A secure relationship with you. This is the basis of all effective support. For change to take place, our exchanges need to be based on mutual respect and trust, which is built up from our first contact and grows with each session. With this in mind, I am committed to a clear code of ethics: respect for professional secrecy, adapting to your pace of work, using my skills as a hypnotherapist to help you achieve your goal, avoiding personal projections and interpretations, and respecting my own safety and humanity. I will be transparent with you: if I feel unsafe or if I feel that the nature of your objective conflicts with my deepest values, I will tell you so. If I have to end our work, depending on the circumstances, I will do my best to refer you to someone else.
 

Digest simple traumas and disruptive life events (DLEs) using the related desensitisation techniques EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). These techniques are based on the ancient principle of alternative hypnotic stimulation. In both methods, there is a double exposure: while you are briefly immersed in the event that is still troubling you, we tap your body, or you follow the bilateral movements of my hand with your eyes. This phase of exposure to the trauma is short and is embedded in a reassurance structure in which a very pleasant emotion is recalled to dilute the painful aspect of the traumatic memory. In this way, we enable your unconscious parts to discharge the emotions still associated with this memory, to give them meaning, finally to file them away for good and to increase your resilience in the face of trauma. These techniques can also be very effective in desensitising phobias. Important: For traumas that are unbearable to talk about, there is another alternative to re-exposure to the event. It is based on a double dissociation of the body under a state of hypnosis and a connection to the before and after. The safest way for you is established between us prior to any hypnotic work.
 

Cultivate a state of being with kinaesthetic anchors. These are often used in hypnosis to amplify an inner resource, to give an emotionally strong and engaging direction to a goal and therefore to the therapeutic journey. In these anchors, we link a particularly pleasant sensation or emotion (peace, joy, serenity, love, enthusiasm, dynamism, etc.) to a physical gesture that you can then trigger at will. They are based on our brain's astonishing ability to establish links between anything - a piece of music and a person, a smell and a feeling, an image and a sensation, and so on. The anchoring that we put in place together serves us throughout the coaching. In your daily life, it serves as a quick and easy reminder, an instant re-connection to the state of being you want to cultivate. It's a precious tool.

Project yourself into a desired future using futurisation techniques. In a deep state of hypnosis, standing or sitting, I guide you to explore a desired goal through your imagination. It's a journey that makes a dream more real and more present in your whole being (conscious and unconscious) and allows you to experience concrete inner changes in behaviour, the activation of dormant resources within yourself or the adoption of new strengths by putting yourself in the shoes of an admired role model. This journey also allows you to become aware of the steps required to achieve a goal. It is said that everything we achieve was first imagined by us. The Law of Attraction is a very fashionable concept these days, but in fact this teaching has existed since the dawn of time. As far back as 5000 years ago, the wise yogis taught the art of focusing your attention on a desirable achievement, with pleasure, emotion and energy, in order to make it a reality. Hypnotherapy is brilliant in that it addresses the three factors of achievement: the desired state, what is preventing it from being achieved, and the flexibility of mind needed to change course if necessary.
 

Giving meaning to the past through hypnotic regression. Regressions are a major asset in hypnosis, as they can be so effective in dislodging a problem. Regression is the act of returning to the past in a deep trance state to release an emotion, provide resources for a younger version of ourselves, make sense of events that have left us baffled and perplexed, or bring back an ability that we may have left behind. This work allows us to make peace with the past and see it as a stable building block on which to construct a future more in line with our current values and desires. It's not about changing the facts, forgetting or embellishing a painful event, or pretending it never happened. On the contrary, regressions enable us to recognise the existence of an event and to alter the parameters with which our brain has recorded it, so that it still affects us in the present: painful emotions, limiting beliefs about our value or abilities, lack of meaning, discontinuity of time. Regressions can be biographical (going back to the origin of a problem in this life) or non-biographical (exploring a symbolic life, such as a past life).

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Discover the positive intentions of your symptom and be free. As hypnotherapists, we have several ways of getting a symptom to talk about itself and explore its purpose. We start from the fact that every part of us is trying to protect us and give us something, however clumsy the way. Every symptom in the past has been a creative and useful survival or coping mechanism found by our unconscious: drinking to forget, removing bits of skin so as not to feel another, much worse pain, cutting ourselves off from our feelings and controlling everything with our thoughts so as not to relive the terrifying powerlessness of childhood, and so on. The fact that these behaviours are disturbing us in the present is a very good sign: the defence mechanism is no longer adapted to the life we want to create. And this is the beginning of the healing process. It can be a long road (I'm still not over my hair-pulling addiction, which I started at the age of 7). But in my experience, the more you listen to your symptoms, the more you can understand their deepest needs and act accordingly. Fighting an addiction or trying to control it by willpower doesn't work. Techniques such as partial trance, Bob Burns' Swann, the negotiation of parts or Ernest Rossi's mirroring hands enable this benevolent communication with the symptom and also with the solutions.
 

Adopt more appropriate and constructive behaviours. Once you have digested many of the emotions associated with harmful behaviour (original traumas, guilt, shame, anger, grief), we can address their neurological cause: the habit and the action/reward connection rooted in the brain. Using reframing and projection techniques, we can activate a large number of more adapted and healthy behaviours in the unconscious that fulfil the positive functions of the old behaviour. Our unconscious parts are capable of immense creativity. Entering a deep state of hypnosis to ask the unconscious to activate all the creativity needed to create paths other than the old repetitive patterns is a great exercise.
 

Explore your values and change your limiting beliefs. Our values are our motivational goals. Without them, we wouldn't be motivated to take action, to improve our living conditions and our behaviour. Whether they are joy, love, serenity, social success, enlightenment, sharing or dynamism, our values give meaning to our lives and direction to our day. They are powerful levers for change. Think of pioneers of their time such as Martin Luther King (fighter for social and racial justice), Marie Curie (researcher in the fight against cancer), Jane Austen (militant writer for women's rights). These people endured great hardship to stand up for what they believed in, and turned the pursuit of their values into an art form that changed the attitudes and quality of life of entire generations. In hypnotherapy, we use these guiding forces to help you move towards your goal. Sometimes, simply clarifying or raising the importance of a value within yourself is enough to break a bad habit or generate enough energy to achieve a specific goal: passing an exam, getting a job, prioritising your own needs and setting limits for those around you. Working on values is part of any good therapy.
 

Beliefs are the conclusions we draw about what is true or false, possible or impossible, good or bad, for us or in the world. Our beliefs are heavily influenced by our cultural, social and family background. We inherit many things and are conditioned to replicate what is known and safe for the survival of our species. But since the dawn of time, the dominant species has been the one that best adapts to changes in its environment. The world is constantly changing, and with it the living conditions, customs and values of its inhabitants. In general, when we feel blocked, frustrated or unable to move forward, it's because there's an inner conflict: one part of us wants to stay with what's familiar and reassuring, while another yearns for renewal, the unknown and exploration. Beliefs play an important role in our evolution. When they are limiting, they restrict our choices and keep us in a cocoon that is too small and cramped. When they are supportive, they support our deepest desires. Beliefs such as ‘I'll never get what I want’, ‘I don't deserve to be happy’, ‘You must never show weakness’, ‘Bad luck sticks to me’ are clearly restrictive. They are loaded with a whole heap of defeatist thoughts and painful emotions that create filters through which we interpret reality to our disadvantage. In hypnosis, we actively work on these limiting beliefs in order to clear them. There's no point in trying to eliminate them, as they serve as protection mechanisms for certain unconscious parts. It's more a question of getting the parts that believe in them to talk, to allow them to digest the buried emotions and to envisage new behaviours that will lead to more positive experiences and therefore to the formation of new beliefs.