In 2007, Wendy Isley, facing a challenging divorce, stumbled upon hypnosis as a remedy for sleepless nights and anxiety. What began as a personal lifeline evolved into a transformative career. Wendy shares her journey from corporate life to seasoned hypnotist in this MysticMag interview, delving into the nuances of hypnosis, success coaching, and her holistic empowerment approach.
How did you get into hypnosis and what drew you to it?
Back in 2007, I went through a divorce after being married for a really long time. I was struggling with not sleeping, worrying a lot, and was having anxious thoughts. There was a lot of change happening in my life. Then, a friend of mine recommended a hypnotherapist here in the Kansas City area. I started working with her and working on myself. I suddenly started to sleep better and feel better. I had been in corporate America for almost 30 years up until that point, and I was tired of it. I’d worked for a medium-sized corporation and then for a small two-person shop in the oil and gas industry.
However, I always wanted to help people. I always felt the call to serve others in some way, and I also wanted a business of my own. I knew that my boss was probably going to close the business down in a few years. He’s older than me, so he’s closer to retirement. I thought about different businesses, so I finally asked my hypnotherapist about getting certified to do what she was doing, to be a hypnotist or a hypnotherapist. She said, “Oh, I think you’d be really good at it.”
In the fall of 2009, I traveled every weekend from Kansas City to St. Louis for my training for eight weeks and got my certification at the end of that year. I opened my practice in 2010, but it was only a part-time job for me at first, as I was still working full-time. That’s when I started to work with others and help people. Then, at the end of 2012, my boss did close the business down, as I expected, so I decided that my practice was going to become my full-time job. In early 2013, that became a reality and I started doing this work full-time. And I just love it.
Can you walk me through one of your hypnosis sessions?
Clients come to me for different reasons – habit removal, behavior modification, gaining confidence, removing fears, etc. A big part of my work involves habit removal, weight loss, and quitting smoking or alcohol, but I also work with a lot of people to increase confidence for public speaking (and confidence in general) and to remove fears, for example, a fear of driving over bridges or flying.
When a new client comes, I ask them about the issue that they’re having, what brought them there, and why they want help. Then, I go through a roughly 20-minute-long explanation of what hypnosis is and what it’s not, how it works, why it works, etc. I also answer any questions they might have. I explain that it’s not mind control and I do my best to debunk some of the usual myths and misconceptions about hypnosis.
I tell them that they don’t have to listen to the words I say, that their subconscious mind is open and suggestible like a little child because we are slowing down their brain waves. I also have this information in a video on my website. Furthermore, I show them a little exercise and walk them through it. It helps show them, through the power of their imagination, how they can make a physical or a rapid change.
Then, I talk to them about the power of emotions and that it’s really not the depth of the hypnotic state that’s important. You don’t have to be in a deep theta state where you have natural anesthesia and amnesia, which is a lot of what people think hypnosis is. A light state of hypnosis is actually just as effective for every type of issue that I help clients with, except for pain management. To manage pain, you would need the natural anesthesia.
Then, we go through how their emotional state drives their thoughts, which, in return, fuels their emotions. So, we want to get to the emotional state of why they want to make presentations, how they can overcome things such as trauma, or why they want to get healthier and play with their grandchildren, for example. We get to the emotion of it – How are you going to feel when you’re at your perfect healthy weight? That takes around 20 minutes and it is followed by an intake where I ask them some questions about themselves. I want them to get to their relaxation place, a place where they like to go on vacation, and I’m just the tour guide taking them there. I’m just guiding them and asking a few questions. At this point, we typically do a session.
A classic session for hypnosis involves inducing and deepening a trance state. Then I test to see where they are and make some suggestions, direct or indirect, or a combination of the two. Then we wrap it up and exit the hypnotic state. In the first session, I’ll give them some audio reinforcements. It can be either a general hypnosis session that anybody can use to relax, improve, and focus or a specific one that would reinforce the new program we’re working on implementing.
The client then comes back the next week and tells me about their experience. Typically, in a second session with my clients, I teach them self-hypnosis as we’re going into trance together, as hypnosis is essentially a relationship.
As for the tools I use, I’ve gathered a lot of them over the course of my career. Which ones I’ll use depends on the client and on the type of session we’re doing. It’s client-driven hypnosis, and it’s individualized for each client.
How is Success Coaching different from life coaching?
I’m not sure if there’s a clear difference. In my case, it involves an element of hypnotic techniques or hypnosis. I feel it’s super powerful to get to the subconscious programming that’s stopping you from being successful. You can say, “Here are my goals, here’s my action plan, here’s my vision for my life/work/health,” but you’ll sometimes get to these blocks and it’s really hard to get through them just by talking to a life coach.
Success coaching would mean removing the old programming through these hypnotic techniques. We want to get it out of the computer, which is how I refer to the subconscious mind. It’s programmed by our parents, the society we live in, etc. We want to remove those things so that we can put in new positive programs to create that change that you desire, which will allow you to reach your goals and be successful in any area of your life.
You also offer a Hypnotist Certification Training. What is the training like and what does it entail?
It is very comprehensive. It is possible to take it in person, here in Kansas City, MO, or via Zoom. We go through what hypnosis is. We start with the basics – how to induce the hypnotic state, what you do with a client once they’re in hypnosis, how to do the pre-talk, and how to develop rapport with your client. We also cover the tools and techniques that can help in specific situations, such as quitting smoking, losing weight, gaining confidence, etc. We go through the details of releasing old patterns and traumas. Another important part of it is Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP).
The training includes 110 hours in the classroom/on Zoom, and then another 110 hours of independent study and working with practice clients. I do the training sessions one weekend a month, January through June. Then, they work with their practice clients during that time, if they can. If not, they can do it after the class is over, in June.
By the time they’re done, they have everything they need to open up a practice just like mine. There’s an ethics requirement from the International Association of Counselors and Therapists – IACT. They must complete the ethics course and pass it, as well as the certification test. Having in mind that this profession is unregulated, the only regulation is on us, so I know that the higher the standards that we have are, the more uplifted the whole profession will be. That’s why getting a certification from a group such as IACT is very important for confidence that your professional hypnotist is qualified and effective.
After my initial training in 2009, I felt that it was very basic and that I needed to learn a lot more before moving forward. That’s why I received more education, more workshops, more training from different areas, and just kept adding to my repertoire of tools and techniques. That’s the same path I want my student to take.
Is there anything else about your work that you’d like to add?
I want to send a message that our mind is way more powerful than we give it credit for. Your thoughts are things and they are powerful. You can think something and, even if you don’t believe it, over time, if you train your mind with positive suggestions, you can start believing it and turn it into reality. It’s a powerful thing because you realize that those old patterns that are running don’t have to keep running. You can actually reprogram yourself, with the help of a hypnotist or without it. You can change your life.
Furthermore, emotions are a big key, which is something I discovered over the last few years. The emotions drive the thought and then the thought fuels the emotional state. So, if you can upgrade your emotional state, even just a little bit, for example, by thinking about your favorite vacation or a person you love, that will eventually enable you to make that change in your life, and hypnosis is a really rapid way to do just that.
To learn more about Wendy and her work, you can visit libertyhypnosis.com
