Why You Should Use Hypnosis as a Healing Tool for Business

Have you ever thought about using hypnosis as a healing tool for your business? It’s one of the tools I’ve used for several years now, so I want to share how hypnosis can help people to move forward with their own progress. I often talk about hypnosis with my friends or family and I always get such a mixed response from people. So many people are like, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do it. I’m scared.” 

I recently spoke with Nick Colasanti, who owns the PA Center for Hypnosis and someone I consider a coach. He says that most people have a preconceived notion of what hypnosis is. They’ve seen stage hypnosis or watched movies that show it as mind control where a hypnotist can make people do whatever he or she wants him to do. None of that is true, he says. Hypnosis is about helping someone help themselves heal for whatever issue they have. 

My experience is very different from stage hypnotherapy. It’s very calming and peaceful. For me, hypnosis helps me get myself to that state of calm that I don’t seem to be able to do on my own.

“Stage hypnosis is dramatic,” Nick says. “A skilled hypnotist polls the crowd as to who might be more suggestible than someone else, because you can’t hypnotize someone against their will. There’s an anticipation that people have, especially in a crowd, they want to perform sometimes. That’s what gives people the wrong impression. But the hypnotist is not controlling people. He’s giving them suggestions that they’re willing to act on. It’s not much different than when you go to a wedding. If there are no drinks at a wedding, people act very differently than if there’s drinking going on. Drinking, in some way, frees up people’s inhibitions about things. Hypnosis is a way to help people be relaxed and calm. And they’re willing to say things and do things that they might want to do in their normal life, but they would never do. That’s what stage hypnosis does.”

Nick started in talk radio back in 1995. It was during a radio show in 1998 that he spoke with Shelley Stockwell and became her mentee. After reading her book, Nick asked her to teach him how to be a hypnotist. Since then he’s had over 700 hours in training and has multiple certifications in different aspects of hypnosis. And he works with people in many different areas. 

For example, he told me that someone could have a skin condition. And the skin condition isn’t necessarily caused by their mind. But it could be exacerbated by their emotions. Hypnosis can help people with that. It can also help with phobias, sleep disorders, and emotional trauma. 

From my perspective, coaching people in business, so many times past traumas come up that you don’t want to come up when you’re trying to run your own business. Or when you’re in a leadership role, there can be a lot of challenges. That’s where people get stuck in their business. When their confidence is called into question, when you have to be confident, even if things aren’t going well. And part of what I do is help people get unstuck with their business, looking at their marketing, seeing what they can do. Hypnosis can help people get unstuck in this regard, as well. 

Nick says we can’t escape our childhood. But we can understand it and change how we feel about it. “And if you can change how you feel about something, then it’s as if that thing has changed. The theory of quantum physics says that the observer changes the observed literally, physically. The way the person sees something can change the actual reality in its own right. If we can change your perspective on things, you can change the outcome.” Nick is able to do this in a very gentle, understanding and compassionate way. It’s not stage hypnosis, his clients aren’t doing anything to embarrass themselves. It’s a gentle process to move people into a state of deep relaxation. And for some reason, when people are in a deep state of relaxation, they take suggestions that are valuable for them. 

Nick says that the core of any therapy situation is the relationship that you establish with your therapist. “So if you feel safe, if you feel calm to some degree, that’s the beginning right there. Hypnosis actually starts the moment you call the therapist on the phone or you come to their office or meet online, because that is what begins the establishment of a relationship with that individual.”

“Oftentimes, the people who say they can’t be hypnotized because they’re a “control freak” don’t think they could give up that kind of control. But they end up being my best clients many times because they don’t feel they’re gonna be hypnotized. They can’t believe that they will be until they experience it. And then they’re amazed. They love it.”

How Hypnosis Therapy Works

When I visit Nick, I don’t just walk in, sit down, and let him hypnotize me and do whatever he thinks needs to happen. We talk about things. And I always say, for me, that talking with Nick gives me more insight than I’ve ever gotten into myself from talking to anybody else. It really helps me. What I like about the experience is that it’s not counseling, really. The sessions that I have with Nick are really about healing and moving forward. So when we get to the hypnosis part, it’s a very comfortable and safe space to be able to take suggestions in, and it almost feels like a gift to be able to just release and just let those suggestions be followed through. 

Nick likes to say he does cognitive hypnosis. It’s not regular cognitive talk therapy, but it’s not only hypnotherapy. “I try to engage the person’s intellectual mind in the conversation part that we have. We spend time talking before we do any hypnosis. Because in talking, things come up, things come out, and people feel safer, and more confident when they can just explain things.

“If you just came in, and we did hypnosis right away, that would feel like a big loss of control for a lot of people. And I would never put anybody into that circumstance. I need to build a relationship with the individual so they feel comfortable with me, they feel open to be able to tell me what’s going on with them. And if you choose during the hypnosis part to come out of it, you certainly can do that. You’re not locked into it, you can’t get stuck in it.” 

Hypnosis is Really Suggestions

I really feel like hypnotherapy helped me grow in my business, in the consulting that I do, by being able to look forward a little bit more and have this inner calm and inner peace. That just seems to be so difficult to achieve, I think, especially for women and mothers on their own. We’re not always as good at making time for ourselves, or maybe we don’t know how to make caring for ourselves a priority. 

“One of the things I like to say is if people could fix this stuff on their own, they would do it,” Nick says. “If we could will ourselves into submission, we all would. But we can’t because it’s not a question of willpower. It’s a question of what’s going on underneath. Once you can help a person through their fears, help them be comfortable, be calm, and teach them how to do that, then the suggestions start to work for people.” 

Nick says that everything is hypnosis. “Because let’s face it, we act the way we act because of suggestions. Everything in our life is a suggestion from the time that you’re a little kid until the time you leave this earth. The church, the government, your parents, your family, your boss, everybody’s giving you a suggestion.”

That’s why I love hypnosis for myself, because it helps you filter out the suggestions you don’t need. It puts you in a calm place so that you can receive the right suggestions for yourself as a person. It’s always personalized. And it’s specific to a person. 

Nick creates a customized script he follows for each individual client after they’ve had a conversation and he’s come up with ideas for certain suggestions. “Sometimes it seems illogical. And yet it works. And people get better and they feel good. You don’t have to dig up everything to get to that point.”

How Many Hypnosis Sessions are Needed?

“People come to me many times after they’ve been to the traditional therapists,” Nick says. “And they can tell me chapter and verse of what’s wrong with them. They’ve got a diagnosis, they have a label, And all I say to them, do you feel any better? No. Well then it probably wasn’t exactly what you needed. 

“So they do a session or two. And usually people feel a lot better. And if they want to come beyond that, they come beyond that for things to work on all the time.” 

I’ve been seeing Nick for many years on and off. But it’s not necessarily something you have to engage in for three months, six months, or 10 sessions, which is often what you might hear when you talk about going into a therapeutic environment. You can go once or twice and just really get a lot of benefit from it. 

Hypnosis Can Help You in Your Business? 

Nick gave me an example of a business woman who knows their business and what they want to do, but they lack confidence to get started. Hypnosis can help them find out where the lack of confidence is coming from. Maybe they grew up with a critical parent, and they tended to procrastinate because they were always afraid of the criticism from their parents. Things like that can prevent a person from doing well in business. Hypnosis tackles that emotional component of getting past themselves.

In business and in life, there’s that sort of fake it till you make it part that you have to do. And sometimes you have some of these underlying feelings that don’t go away. And if you don’t handle them they may continue to fester and grow. In business coaching and consulting, that’s where you start to see people lacking confidence in the business decisions, and then they stop taking action, and then they actually do end up failing. They kind of fulfill the prophecy for themselves. So I think everybody should work with a coach (or a few) to help them move forward in life. 

Nick’s goal is to create authenticity so that the person can be on the inside the way they’re perceived on the outside. “When we’re authentic, we can be 100% who we are, still care about ourselves, and then have the world benefit from the services that we provide.”

We don’t have to sort of have this exterior that’s different from the interior. We’re all always a work in progress and there’s always an opportunity to improve.

If you want to reach out to Nick Colasanti to use hypnosis as a healing tool, you can email him at hypnosleep@aol.com or nicholas.colasanti@gmail.com. He’s also available by phone at 610-326-8647.