What Hypnotherapy Actually Is
What Hypnotherapy Actually Is
Let us get the stage hypnosis out of the way first. You will not be clucking like a chicken. You will not be under my control. You will not be asleep. And you will remember everything.
Good. Now we can talk about what hypnotherapy actually is, because it is one of the most misunderstood tools in the therapeutic landscape, and it deserves more light to be honest.
Your Brain Has Two Gears
The simplest way I know to explain hypnosis is this. Imagine for a moment that your mind operates in two broad modes. The first is the ordinary waking state, the analytical, critical, evaluating mind that filters everything through what it already believes to be true. The second is a more receptive state, quieter, more open, less defended, closer to the way the mind works in deep relaxation or just before sleep.
Hypnotherapy works in that second state. The critical mind steps back, just enough, and the deeper layers of how you process experience become accessible. This is where habits live. Where old decisions about who you are and what is possible were made. Where the nervous system learned its patterns. And crucially, where those patterns can change.
This is not magic, It is neuroscience with better stories.
You Are Always in Control
In 30 years of doing this work, beginning in psychiatric settings in the early 1990s and moving through forensic, liaison, and community mental health before arriving at Sacred Alchemy, I have never once made anyone do something they did not want to do.
Hypnosis works because the person in the chair is willing. The deeper mind has its own intelligence and its own boundaries. It accepts what serves it and filters out what does not. A skilled hypnotherapist works with that intelligence, not around it.
What changes in hypnosis is the quality of receptivity, the willingness of the deeper mind to entertain new possibilities. That is all. And that, it turns out, is everything.
What Actually Happens in a Session
A Sacred Alchemy session begins with a conversation. I want to know your story, what you are carrying, where it started, what you have already tried. That context shapes everything that follows.
The hypnotic element of a session might look like guided relaxation, an inner journey, a conversation with a part of you that has been carrying something it no longer needs to carry. It is quiet, internal, and often surprising. People frequently describe it as the most deeply restful experience they have had in years, and at the same time, one of the most alive.
Because alongside the hypnosis runs the shamanic and Jungian layer of the work. The imagery that arises in trance is not random. It is the psyche speaking in its own language, through symbol and metaphor and felt sense. Learning to listen to that language, and to respond to it with skill, is what 30 years of practice has taught me.
Who Hypnotherapy Is For
The short answer is anyone who is ready to engage with their inner world honestly. I have worked with people carrying anxiety, trauma, chronic pain, grief, burnout, depression, addictive patterns, relationship dynamics that keep repeating, and a bone-deep sense that something needs to fundamentally change.
I have also worked with people who do not fit any category neatly, people the system had run out of answers for, people referred by neurologists and cardiologists and psychiatrists who had reached the limits of what conventional medicine could offer. Those are often the cases I find most interesting.
Hypnotherapy does not work because it is clever. It works because it goes where other approaches often cannot reach, into the body, into the nervous system, into the deeper layers of how a person has learned to be in the world. And it invites those layers to change.
A Word About What I Bring
I am not a standard hypnotherapist. My training spans psychiatry, forensic and liaison mental health, NLP, Jungian depth psychology, shamanic practice, and 30 years of sitting with thousands of people in some of the most complex passages of their lives.
Sacred Alchemy is the methodology I developed from all of that. It uses hypnosis as one of its primary tools, alongside shamanic journeying, somatic awareness, and Jungian depth work. The combination is unusual. The results are real.
If you are curious about whether this kind of work might be right for you, the first step is a free 15-minute conversation. No obligation, no pressure, just an honest exchange to see if this is the right fit.
Alexia Elliott is a hypnotherapist, shamanic practitioner, and psychospiritual therapist based in Leicester, UK. She offers 1:1 sessions in person in Leicestershire and online worldwide through her Sacred Alchemy practice.