced clients), you’ll be gently brought back to full awareness. Any important information will be reiterated, and you’ll have time to ask questions about your experience. The Bottom Line Hypnotherapy is a powerful, evidence-based tool for personal change and healing. It’s not about losing control or doing embarrassing things. Instead, it’s about gaining greater control over your thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses. So no, you won’t cluck like a chicken unless that’s genuinely your goal. And in seven years, I’m still waiting for that first request.  What if I told you that you're already practicing hypnosis every single day, but you just don't realize it?
Every time you tell yourself "I'm so stupid" after making a mistake, or repeat "I always forget things," you're actively hypnotizing yourself. The question isn't whether you're using hypnosis; it's whether you're using it intentionally to support your goals, or accidentally to reinforce patterns that hold you back. Understanding the Nature of Hypnosis Here's a fundamental truth that might surprise you: all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Even when working with a skilled hypnotherapist, you're the one doing the work. A hypnotist is simply a guide, helping you access states and resources that already exist within you. We are always most suggestible to ourselves, which is precisely why the internal dialogue we maintain matters so profoundly. Think about it. When you catch yourself saying things like "Why am I such a dummy?" or "I forgot again! What's wrong with me?", you're not just venting frustration. You're actively programming your subconscious mind, reinforcing neural pathways that support the belief that you are forgetful, incompetent, or inadequate. Your subconscious doesn't judge these statements as true or false. It simply accepts them as instructions. This is the double-edged sword of self-hypnosis. The same mechanism that allows negative self-talk to damage our self-concept can be harnessed intentionally to create profound positive change. Programming Your Mind for Success Self-hypnosis is the practice of consciously programming your mind to align with your current goals and values. Instead of allowing random, often negative thoughts to run the show, you take the director's chair and deliberately choose what to reinforce. Want to sleep better? Reduce stress? Feel more confident at work? Build healthier habits? Self-hypnosis offers a direct pathway to communicate these intentions to your subconscious mind, the part of you that controls approximately 95% of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The Foundation: Working with a Practitioner First While anyone can practice self-hypnosis, there's tremendous value in first working with a skilled practitioner who specializes in subconscious behavior. Think of it as learning to drive with an instructor before heading out on the highway alone. A qualified hypnotherapist can help you: Achieve a reset to your authentic self. Before we internalized limiting beliefs about who we are and what we're capable of, we existed in a more natural, authentic state. Tools like Integral Eye Movement Therapy can help desensitize problematic emotions and negative beliefs, essentially clearing the slate so you can work from a healthier foundation. Develop familiarity with the hypnotic state. Many people worry they "can't be hypnotized" or won't know if they're doing it right. Working with a practitioner helps you recognize what the hypnotic state feels like in your own body and mind, making it significantly easier to access that state independently. Learn proper techniques. Just as you'd learn proper form in exercise to prevent injury and maximize results, learning self-hypnosis techniques from an expert ensures you're using methods that actually work. Address deeper patterns. Some beliefs and emotional patterns require the skilled guidance of someone trained to navigate the subconscious landscape. Once these foundational issues are addressed, your self-hypnosis practice becomes exponentially more effective. The Hidden Practice You're Already Doing Most people practice self-hypnosis all day long without any awareness of it. Every time you zone out during your commute, lose yourself in a good book, or get absorbed in a task, you're entering a light trance state. Every time you imagine a future scenario (whether positive or negative) you're engaging your subconscious in visualization. The difference between unconscious and conscious self-hypnosis is intentionality and direction. When you incorporate self-hypnosis into a mindful self-care practice, you're wielding this natural ability with purpose, directing it toward specific outcomes that support your wellbeing and goals. The Magic Hours: Leveraging Key Times of Day Your brain operates differently at different times of day, and there are specific windows when your subconscious mind is particularly receptive to suggestion. The two most powerful times are: The moments before falling asleep. As you transition from waking consciousness to sleep, your brainwave patterns shift from beta (active thinking) through alpha (relaxed awareness) to theta (the hypnotic state). This is prime time for positive programming. The first moments upon waking. Before your conscious, analytical mind fully kicks into gear, you experience a brief theta state window. What you think about and imagine during this time has amplified impact. Yet what do most of us do during these valuable moments? We ruminate about our day. We worry about tomorrow's to-do list. We replay difficult conversations or imagine worst-case scenarios. We're practicing self-hypnosis, all right, but we're programming anxiety, stress, and limitation. Imagine instead using these moments to visualize your best possible outcomes. To mentally rehearse confidence and success. To visit a future version of yourself who has already achieved your goals. This isn't just positive thinking. It's strategic reprogramming of your subconscious mind so that it works in alignment with what you actually want to create in your life. Beyond Visualization: A Holistic Approach While there are multiple methods for practicing self-hypnosis, I'm particularly drawn to approaches that integrate the emotional body, physical body, and intellectual mind. True transformation doesn't happen in just one dimension of our being. It requires all aspects of ourselves to come into alignment. An effective self-hypnosis practice might include:
When these elements work together, self-hypnosis becomes more than just mental exercise. It becomes a full-body, full-being experience that creates lasting change. The Ripple Effect of Conscious Self-Hypnosis When you commit to a regular self-hypnosis practice, the benefits extend far beyond your specific goals. You develop:
Perhaps most importantly, you reclaim power over the narrative you tell yourself about who you are and what's possible for you. Taking the Next Step If you're intrigued by the potential of self-hypnosis but unsure where to start, know that this is a learnable skill. You don't need any special abilities or talents; just curiosity, willingness, and guidance on proper technique. Learning self-hypnosis is an investment in yourself that pays dividends every single day. It's a tool you'll carry with you for life, one that grows more powerful with practice. Your mind is already creating your reality through the thoughts you think and the beliefs you reinforce. The only question is: will you take conscious control of that process, or leave it to chance? The choice, as always, has been yours all along.  Every January, it's the same ritual. Your feed becomes inundated with advertisements about creating a new you for the new year. Transformation promises fill every corner of the internet. This year, be different. This year, finally become who you're meant to be.
I've seen countless posts promoting 2026 as The Year of the Horse, even though the Chinese zodiac doesn't actually begin until February 17. The symbolism is compelling: horses represent freedom, power, forward momentum. Who wouldn't want to gallop into their best life? Then there's the complete opposite perspective. Posts proclaiming that the new year actually starts in spring, that winter in nature is a time for planting seeds, for hibernating, for reflection. Rest before you run. Dream before you do. That second approach resonates more with how I want to live my life. But here's what I've learned through my work: there's an even more powerful third option. The new year—and the new version of you—doesn't have to start with a calendar page or a particular season. It can begin at any moment when you feel the call to create a positive change for yourself. The pressure to be constantly improving can feel insurmountable. You're supposed to be better every quarter, every month, every week. More productive. More optimized. More evolved. It's exhausting just thinking about it. But in my work, I've discovered something fascinating: it's not that we need new habits or to create new beliefs about ourselves. More often than not, what's truly transformative is letting go of old ideas. The Beliefs Driving Your Behavior This might sound like therapeutic mumbo jumbo, but stay with me. Our negative behaviors stem from our negative beliefs about ourselves. If you believe deep down that you're unworthy of love, that you aren't a good person, that you're someone who self-sabotages and procrastinates, then you'll unconsciously behave in ways that support those beliefs. Your subconscious mind is essentially a supercomputer with incredibly powerful programming that keeps you following certain patterns and behaviors. We're wired for survival. In the absence of saber-tooth tigers wandering around, that survival instinct gets triggered by things like traffic jams, arguments with family members, disagreements about work projects. And here's the kicker: your subconscious mind is operating off a very old system,one that was built in your childhood and continues to operate in the same manner today, very often without any updates for your current reality. Think about that for a moment. The operating system running your life was written when you were five, or seven, or twelve years old. No wonder things feel glitchy sometimes. You wouldn't run your business on software from 1995. So why are you running your life on programming from childhood? Understanding Your Why Changes Everything Your goals will be achieved much more quickly if you take the time to understand your underlying patterns. Examining why you want what you want is often the first step in a genuinely interesting journey. Let's say you want more money. But why? So you can buy a house? Take a dream vacation? Build a safety net? Or is it that you want the freedom and security that you believe more money can give to you? Once you know that it's actually freedom and security you're craving, you can start to look at how you can feel more free and more secure right now, even without the big raise you're chasing. Maybe freedom means setting better boundaries at work. Maybe security means having difficult conversations you've been avoiding. Maybe it means finally dealing with that thing you've been putting off for months. Approaching your goals through the lens of how you want to feel in your life, instead of what you want to have, can be a powerful way to start reverse-engineering your goals to create that successful future. This is the work that actually creates lasting change. Not another planner. Not another productivity hack. Not another vision board (though I have nothing against vision boards, I love using them myself. Make one if it sparks joy). Discovering Your Authentic Self, Not Creating a New One This spring, I'll be exploring these concepts more deeply in a free online workshop I'm co-hosting with my wonderful colleague and dear friend, Emma Toms. Our workshop, "Why You're Stuck: A Nervous System Workshop for Real Change," will address how those common patterns people often find themselves stuck in were once brilliant survival strategies (and how to start shifting them). Because here's the truth that no January transformation campaign wants you to know: you don't need to discover a new version of yourself. You need to discover the authentic version of you that's been there all along, buried under years of outdated programming and survival strategies that no longer serve you. That version of you isn't hiding behind your next goal. It's not waiting for January 1st or the spring equinox or the Year of the Horse. It's available to you right now, in this moment, once you understand what's been keeping it locked away. The journey isn't about becoming someone new. It's about becoming who you actually are. Ready to understand what might be keeping you stuck? Take my quiz to discover which stuck state might be driving your life right now, and get some practical ideas for how to start shifting it. No January deadline required. Why More Teens Are Turning to Hypnosis: And Why It Might Be Exactly What Your Child Needs12/29/2025  Hypnosis is rarely the first option parents consider for their teens. In fact, almost every parent I speak with starts our conversation the same way: “We’ve tried everything, and nothing is working.”
Yet, again and again, hypnosis turns out to be the approach that finally creates the shift their child needs. The Rising Pressure on Teens in 2026 Today’s teens face extraordinary levels of pressure, from academic expectations and extracurricular demands to social dynamics, online culture, chronic comparison, and their own internal standards. It’s a lot. And those layers of stress often show up as:
Why Hypnosis and IEMT Work So Well for Teens Hypnosis and Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) are particularly powerful for young people because they allow teens to process emotional challenges privately and internally, without needing to talk endlessly about what’s bothering them. Many teens want to share their struggles, but rapport takes time. Hypnosis gives them a sense of comfort and agency right away. To them, it often feels like they’re “taking a nap,” yet they start noticing real changes in their actual lives, like walking onto the field and playing the best game of their high-school career. While hypnosis is my primary go-to with teens, IEMT can create quick and meaningful shifts, especially when a teen is stuck in a negative memory loop or repeatedly experiencing an intense emotion. A Real Story: From Daily Fear to Real Freedom Not long ago, I worked with a 13-year-old client diagnosed with ADHD and supported by an IEP at school. When I first met her last summer, she was struggling with a severe phobia of vomiting and getting sick, a fear that had completely taken over her life. Before working with me, she had spent an entire year in weekly therapy with no progress. We completed six hypnosis sessions (one per week for six weeks). By the end, her phobia was gone. This is a child who used to walk into my office and anxiously ask, “Has anyone been sick in here?” every single time. Now, she comes in once a month to work on focus, confidence, and all the very real emotional challenges of middle school. Recently, her mom attended an IEP review meeting and told me how good it felt to share that after everything they tried, every strategy, every appointment, every traditional approach, hypnosis was the thing that finally worked. Why I Love Working With Teens Helping kids and teens transform their lives is one of the greatest joys of my work. While I can never promise specific results, I can promise this:
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