The Horizon Center School of Hypnotherapy

One of the most common fears people have about hypnosis is that the hypnotist will be able to control their mind.

I understand why. Stage hypnosis looks exactly like that. Normal, rational people doing embarrassing things, sharing secrets, acting completely out of character. And it appears to be the hypnotist causing all of it.

What most people don't see is that the hypnotist is screening for a certain personality type.
There is a scale that people fall on, and where you land on that scale determines what hypnosis feels like for you and what you will or won't do in that state.

At one end are highly suggestible people. Personality-wise they tend to be extroverts, life of the party types, comfortable being the center of attention, happy to be the entertainment. This is exactly why they volunteer to get up on stage in the first place.

At the other end are the analytical types. Thinkers. More introverted. They'd rather sit back and figure things out than be put on the spot. They absolutely do not want to be anyone's entertainment.

The stage hypnotist wants the first group and does not want the second. the second will opt out of doing anything embarrassing and spoil he show. So he uses techniques that work primarily on highly suggestible people and sends the analytical ones back to their seats.

From the audience's perspective it looks like very few people can be hypnotized and that those who stayed on stage have some special quality. What they're actually watching is a screening process. The hypnotist is filtering out the people who won't play along and keeping only the ones who will.

Here's the part that matters for my work.
The people who go back to their seats? Those are my clients.

Analytical, thoughtful, engaged people who stay lighter in hypnosis, remain aware of what's happening, and can choose to opt out of anything that doesn't feel right. And that's not a limitation. It's actually an advantage. I have a broader range of tools available with clients who stay engaged. We can have an interactive conversation in hypnosis, I can get them to do meaningful exercises in their minds. I can give them tools to practice with. The work goes deeper in a different way.

The problem is that most of my clients come in expecting hypnosis to feel like what they saw on stage. They're waiting to black out, lose control, or wake up with no memory of what happened. When that doesn't happen they sometimes wonder if it worked.

That's why I always explain this before we begin. So they know what to expect for someone like them. Because being analytical doesn't mean hypnosis won't work. It just means it feels different.

And honestly? I'll take an analytical client over a highly suggestible one any day.
If you want to understand how to work effectively with the clients who actually show up for therapy, this is exactly what I teach in the Whole Brain Hypnotherapy training.

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Every now and then a new client wants to skip the intake and just get into the chair.

My response is usually some version of: whoa, Nellie.

The intake isn't a formality. It isn't paperwork. It isn't me being cautious or slow.

The intake is for me.

Here's why it matters more than most people realize.

I'm not just working with the conscious mind. I'm working with the subconscious. And the subconscious is a completely different animal. It's protective, it's illogical, and it decides very quickly whether it feels safe with someone.

If I remind your subconscious of your critical mother or your mean grade three teacher, you might be perfectly willing to work with me on a conscious level and completely unavailable on a subconscious level. The guard at the gate stays up. The work stalls before it begins.

I tell my students that I'm forming two relationships simultaneously. One with the client. One with their subconscious. The intake is where both of those relationships begin. It's where the subconscious gets to check me out, decide if I seem trustworthy, and determine whether it's safe to let me in.

Skip that step and you're building on sand.

The intake also matters because I do personalized, client-centered work. I once had a former client volunteer for a demonstration in my class. She told the students that before she came to me, she had seen another hypnotherapist. She told him she wanted to work on weight loss. He said great, get in the chair.

That was the whole intake.

I was genuinely shocked. He knew nothing about her. Not her history, not her goals, not the language she used to describe how she wanted to feel, not the reasons she was carrying extra weight in the first place.

And those reasons matter enormously.

I could see five weight loss clients in one day, all presenting with the same goal, all needing completely different work. The client whose subconscious is holding onto weight because of sexual trauma in her past needs to hear something entirely different from the client who was born premature and whose subconscious learned early that low body weight meant danger. These are not the same situation. The same script won't touch both of them.

The intake is where I find out which situation I'm actually in.

If you want to learn hypnotherapy that works at this level, the first two units of my Whole Brain Hypnotherapy training are completely free.

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I’m looking for my next Inside the Session Lab volunteer.

If you’ve ever been curious about what it’s like to do real hypnotherapy work in a supportive, structured environment, this might be for you.

Here’s how it works:

You’ll join us live on Wednesdays from 6:30–7:30pm Pacific.

* June 3 – Consultation
* June 10 – Session 1
* June 17 – Session 2
* June 24 – Session 3

You’ll receive a full consultation and three sessions with me. Come and work on weight loss, smoking cessation, anxiety, life dissatisfaction, phobias or fears, sleep issues— whatever you are struggling with.

The students observing are training to be hypnotherapists. Everything you share is held in confidence within the class. That said, you do need to be comfortable sharing personal information openly in a small group setting. This is real work - not surface-level.

In exchange, my students get to observe real-time decision making, session flow, hypnotic argument, and how themes unfold across multiple sessions.

It’s powerful for them. And it’s powerful for you.

If you’re interested, send me a private message and tell me a little bit about what you’d like to work on.

Let’s see if it’s a fit.

A lot of practitioners worry that rapid inductions only work on highly suggestible clients. That if someone is analytical, resistant, or nervous, a fast induction won't land.

That's not how Ozz approaches this.

The techniques he teaches are based on principles that work regardless of suggestibility. Because when you look at what actually gets someone into hypnosis quickly, it comes down to a few core mechanisms.

Focused attention. When you direct someone's attention with enough precision and intensity, everything else naturally falls away.

Pattern interruption. When you interrupt the way someone is normally thinking before the analytical mind has a chance to engage, the subconscious becomes immediately more accessible.

Confusion techniques. When you give the conscious mind more than it can neatly process, it steps aside. This works especially well with analytical clients whose thinking mind tends to stay active.

None of these depend on how suggestible someone is. They work with how the mind functions. And once you understand the principle behind each technique, you can read your client and choose the right approach for that person in that moment.

Resistant client? Covered.
Nervous client? Covered.
Analytical client who overthinks everything? Covered.

That's what makes this workshop genuinely useful for real practice.

Two Saturdays via Zoom. June 13 and June 20, 9am to 2pm Pacific.
Early bird pricing of $350 ends May 25th.

Details and registration below.

Early bird link in comments.

You may not know this about my husband.

For 28 years he toured Latin America as Bruno Lamont. Over 10,000 live shows. 13 countries. Audiences totaling more than two million people.

Take a look at the video below. It's in Spanish but you'll get the idea very quickly.

https://youtu.be/1y-c8k7rhqk?si=0cD1b5tjgGq_P8w2

He's coming out of retirement and getting ready to perform again. And before he does, he's agreed to teach a two-day rapid inductions workshop through Horizon Centre for hypnotherapy students and practitioners.

Everything in this workshop has been adapted for therapeutic use. No shock tactics, no dropping people on the floor, no high-pressure methods. What you'll learn are ten rapid inductions you can use with real clients in real sessions, the kind that come in handy when you're running short on time, when a client surfaces from trance with something important, or when you need to get someone into hypnosis without a long drawn-out approach.

And here's what I really want you to hear: knowing you can get a client into hypnosis quickly and reliably changes your confidence as a practitioner in ways that affect everything else you do.

Early bird pricing until May 25th. All the details are on the special events page.

Early bird link in comments.

EL HIPNOTISTA TOUR PROMO - Bruno Lamont Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Phobias are one of my favorite things to work with.

Because they're almost never what they appear to be.

Clients come in frustrated because they can't identify any experience that would explain their fear. No trauma, no obvious trigger, no logical connection. I once worked with a client whose phobia made so little sense to her that she almost didn't book the session.

The subconscious doesn't always attach fear to the thing that caused it. Sometimes it attaches it to whatever happened to be nearby at the wrong moment.

I wrote about the three ways phobias actually form on the blog. If you work with clients, or if you have a fear that has never made sense to you, this is worth understanding.

Read the article below.

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really-come-from-the-hidden-triggers-behind-your-fear

Where Do Phobias REALLY Come From? Phobias are learned subconscious responses that often have surprising origins. This article explains how phobias form and how hypnotherapy resolves fear by addressing the root cause rather than managing symptoms.

After seeing thousands of clients over more than 25 years, you start to notice patterns.

One of the most interesting ones: sometimes a habit has nothing to do with the habit itself.

Sometimes the subconscious is holding onto it for a completely different reason. One that has everything to do with someone else's opinion, and the quiet refusal to let them be right.

I wrote about this on the blog. It's one of the recurring themes I teach in my training, and once you see it, you start recognizing it everywhere.

Read the article below.

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Are You Holding Onto a Habit Because of Someone Else’s Opinion? Some habits persist not because people want them, but because letting go feels like giving someone else power. This article explores how habits become a form of subconscious resistance—and how hypnotherapy helps restore choice and autonomy.

Here's something that surprises a lot of people new to hypnotherapy:

Deeper is not always better.

There's a common assumption that the goal is to get clients as deep into hypnosis as possible. But clients in the deepest states often can't participate in the work, can't follow instructions, and sometimes don't remember the session at all.

The level that actually allows for the most effective therapeutic work is more specific than that.

Curious which one and why? I broke it all down on the blog, including a full breakdown of all four levels and what's happening at each one.

Read the article below.

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Exploring the Different Levels of Hypnosis Hypnosis exists on a spectrum, from light trance to deep hypnotic states. Learn the different levels of hypnosis, what happens at each depth, and why deeper hypnosis is not always more effective.

The subconscious does not automatically recognize when a threat is over.

This is one of the most important things I've learned in 25 years of hypnotherapy practice. And it explains a lot about why people can be objectively safe and still feel like they're constantly bracing.

A woman came to see me for anxiety. During our first session I noticed something that had nothing to do with why she'd booked. Her voice was unusually childlike. Soft. Almost fragile. Like a little girl, not a grown woman.

I didn't say anything. But I filed it away.

What we found underneath it, and what happened to that voice by the end of our work together, is something I still think about.

Read the article below.

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How the Subconscious Holds Onto Trauma -and How It Lets Go Trauma isn’t stored as a memory alone. It’s stored as a state. When the subconscious doesn’t recognize that danger has passed, old survival responses can stay active for years. This article explores how trauma is held at the subconscious level—and how hypnotherapy helps it release without re...