By Sara Piccola |
If you’re suffering from a phobia, fear, addiction, self-esteem issue or other type of trauma, Tonda Adams might be the person for you. Tonda is a hypnotherapist. She focuses on empowerment and personal change using hypnosis and therapy as tools to get to the core of the problem.
Adams is a Certified Master Hypnotherapist, a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, and a Certified Alchemical Hypnotherapist. Alchemical Hypnotherapy focuses on our inner guides and the balancing of archetypes. Tonda has been interested in hypnotherapy most of her life, getting her first taste of it as a psychological tool in a business class in college. She pursued a degree in accounting and eventually wound up in law school.
Two years into law school, Tonda’s husband, an attorney, died of a sudden heart attack. Between finishing law school and managing the law firm she shared with her husband, Adams found herself unable to grieve for her loss. She sought counseling through conventional therapy, grief therapy, medications, but nothing worked. Finally she encountered hypnotherapy and found the experience so powerful and healing that she decided to become a certified hypnotherapist. She opened her practice, MtnQuest Hypnotherapy, in Reno, and has been practicing here for 7 years.
Hypnosis expands your everyday consciousness so that you have greater awareness of past events, feelings, and hidden motives. There are four levels of hypnosis; light, medium, deep (or somnambulism), and very deep. Most hypnotherapy is done in a light or medium state.
During light and medium states your awareness is heightened and you are able to converse easily with the therapist. A light state could be used on a specific phobia. Tonda takes the client back through the experience and reframes the situation, empowering the person to eliminate the phobia. It’s similar to deleting an old computer program.
Deep states are best used for direct suggestion. The client no longer converses with the therapist. Deep hypnosis may be used on a client who wants to quit smoking. Tonda begins by putting the client into a medium state where they are still able to communicate. Slowly the client enters a deep state of relaxation during which Tonda begins direct suggestions. Direct suggestions consist of sayings such as, “You are no longer a smoker,” and “Smoking is poisonous to your body.” A very deep state of hypnosis is used by doctors for performing surgery without anesthesia.
The necessary level of hypnosis varies from client to client and their reasons for seeking therapy. To determine the appropriate level of hypnosis Tonda discusses concepts of the conscious and unconscious mind with clients, including their thoughts, beliefs, and expectations about hypnotherapy. Therapy begins shortly after.
Interestingly, Tonda believes that we all function in trance-like states of mind everyday as we perform activities such as driving, working, and eating. We are essentially in an altered state much of the time. So it’s fairly easy to slip in and out of a trance, sometimes just by hearing the sound of someone’s voice. I really didn’t believe this until I found myself in Tonda’s office being lulled into a trance-like state as I listened to her talk. At one point I realized I had a whole page of notes and didn’t remember actually taking them! Tonda assured me that similar things happen with her clients, and I believe it!
Tonda’s passion for hypnotherapy comes from a longstanding belief in empowerment. If you are dissatisfied with something in your life it takes motivation, desire, and willpower to change. Tonda has found that many people don’t believe they possess these abilities and therefore feel unable to overcome trauma and other obstacles. However, because she experienced empowerment in her own life through hypnotherapy, she is now dedicated to helping others experience the same thing.
In addition to office therapy, Tonda creates therapeutic CD’s for use at home and on the road. She is in the process of creating a new product, “Healing Stories on CD” which are designed to directly contact the unconscious part of the mind.
