The Healing Value of Love in Hypnotherapy
By Barbara Lynn Allen

I have always believed that the ultimate value in healing is love. When I began as a young therapist, I asked myself the question: what really heals? As I witnessed the benefits of simple human empathy and caring in sessions with my clients, I came to believe that it was the power of love that empowers healing, and not only therapeutic tools and techniques.

I sensed that within this empathy, therapist to client, there was a spiritual connection that allowed people to feel that they were not alone, even in the most difficult circumstances. This spiritual connection, evoked when people feel truly understood, is the extra ingredient that allows them to go beyond their prior limitations.

I developed Advanced Hypnotherapy® to embody the primary values of support, validation and respect. Support for who you are as a person, just as you are right now; validation for what you have already done in your life, however large or small; and respect for your uniqueness, your pace in healing, and your own special way of being.

Today, with the many tools and techniques gained from years of experience and training in methods such as Gestalt, NLP, EFT, Reiki, breathwork and energy therapies, combined with hypnosis, I still believe that love (coupled with therapeutic skill, effective methods and sensitivity) is the ultimate healer.

Recently I worked with a gifted writer who was plagued with guilt and shame. "Sara" didn't understand her feelings even though they were blocking her joy and productivity in writing. She experienced deep sadness leading to procrastination whenever she thought about writing.

After only a month of intensive therapy, which included some energy therapy techniques along with hypnosis, and several deep and healing regressions, she began to re-experience the joy of writing that she remembered from her early years as a writer. She fully released old feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety that had been keeping her from living her life fully.

Deeply painful and confusing experiences from long ago had kept her stuck in the past when she was too young to sort things out for herself. Now she was finally free.

Now she's writing again, working on a book, and has had several excellent articles published by a prestigious New York publisher. She finally feels worthy of success. After so many years of suffering, she is finally free to enjoy and prosper doing the work she really loves.

Advanced Hypnotherapy® is a process of inner healing that creates self-empowerment by freeing us from the wounds of our past. Healing can flourish only when there is self-love. The values of support, validation and respect that underlie this therapy become internalized, replacing guilt, shame, and self-denigration; allowing us to feel whole, free, authentic and deeply supported from within.

Out of a genuine sense of inner support, validation, respect and self-love comes a whole life that is truly right for you because it expresses who you are. This is true empowerment.