I actually didn't give [hypnosis] much thought. I just called it body centered therapy, where you tune into your body for accessing unconscious hidden parts of yourself.
Did you only want stories in which Grace Smith was the catalyst for change? For me, hypnosis was the first step in accessing hidden trauma and pain that conventional psychotherapy could not reach.
Physical pain brought on by emotional trauma, tension held in my body.
It was 2001, I had just gotten out of a divorce of an arranged marriage of one year and a half. The emotional trauma was immense, but I had nothing to say as I lay listlessly in the therapist’s chair. I couldn't feel anything besides for physical pain choking me and pressing down on me. I felt I was laying beneath a tree trunk that had fallen on top of me. With a help of a therapist who I had gone to for a Chinese form of accu-pressure but was dabbling in hypnosis, I began to ask my body what it was trying to tell me, and in this way I began to face the emotional pain that I was holding in my body. Laying down closing my eyes, and tuning in to my body was the only way I had to access my deep emotional pain. If I had not learned to do this, but had relied on psychologists, and medication, I shudder to think of where I would be today. Accessing my unconscious in this way opened me up to experience all of who I am in a way that has filled me with so much joy and love, I could never have imagined before.