Thursday’s show with legendary hypnotherapist Holly Holmes-Meredith brought up so many salient points about consciousness, I’ve been pondering her words ever since. Holly and her husband Paul run an incredible professional training center in Layfayette California, called HCH Institute. There, people from around the world come to study techniques in hypnosis, many for personal reasons, and others to add to their professional resources as therapists, counselors, nurses and healers.
If you meet Holly, you may feel you have run into a master soul who is just visiting Earth for the heck of it. She literally brings a radiance into the room with her, but the radiance is not about her, its about you; what you can do, and who you really are.
During our interview, Holly shared that her fascination with consciousness arose in her very early years around dysfunctions in her family. In reactions to drama and pain, she would feel herself somehow expand into a larger soul, someone who was in her situation, yet connected with a much larger self and reality. I suspect this is one of the keys to her work, because in her presence, people tend to automatically feel empowered, to “remember” that they are fully competent, pure of heart, and capable of achieving their goals.
If you follow prominent teachers, you may have noticed that some of them treat you like a “grasshopper,” a fledgling neophyte who desperately needs their next training or product in order to stop being such a loser. They can make you feel like a hungry ghost, empty, lost and with only one hope: spending money on their latest offering. One of the reasons I can usually spot that pattern is because in my late twenties I studied with Holly, and she is such a powerful example of a very different way of helping people.
In addition to being a very successful therapist, teacher and pioneer in hypnosis, Holly also practices what I call the Feng Shui of Decency. She behaves with a sense of fair play, welcoming our problems, but always emphasizing our power and allowing people to expand into themselves. In her classes people truly remember that they are competent, loving, effective and courageous. I literally cannot count the number of people who have exclaimed to me: “Holly changed my life!” Perhaps what she really does is help us to remember our larger selves, and enable us to live as our best selves.
If you are noodling around with the idea of getting some kind of training this year, or if you feel your practice with clients is ready for some different approaches, please check out Holly’s HCH Institute and contact them for more information. No one will haunt you with a sales pitch, because they want you to do what is right for you, and you are the best source to make that choice. (Imagine that!)
Holly’s advice to us all is to follow the overwhelming waves of knowing that rise and fall inside, even if what you feel is a kind of discontent, the voice of that intuition will lead you–if you follow it–to the ideal fulfillment of what you need right now. Many people recite some version of this truth, but Holly Holmes-Meredith has seen thousands of people stop hurting themselves and discover what makes them happy. The same bundle of tangled pain that holds the problem, also has the solution rattling around at the bottom of the bag like an errant key-chain. Belief, persistence, gentleness, and reaching out for expertise when you need it will make it possible to locate your keys and make lasting changes with a sense of ease and joy.
Here are some important links to the work being done at the HCH Institute. If you feel a movement in your heart, please take the time to visit them!
Student testimonials on YouTube.
Samples of Dreamwork and Hypnosis CDs.
Catch our interview with Holly here.
~Gillian