NourishDoc Holistic Health Interview

Watch or read Nat van Zee’s interview with Amita at Nourish Doc, a holistic health platform who curate integrative therapy experts from all over the world.

Nourish Doc Facebook Live

Text version of video, transcribed by Otter

“We women, generally don't worry about ourselves. We worry about others, right? We take care of everyone, our parents, our spouses, our kids. With today's session we want to talk about how do we start taking care of ourselves using some of the tools like hypnotherapy to empower ourselves? Well, that's why we have Nat, Nat is a hypnotherapist as well as an empowerment coach joining me from UK. Welcome Nat.

Hello, so pleased to meet you.

Do you want to explain a little bit as to what is it that you do? And then how you've been using these tools to help women overcome some of the things that they whether it's an emotional burden that they're carrying, or they're carrying some chronic fatigue or whatever?

Yeah, sure. So ultimately, people come to me when they are either depressed in pain, or they're stuck in life. So often, they've tried many different modalities, they may have unexplained feelings, they may have have unexplained health issues. And usually hypnotherapy is kind of the last thing that they think about.

They have maybe been on medication, they've had talking therapy, and never nothing is really working for them. Now, what I do as a hypnotherapist, I basically help them uncover some emotions that they may have been carrying over a lifetime. Maybe they have experienced things in the womb, or in previous lives, that are still happening for their soul now.

So you may, you know, typically, if I think about some of the clients that I have. One client who came to me who really wanted to have friend and a partner, but she was she couldn't be close to people. She also was working as in education, working with children. But she was exhausted, she had like panic attacks, depressed and didn't really know the cause.

When we did the hypnotherapy session, it turned out that she was abused as a child. Now when, as we are younger, what may happen to my clients, is when something traumatic happens, their mind might actually put it into the subconscious mind. So it doesn't actually affect the child at that point. And as an adult, these kinds of events come back. So she would have like flashes of like, like people have a PTSD, like there's memories coming back, but she didn't know the cause of it.

So during the therapy that I do, I basically work with my client’s subconscious mind, which, if you think about the mind, in a very simple way you have if you think about an iceberg, you have the top of the iceberg, which is the conscious mind. And that is really good at analysing the rational, maths, that sort of stuff, which is important.

And then we have the subconscious mind, which is a large underneath part of the iceberg, which is basically like a hard drive of your computer. It stores all your memories, it stores all your automatic programming, you know, anything you do on autopilot, and it's also the access to your inner wisdom, or even the collective wisdom.

So people can access this part of them through meditation, through possibly exercise, it's that flow state that athletes access that musicians or inventors access. So it's something that is part of our daily experience. Like when when people go to sleep and they see like images or like symbols, that's the dream state and that is like entering the subconscious mind. So through our dreams, we can get information and really what hypnosis is, it's like a focused state of awareness. And just like you have like in meditation, you have like light or deeper meditation.

It's the same with hypnosis. I don't control how deep people go. That depends on how they are wired, but most of the time my clients are fully conscious in a session. They have a dialogue with me all the time, because I am constantly asking them questions about what is happening in their inner experience. They may receive information through visuals, through hearing things, through feeling or knowing, or sometimes even taste.

So it's, it's often a very embodied experience. And particularly if we go to a traumatic event that the soul needs to heal I help and guide clients is to really process that emotion. So it could be a childhood event, which I had with one client, where he was seven, and something happened with him. There was a miscommunication that was traumatic for the client.

And so I help my client to actually voice whatever they couldn't say. So they actually get some of his power back, say it's like an event where they've been abused. I get them to actually defend themselves, like in real time, because for them, it's happening now. And actually reclaim those parts of themselves and parts of their souls that have frozen in that time.

So we do inner child work. And that is so important, because when people have multiple traumatic events, their body relives memories. And your mind doesn't know the difference between what is reality, or what is imagination. So you could be reliving a memory and sitting like right now before the computer, but your body is actually creating a biochemical response and releasing stress hormones.

And if you do that all the time, then the accumulation of that can actually trigger health issues. So by using hypnosis I help them to actually address that event, so it's not a painful memory anymore. We actually edit the memory; I get the clients to reclaim their power, and say what they need to say. Then we, we just like as you do with a video, I say okay, well now you can draw the colour out, or you can change the house, redecorated it and clear the energy. It's very creative process.

And the charge of the event is then released. So if we were to visit it again, it's not traumatic anymore. So that's like, in a nutshell what I do. Often I work with people that have had trauma or abuse or addiction, or like in a trauma could be anything, I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Gabor Maté but you could have an event that for one person may not be traumatic, but for another client is traumatic.

So I think it's really important with hypnotherapy, to rewire the mind, and get inner like insights and wisdom. But then with coaching, it helps to integrate that awareness, and also to, to act on the insights. And actually build new healthy habits, to set boundaries.

And this is what is often so important for women because I work with a lot of women that have always looked after other people, and they've kind of forgotten about themselves. So they haven't really learned the tools to actually be more sovereign of their power. And to be aware that, you know, by being more vocal about what it is they need, they are actually preventing certain triggering scenarios. So, yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell what I do.

So I think that's fascinating. I want to emphasise the fact that hypnotherapy can help. All of us, all of us have had some kind of traumatic experience throughout our life. Talk to us a little bit about the detoxification part that women should go through.

So what you got to remember is that emotions and feelings are actually working with the body systems there are, they're actually connected to the organs. So an emotion it's simply a message is like a message from the body to pay attention -you need to address this.

I just worked with a lady who is in her 70s.When when she came to me, she was really,really angry. That was the overflowing emotion. We did the process that I've just explained with her. Now she also been abused, she has been really let down. And you know, her direct family is not respecting her as a person really.

So she needs to learn how to set boundaries, but by going through the process that she experienced as a 14 year old, being abused, and actually, you know, reliving it, feeling it, letting go of it, she told me that a few days later, she felt inspired to buy a rose to leave it on the doorstep of her abuser that died a year ago.

And who she actually had to marry at the time because she got fell pregnant from the from the sexual abuse. And by by forgiving him, like letting go of the anger. She actually didn't condonehis actions, but she set herself free. This meant that she started to get more energy because her body had cleared that energy of anger.

And I don't know, if you're familiar with Chinese medicine - I'm also trained in as a facial acupuncturist - and the liver often stores anger. So these these emotions have an impact on our body. So she started to get more energy, she started to sing more. People were noticing that she was looking better, like physically looking better. So there is a real detoxification happening by actually releasing old emotions like that.

Okay, no, I think I think these are the examples that that we want to give women themselves and most of the women don't know the tools that they need to use. Anything else you'd like to add as a closing statement before I wrap up?

I work one-on-one with people and help them with ways they can actually protect their energy. Because a lot of the time we've not really been taught that we are energetic beings. So you know, the people that we hang out with the people that we are exposed to, they can have an impact on us, unless we actually have an energetic hygiene practice. So I help people like to set the boundaries, like energetically like help them to clean their chakras at the end of the night and it's all about empowering the individuals themselves.

For me, it's really important that they start to trust themselves to trust their inner awareness, because most of us have really forgotten that, you know, all the knowledge is within. And, you know, we've been outsourcing our power to like the medical establishment and to education. But really the most important thing that I'm passionate about is just to help people reclaim their own power.”