Hypnotherapy might just be the solution to your lingering health problems

If you’re familiar with and believe in the placebo effect, you might want to give hypnotherapy a chance. With placebo effect, we learned that the mind is more powerful than we think. Likewise, hypnotherapy believes that similar to how positive thoughts can heal us, negative thoughts can also have a pertinent impact on our bodies, often leading to illnesses and diseases. Contrary to western medical practices, hypnotherapy focuses on the spiritual and emotional well-being of a person just as much as the physical, anchoring on the belief that the body, mind, and feeling are all interconnected, and more often than not, diseases are actually borne out of past traumas and personal ordeals. Thus, while modern medicine prescribes medications for illnesses, hypnotherapy on the other hand, recommends lifestyle change in terms of diet, and claims that clients who are able to retrieve and accept their past painful experiences, are the ones who recover more quickly and for good.

Hypnotherapy might sound intimidating. I know the first thing that comes to mind is the voodoo hypnotism you often see in movies. Don’t worry, though it does involve accessing your subconscious mind, it is 100 percent safe. Rest assured you will remember everything from a hypnotherapy session. According to Psychology Today, it’s similar to “being completely absorbed in a book, movie, music, or even one’s thoughts or meditations. In this state, the clients can turn their attention completely inward to find and utilize the natural resources deep within themselves that can help them make changes or regain control in certain areas of their life.”

Locally, we now fortunately have a professional hypnotherapist in Saps Uttam. Inspired to pursue the practice from her own experience, Saps now wants to bring hypnotherapy to her home country and help Filipinos the way it has helped her in the past. She is the first in the Philippines to be licensed by the International Medical & Dental Hypnotherapy Association (IMDHA), an international board based in the US, after taking hypnotherapy studies with them, as well as with the Ekagra Karma Apara Antara (EKAA or the Integrated Clinical Hypnotherapy Foundation) based in India. Saps also took a course in Metaphor and Applied Psychology in Hong Kong.

With hypnotherapy, Saps helps her clients expedite the healing process by tapping their subconscious while calling attention to the importance of nutrition through a healthy diet and proper supplementation. Since she first began her practice, she has helped several people overcome various physical and mental afflictions such as depression, anxiety, trauma, eating disorders, eczema, liver problems, diabetes, and even cancer. Testimonials from past patients include a claim on its overwhelming effect in his life in as early as five sessions. Another shared, “[Saps] told me the link between skin and other organs and as someone who works for doctors, I decided to try it out. What came out was deep-seated anger I had and, believe it or not, after a few sessions, the eczema stopped [..] I tried creams in the past and it didn’t work at all. She explained the metaphysical connection and I was desperate to try it. It worked! To this day no more eczema.”

In an intimate lunch with Saps, I had the chance to experience a sort of teaser to what she does. It wasn’t really hypnotherapy, but rather a 5-minute meditation activity known as the Pink Bubble Meditation Technique, which she revealed she administers to her patients before ending each session. Despite the noisy restaurant setting, I actually felt lighter after this activity. Full disclosure though, I believe in Saps and her ways (though that was the first time we met)—which is significant, because, as Saps said, she can only help those who want to be helped and believe they can be helped. Hypnotherapy, after all, is founded on the principles of the placebo effect, which means if your mind is blocking the notion of treatment before therapy even starts, then the sessions might be futile.