On a crisp Friday afternoon at the Hypno Healing Institute Inc., Master Hypnotherapist Debbie Papadakis rustles into the waiting room, agleam in a large golden scarf. Solid and maternal, she greets the handful of devotees and curious seekers and corrals us into the seminar room. She is gearing up for the “Transforming Yourself into a Prosperity Magnet” conference tonight, which, she tells us, has already sold out.
Papadakis has appeared in O magazine, Elle Magazine, and on the cover of The Journal of Hypnotism. Today she is here to answer our questions and dispel myths about hypnotism, all in the festive spirit of World Hypnotism Day.
For this auspicious occasion, Papadakis’ staff has laid out an array of snacks, including turkey wraps, clementines and a single bottle of unopened red wine. Like many holistic spas, there is a bucket of slippers on the floor, which I interpret as a clue to get my dirty boots off ASAP.
We are seated in the seminar room where Papadakis takes to the stage to candidly answer anything we want to ask her. A woman from Mississauga wants to know about past life regression therapy. Another man wants to recall a conversation he allegedly had with Jackie O. Another is looking to hypnotherapy as a form of relief for his panic attacks.
Papadakis has been practicing hypnosis for “15 to 17 years” having originally worked as a psychotherapist. She offers Professional NGH Hypnosis Certification training as well as numerous workshops: Empower Your Relationships, Increase your Prosperity and Anger Management. She also offers private sessions to help you through everything from losing weight to curing insomnia.
She explains that hypnosis works by penetrating our three levels of mind: the conscious, subconscious and unconscious. “At the conscious level you have the will-power, the rational, the political part of us – the thinking is here. If I was to put one word here, I put ‘thinking.’ If I were to put one word here on the subconscious, that’s called ‘feeling.’ Here we have all the anger, sadness, pain. The emotions are here. And here inside the subconscious is the unconscious part, the unconscious is the body. The body response. The involuntary, the automatic bodily function.”
Broken down that would mean: my conscious mind sees a math test and attempts to solve the questions. My subconscious registers fear and confusion; the memories of math nightmares past. My unconscious response is nausea.
“We are hypnotized three quarters of a day,” announces Papadakis. “A hypnotic state is a state we enter. Hypnosis, to me, is focused attention. So if I’m talking to you and you’re totally focused on me and you don’t hear the sounds outside — you are hypnotized.”
One woman wonders if hypnosis can get people to do things they don’t want to do.
“Now to what degree,” Papadakis continues. “In our levels we have the six levels. If we go to the deepest level, the sixth level, you can still know you’re here. You are still aware that you are here. You’re still aware of danger. If sirens go off and you’re hypnotized, it doesn’t matter how deep you are, you’re still going to come up. 10 per cent of us is still alert, no matter what level you are.”
Despite this, Papadakis concedes that hypnotic techniques have occasionally been used for nefarious brainwashing purposes.
Papadakis got into hypnotism because “my life wasn’t working and I had to figure out where the problems were stored.” Her passion for the practice comes with “working with the root cause of issues.” She has developed a ‘river’ analogy to explain the origin of our emotional problems. If you have a river flowing down a mountain carrying garbage, you can build a dam which will filter some of the garbage. But if you want clear water, you have to go to the source, the root cause. Push all of the garbage out from the top and in a few weeks you will have clear water.
“People say well, ‘be positive,’ how can I be positive if internally, I’m boiling? I need to find out what’s inside of me to clear what’s inside of me in order to be positive. Does it make sense?” She points out that we can look at a vase of flowers and see them as crooked and mis-matched, or we can view them as beautiful. Personal perspective is more of a reflection of ourselves than the object or person we’re looking at. She mentions that the most common problem she encounters is that people think that “they are not good enough.” The best part of her job is when clients ‘break through’ by accepting who they are, which increases their confidence.
I wanted to see some people get hilariously hypnotized today, but Papadakis is no one-trick pony. The private sessions are $200 bucks a pop, and she will generally require six double sessions (averaging out at around $2000+). Her ethics dictate that she won’t take on anyone unless she can work with them, so she offers a complimentary introductory evaluation to all new clients. Unfortunately for the gentleman with panic attacks, she is not covered by OHIP. In some cases she can be referred to by a doctor, and some doctors and psychologist offer hypnotherapy services.
Nonetheless, for Toronto Standard readers, she shared some free & practical self-hypnosis tips for the New Year.
- Check your thinking: Check your behaviour, thoughts and feelings. If you’re a negative thinker, stop yourself and ask yourself, “What are those thoughts? Are they my thoughts, or somebody else’s?” Because 99% of our beliefs aren’t even our own, they are put in us.
- If you are repeating negativity, stop yourself. I always say, “Cancel.” If I hear something negative, I say, “cancel, cancel.”
- If you gossip, if you criticize, that means internally you have some kind of inadequacy. You somehow feel better by doing that, look inside yourself to change that. Find someone to help you do that.
- If you’re not succeeding in life, instead of criticizing others and blaming parents and this and that, find a way to clear that or take responsibility. If I take responsibility then I can do something from it and take something out of it, then I can learn from it and move forward and become stronger.
- Sit and meditate. Spend time with yourself.
For more information on hypnosis therapy in Toronto, visit here.
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Tiffy Thompson is a writer and illustrator for the Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @tiffyjthompson.
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