Being in Balance: My Journey to Hypnotherapy
What Does It Mean to Be in Balance?
Unlike most Western cultures, which recognize only the five senses—sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste—the Anlo-Ewe people of West Africa honor an additional sense: a sense of inner balance. From infancy, they teach that true stability comes not just from interacting with the outer world, but from cultivating an internal steadiness—an attunement to one’s self and a deep connection to the rhythms of the earth itself.
Balance, in this view, is not just about calm—it’s about alignment.
To be in balance means to be unstuck. It means you’re living in truth—when your outer actions reflect your inner wisdom. In hypnosis, this is precisely what we work toward: aligning conscious thoughts and behaviors with subconscious beliefs, values, and truth. When these parts of the self work in harmony, we feel whole. We live from our highest self.
How I Came to Hypnotherapy
I didn’t find hypnotherapy as a practitioner—I found it first as a patient.
I was a mother, caught in an invisible war. On the surface, I was parenting with love and intention. But underneath, fear and anxiety had taken root—ghosts from a traumatic childhood that had never fully let go. My rational mind knew that my children were safe. That they were not living my story. But traumatic memory doesn’t follow logic.
Trauma disrupts the brain’s language center—the Broca’s area—making it nearly impossible to “talk through it.” These memories don’t come as stories. They come as shadows, tightness in the chest, images, sounds, or startles. And because the brain stores them without time stamps, they reappear as if they’re happening now.
As Dr. Jo Dispenza notes in his book, Becoming Supernatural, “when stress doesn’t end within hours, the body never returns to balance.” And as this imbalance manifests itself as disease and depression, the mind and body become accustomed to the stress – becomes addicted to the very chemicals associated with stress – cortisol and adrenaline – and the familiar rush they provide. (Dispenza, 2017). I was living in this internal survival mode for years without any clear understanding of why or how unusual it truly was.
My children’s innocence—their tiny hands, their playfulness—sometimes transported me back to a time when I was small, and hurt. It was heartbreaking and disorienting. After five years of talk therapy, my therapist gently suggested I try hypnotherapy. I was skeptical. But after just three sessions, something shifted. The grip of fear began to dissolve. The heavy tension that lived in my core melted away. I could breathe.
It felt like a miracle. But now I know better.
This isn’t a miracle. This is the science of the subconscious.
Hypnotherapy helped me come into balance—not by silencing my story, but by integrating it.
By creating safety within.
By aligning who I am now with what I deeply believe to be true.
And that’s what I offer in my work today:
Not perfection.
Not escape.
But the chance to return to balance.
To truth.
To yourself.
Suggested Reading:
Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza
The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
Radical Wholeness by Philip Shepherd