Frequently Asked Questions, answered.

No. You stay awake and aware the whole time.

Hypnosis is a relaxed, focused state. You pass through something like it every day without naming it. The minutes before sleep. A long drive where the exit arrives before you expected it. A film so absorbing that the room falls away. You were not unconscious in any of those moments. You were simply focused somewhere else.

You will hear everything I say. You will remember the session afterward. Most people are surprised by how ordinary it feels, and how good.

Yes, completely.

You cannot be made to do anything against your will. Not in my office, and not on a stage. The people who cluck like chickens at a show are people who came to a show and wanted to cluck like chickens. Hypnosis does not override your judgment. It quiets the part of the mind that argues with everything, so that the suggestions you actually want can reach you.

You can open your eyes at any moment. You can stop the session. You can tell me something is not landing and we change it.

Almost everyone can, and analytical people are often the easiest.

This is the most common worry I hear, and it rests on a misunderstanding. Being hypnotized is not about being suggestible or gullible. It requires focus, imagination, and the ability to follow a voice, which is exactly what an analytical mind is good at.

The people who struggle are usually the ones trying hard to make something happen, or the ones who do not want to be there at all. If you are willing, and you can follow along, you can do this.

No. You say only what you choose to say.

You are awake and in control, and nothing loosens your tongue. In fact, much of the work happens without you narrating anything at all. You do not have to tell me the story. We are not working with the story. We are working with the pattern underneath it, and that does not require a confession.

No. This has never happened to anyone.

Hypnosis is not a place you go. It is a state of attention, like concentration or daydreaming, and it ends the way concentration ends. If I stopped speaking mid-session and left the room, you would either open your eyes on your own or drift into an ordinary nap and wake up from it.

Calm. Pleasant. Slightly disappointing in the best way.

People expect a lightning bolt. What they get is closer to the most relaxed hour they have had in months. You sit comfortably, you close your eyes, and you follow my voice. Your body settles. Your thoughts slow down without stopping.

Afterward most people feel clear and a little lighter, the way you feel walking out of water.

Yes, and it has been taken seriously for a long time.

The American Medical Association recognized hypnosis as a legitimate tool in 1958. The American Psychological Association has an entire division devoted to it, Division 30, which defines it as a state of focused attention with reduced awareness of everything else and a heightened openness to suggestion. It is studied, it is taught, and it is not fringe.

What I will not tell you is that it works on everyone for everything. It works when you want the change and you show up for the repetition. That is most people, and it is not everyone.

Because willpower is the small part of the mind arguing with the large one.

The conscious mind, the part that sets goals and makes plans and resolves to do better on Monday, is roughly twelve percent of your mental life. The other eighty-eight percent is subconscious, and it is where habits, reactions, and core beliefs are stored and run on their own.

Many of those patterns were written before you were about eight years old, before you had a filter to weigh them critically. A child takes an experience in whole and makes a rule out of it, and the rule keeps running long after it stops being useful.

So when you strain against a pattern and lose, that is not a character flaw. That is twelve percent losing to eighty-eight percent, which is what should happen. Hypnotherapy stops the fight and goes to where the pattern lives.

Six at a minimum for lasting change in a pattern.

One session can bring a real shift, and often does. But the subconscious learns the way it has always learned, through repetition. A single session is a strong suggestion. A series is a new habit.

I would rather tell you this at the start than sell you a miracle and watch it fade. We decide the right pace together, and you are never locked in.

Then we find out early, and I tell you.

I am not interested in taking your money for something that is not moving. If we are several sessions in and nothing is shifting, we talk honestly about why. Sometimes the goal needs changing. Sometimes the timing is wrong. Sometimes what you need is something I do not offer, and I will say so and help you find it.

Everyday change, which covers more than it sounds like.

Confidence and self-image. Motivation and follow-through. Stress and deep relaxation. Focus and concentration. Sleeping more restfully. Fears and phobias. Public speaking. Procrastination and perfectionism. Fear of failure, and fear of success. Creative blocks. Habits such as nail biting or overeating. Letting go of smoking. Exercise and healthy routines. Assertiveness. Career and performance.

For a diagnosed condition, I work on referral from your licensed provider.

Not as such, and I want to be straight with you about why.

Anxiety, as a condition, belongs with a licensed clinician. That is not this practice. If anxiety is the thing running your life, you deserve someone whose whole training is built for it, and I will gladly help you find them.

What I do work with is fear that has a shape. The fear of speaking in a room. The fear of being seen. The fear of finishing the thing, in case it turns out to be good. Those are patterns, and patterns are my work.

If you are not sure which one you have, tell me on our call. I would rather send you to the right person than take your money for the wrong hour.

About an hour.

The first session runs a little longer in feel, because we talk before we begin. I want to understand what you are working on and how your mind takes in information, since that changes how I speak to you.

Yes. All individual sessions are held online.

This surprises people, and it works just as well. You need a quiet space where you will not be interrupted, somewhere comfortable to sit or lie down, and headphones if you have them. There is an argument that it works better, because you are already home, already safe, and you do not have to drive anywhere afterward.

The dream circles are the exception. Those gather in person, in Los Angeles.

Sessions are $250 each, paid when you book.

Dream circles are offered on a sliding scale, and the monthly guided imagery journeys are by donation, because I want those to be open to anyone.

Forty-eight hours.

If you need to cancel or move a session, let me know at least forty-eight hours ahead and you can reschedule or receive a full refund. Less than that, or a missed session, and the fee is charged. This is not about the money. It is that the hour was held for you and cannot be given to anyone else on short notice.

No. Come as you are.

There is nothing to read, nothing to practice, and no right way to arrive. You do not need to believe in it. You do not need to be good at relaxing. Skeptics do well here.

The only thing I ask is that you are not driving, and that you have somewhere private to sit.

With a short call, and no pressure in it.

You fill out a brief screening form so I understand what you are hoping to work on. Then we talk, free, for about thirty minutes. You ask whatever you want. I tell you honestly whether I think this is the right fit, and sometimes I say it is not.

If it is a match, you sign the agreements and we book your first session.

A spoken journey inward, about an hour long.

You close your eyes and follow my voice into a sequence of inner scenes. The mind's first language is images, not words, and it responds to a vividly imagined experience almost as though it were real. That is what makes imagery useful rather than merely pleasant.

I hold a group journey online each month, by donation. It is the gentlest way to find out what this work feels like, and you do not need any experience.

Not in the way you are thinking. I do not have a codebook.

A dream is not a puzzle with a solution printed upside down at the back. Dreams do not mean one thing, and the moment you explain a dream, you have usually killed it. The image was doing something before you translated it.

So we sit with the dream instead. We stay close to the images, we ask what they carry rather than what they stand for, and we follow where they lead. The dream keeps unfolding. That is the point.

An evening in a circle, by candlelight, given over to the imagination.

I have been facilitating these in Los Angeles since 2022, including at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz. We learn the histories of dreamwork, from the healing temples of the ancient world through medieval alchemy to modern depth psychology. We drink mugwort tea. We work with our own dreams, and we listen to each other's.

The circles are small on purpose. You do not need to bring a dream, and you do not have to speak.

No.

This is self-improvement and personal growth work. It does not diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition, and it is not a replacement for care from a licensed professional.

If something deeper is present, I would rather say so than take you on. I am glad to help you find the right support, and I will not think less of you for needing it.

No. These are two separate practices, and I keep them separate on purpose.

Inner Alchemy is my hypnotherapy, guided imagery, and dreamwork practice. Here I work as a Certified Master Hypnotist, certified through the Hypnosis Motivation Institute. This work is for vocational and avocational self-improvement, which means personal growth, confidence, focus, habits, creative blocks, and everyday change. It is not psychotherapy.

I also hold a separate license as an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of California. That is a different practice, with a different website, different clients, and different records. The two do not overlap, and I do not provide clinical services through Inner Alchemy.

If what you are looking for is psychotherapy, Inner Alchemy is not it, and I will tell you so.

I am a Certified Master Hypnotist, certified through the Hypnosis Motivation Institute, and a member of the American Hypnosis Association.

I hold a degree in film from New York University. I am also trained in Reiki I and II, in Multimodality Energy Healing with Laura Ellis, and in Superconscious Healing with Tommy Sobel. I have facilitated dreamwork circles in Los Angeles since 2022.

My path here ran through film before it ran through the subconscious, which turns out to be less of a detour than it sounds. Both are about images, and what they do to a person.

Yes, and I want to be precise about what that means.

What you share with me is held in confidence, stored securely, and not shared with anyone without your permission, except where the law or someone's safety requires it. I take this seriously.

Because this is a self-improvement practice and not licensed psychotherapy, the legal privilege that applies to a licensed therapist does not apply here in the same way. I hold your privacy as a matter of ethics and respect. You should know the distinction rather than assume it.