Surja Jessup, Certified Hypnotherapist and longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister is featured in our Counseling and Therapy category. Surja's practice of Body/Mind Transformation combines hypnotherapy, acupressure, and holistic counseling. She also offers a process called Personal Inquiry for couples based on Eckhart Tolle's work.

For the holistic practitioner, the context for healing shifts from addressing a particular problem to whole body healing In whole body healing, each person is seen as multi-dimensional; that is, he or she has an emotional, mental, and spiritual dimension energetically contained in the physical body, which work together to create health and well-being.

Often, disturbance or conflict which affects health happens on the mental dimension or thought level, and then later impacts our behavior. For example, an early childhood trauma such as falling from a tree might result in a phobia of climbing trees long after the fall is forgotten, because the subconscious thought that "trees are dangerous" is still being believed on the mental dimension.

In a similar way, events which happened to us as we grew up create a belief system which can influence our present-day attitudes toward relationships. For instance, if our parents fought frequently when we were children, it is possible to have a deep, subconscious belief such as, relationships are too traumatic to pursue, even while we consciously pursue relationships. We may even sabotage the situation by attracting partners who are not really available, or by rejecting people who really are available, because our subconscious mind is afraid of intimacy. Then we create a story and project it on the world such as, "Oh, there are no available men," or "All the desirable women are already partnered." Our internal story is misperceived as objective reality, and we make ourselves victims in our own drama.

Part of a healthy lifestyle is to choose to believe in the possibility of intimacy and relationship, if that is what a person really wants. So how can we create an attitude of trust that relationship is possible, no matter what our prior experience has been?

This is where a holistic model of healing can be very useful. In my private practice as a holistic practitioner I use hypnotherapy to trace the source of the limiting thoughts and beliefs that a person is projecting into the world. Then I use inner child healing to comfort and love the part of the self from the past that is hurt, angry, or afraid, and this process allows the painful feelings to be released.

The next step is to empower the adult self to be discerning about the stories he or she is telling, which most often create feelings of judgment or victimization. Then I ask the person to look into his own heart and see what the truth really is, in present time.

When an individual fully recognizes what is true now and learns to create, powerful in the present rather than conditioned by the past, it becomes possible to explore relationships with openness and trust. Our spirit becomes aligned with the heart rather than memory. Healthy relationships are the natural outcome of this inner healing.