Couple attest to the power of self-hypnosis
By Rebecca Villaneda Peninsula News
Thursday, January 18, 2007 3:11 PM PST
For many, the idea of hypnosis brings out the skeptic in them.
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| Dona and Duncan Tooley turned their personal experience with self-hypnosis into a career. The Tooleys use their hypnosis training to help clients get over phobias, cure illness and enhance skills. |
But for one wife-and-husband team, the practice of self-hypnosis has proven so beneficial in their lives that they have turned it into their profession to help people break habits, enhance skills and fight illness.
Dona and Duncan Tooley of Rancho Palos Verdes said most people have experienced hypnosis, only they didn’t realize it. The Tooleys compare hypnosis with the trance state people undergo while driving along a highway, daydreaming or listening to rhythmic music.
“It’s a state where you block out the external stuff and you are in a zone of high focus,” Duncan said. “With self-hypnosis there is no feeling of releasing control to someone else.
“You’re releasing control to yourself, you’re going to hypnotize yourself and encourage yourself, not have someone else do it,” he added.
Dona said a hypnotist can’t make someone do anything they don’t want to do.
“If we gave you a suggestion that was totally out of the realm that you usually do, you would bring yourself out of trance,” she said.
During hypnosis, an individual is in a highly suggestible state, and the suggestions given leave a deep and lasting impression so that they can be used in day-to-day activities, according to the Tooleys.
As hypnotists, the duo teaches their clients to use these tools and put themselves in a relaxed state to reaffirm positive expressions whenever they want.
“Once they have mastered that, they can apply the knowledge and practice of self-hypnosis to other areas of their lives,” Duncan said.
“Repetition is part of it,” Dona said. “It’s what makes it happen within yourself. The belief that it’s going to happen.”
Guided meditation is another way Dona explains hypnosis.
“We’re teaching people how to go in center and be able to get in touch with their own truth and what they believe, and the things they want to work on,” she said.
Duncan compares this process to holding up a psychological mirror to his clients so they can address the issue and find the answer themselves.
“It’s just that they are blocking it for some reason,” he said. “They know the right thing,” he said. “You tell the person to call upon their higher self, their supreme wisdom they have inside to answer the question about what needs to get done.”
Once people have accepted this process and practice it, they begin to experience the law of attraction, the Tooleys said. The couple use this formula to explain to clients that they must focus on positive qualities, objects and relationships they want in their life.
“What you think about is what you get. If you focus on having a good time and being happy, you are. The moral is … think about what you want, and it will arrive,” Duncan said.
He noted that alertness is key and that one must pay attention to things around them and to what is presented to them. He said that oftentimes people focus on other aspects of life and let opportunities bypass them.
“It has a lot to do with what you choose,” Dona said. “The law of attraction is, you think about what you really want in your heart and soul, that’s what you’re going to manifest.”
Coinciding with the law of attraction is the law of intention.
“You can go through life not setting any intentions, settling for what events occur, and you never get anywhere,” Duncan said. “The law of intention says if you want the law of attraction to work, you have to intend something and focus for it to work. The two work together.”
Applied knowledge
Duncan and Dona first explored self-hypnosis to address individual issues. Duncan wanted to enhance his creativity and artistic ability in stained glass, and Dona wanted to lose weight.
Duncan now applies his art of stained glass to mandala healing.
According to the Tooleys’ Web site, www.tooleytransformation.com, “Mandalas have been associated with healing energies in many cultures. The creation of a mandala while hypnotized offers the opportunity to express in graphic form the deepest messages from within … symbols emerge from the subconscious to form the content of the mandala.”
“A Mandala can be symbolic of something special in your life, like a marriage. A couple can each create a mandala as a symbol of their marriage and what they want for their future,” Dona said.
“It’s art therapy,” Duncan said. “You design your own mandala, which expresses what you want to get out or where you want to go … that in itself is the healing process.”
Dona said her journey with self-hypnosis allowed her to go down five dress sizes. This transition and success with self-hypnosis encouraged Dona to become a certified hypnotist, which inspired Duncan.
Dona said she treats her clients on an individual basis, takes what people give her and turns that into an affirmation.
“You always put it in the positive and the now and present. It’s not going to happen, it is, it’s here,” she said.
She uses smoking as an example, saying that she may tell her client to repeat, “I love my body; I take good care of it.”
“Habits are built by repetition. It’s hard to break it abruptly; it takes repetition of positive things in the other direction to overcome it,” Duncan added.
“We’re trying to help people understand that they do have that power within themselves, and they can harness it and use it to their benefit,” Dona said.
The couple said the best part of self-hypnosis is “undoubtedly being able to help so many people.”
“The motivation is just, wow, it’s like being a miracle worker,” Duncan said.
Two years ago, the Tooleys met Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, their teacher and the president of the International Hypnosis Federation. Dona refers to Stockwell-Nicholas as the master.
“It changes lives. We’re using it all the time anyway, so you might as well harness your mind and focus it where you want it to go to manifest the result you’re looking for instead of randomly getting what you asked for that you might not have wanted,” Stockwell-Nicholas said.
Stockwell-Nicholas, an RPV resident, has used hypnosis to treat people for 29 years. She teaches people to become instructors out of her home.
She said she enjoys her profession because of the immediate results of seeing people happier, more productive and suffering less pain. “You see people who are dying come back to life. Or you see people die with dignity,” she said. “It’s interesting, and every person is so unique. It’s fascinating to hear what people have to say. You get to be a voyeur, you get to look at their lives and peek in on them.”
One common thread among these three individuals is the spirituality they said they have reached through hypnosis.
“It’s a transformation,” Stockwell-Nicholas said. “There’s a piece of God in you; it’s all there.”
If skepticism still stands in the way of exploring self-hypnosis, the Tooleys have posted links to studies that they say prove hypnosis is a tool for medical and therapy purposes.
“It shows that A, hypnosis works, and B, we ought to be using it more,” Duncan said.
For more information on hypnosis or to explore it with the Tooleys, visit www.tooleytransformation.com. Duncan will hold classes at Hesse Park in RPV beginning in February.
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