Library
Article: War and Soul Loss
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
It has been unfashionable for veterans returning home from war to talk about the effect their experiences during the war has had on them. I have had countless children of veterans tell me that their fathers had never once spoken of their experience in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. I have known veterans who stop speaking when war is brought up. Most men returning from war have turned to silence to deal with the trauma of their experience on the battlefield. This is, after all, the “manly” thing to do. The effect that this silence has on their personal life, their family life, and the society in which they live is often minimized or completely disregarded.
Article: What is Depth Hypnosis?
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Depth Hypnosis is a synthesis of Transpersonal Psychology, Shamanism, Hypnotherapy, and Buddhism. The following description is especially helpful for those who might be considering entering the advanced training course in Depth Hypnosis.
The philosophy underlying transpersonal psychology – that true healing can only take place when one recognizes one’s place within a much larger context of the shared experience of the soul – is the underpinning of my practice. The techniques of shamanism and hypnotherapy provide the catalysts for healing within that context. The differences between the disciplines of shamanism and hypnotherapy are much fewer than the similarities.
Article: Working with the Shamanic Journey
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Shamanism is the core spiritual and healing practice of most indigenous cultures. The Shaman serves as the medical, psychological, and spiritual counselor of these cultures. One of the primary responsibilities of the Shaman is to interface between the world of the seen and the unseen. As part of the interface between these two worlds, the shaman uses the shamanic journey. The shamanic journey is a term that is used to describe the primary vehicle that Shamans use to perceive phenomena beyond the conscious mind. It is a method of perceiving the psyche and world of spirit, as well as a means of gaining deeper insight into the world around us.
Article: Using Depth Hypnosis With Eating Disorders
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Eating disorders are a common presenting problem in the West. Mainstream psychotherapists categorize these disorders according to the specific behaviors involved, providing different diagnoses for someone who binges and purges (a bulimic), as opposed to someone who withdraws from food (an anorexic.) This seems to imply a nascent understanding of the different energetic patterns underlying each disorder. However, mainstream psychotherapy generally fails to trace this understanding down to the origin of the disorder within a person’s psyche.
Article: The Ancient Roots of Huna
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. and Laura Chandler
The Huna tradition of Hawaii is a shamanic tradition with roots far deeper than the Pacific Islands. It is a window into a much more ancient wisdom – one that flows beneath all shamanic and spiritual traditions. Like flowers blooming on the same vine, spiritual traditions draw from a similar source. Just as each flower is unique, each culture is unique in the way that it expresses and preserves specific aspects of this underlying body of knowledge. The Huna tradition offers a rare perspective of this source and a glimpse into the ancient oral traditions that have existed from the beginning of humankind.
Article: Using Depth Hypnosis Techniques to Treat PTSD
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is a surprisingly pervasive disorder suffered by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. Formerly referred to as shell shock in World War I and World War II soldiers, and later named Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam veterans coming home from the war, it is now recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a legitimate psychological disorder, affecting many people, military and otherwise. The causes of PTSD vary, but the common factor is usually a traumatizing event. Any long or short-term event, such as an accident or physical abuse, can permanently affect a person and cause PTSD.
Article: An Interview with Isa Gucciardi
Q. What brought you to this line of work?
A. The beauty of nature has always been an inspiration to me. From the time I was a very young child, I had trouble reconciling the fact that most humans seem to have difficulty appreciating or understanding the sanity and organization of nature that seems so fundamental to my observations. Through all of the subjects I teach – from Integrated Energy Medicine, Depth Hypnosis, Applied Shamanism to Buddhist Psychology – I am always endeavoring to help people move into a place where they can begin to appreciate the beauty of the world which supports us. I think it is the desire to open people to this beauty and to align myself more fully with it that brought me here.
Article: Death, Acceptance, and Grace
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
When a loved one is dying or has died, our defenses to all of the complicated aspects of our relationship with that person are often shaken. If we are lucky, we are less able to keep in place all the unconscious agreements with that person and we are afforded a time to explore those agreements and how they affect our ability to be honest with ourselves. To deepen this process, it is often helpful to use hypnosis and its ability to further weaken the conscious defenses we have to death in order to more fully understand ourselves.
This part of the grieving process, this deeper exploration of the meaning of how death highlights these hidden places in our relationships, is often masked by the homilies of organized religion, the need to save face in front of family members, and the urging by well-meaning friends to just get on with our lives. Even if we find we are able to explore these places, we rarely have the luxury of doing so with the person who is dying.
Article: Case Study: Combining Energy Medicine and Past Life Regression Techniques
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
My work takes me to many times and places in my clients’ psyches. During this work, I use many tools to help people discover the origin of the problems they seek help with. One of the most valuable tools is the use of rays of energy. Vedic science, tantric Buddhist healing practices, and other schools of energy medicine articulate many methods of working with rays to create change in the psyche. When dealing with deep issues within the psyche, it is often impossible to address them by any other method than with rays. This is because ray work can effect change beyond the realm of words or even images.
Article: Using Integrated Energy Medicine Techniques to Address PMS
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Most non-Western medical traditions recognize that physical imbalance, particularly in chronic conditions, is just the tip of the iceberg. They recognize that physical illness is the last and most serious condition in a long line of manifestations by a particular imbalance. Non-Western and shamanic healing traditions, including Chinese medicine, all suggest that physical illness originates in the spirit. My work confirms this position as well.
Article: Creating Safety: A Glimpse of the Role of Energy in the Process of Self-Transformation
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
One important aspect of creating safety in the process of opening to the inner world is the development of ways of perceiving information that can be significantly different than the ways in which we gather information in a waking state. One way of perceiving information which is known about, but minimized, in conscious-mind reality, is through what is referred to as “the sixth sense.” This is the sense that you use to gather information without being consciously aware. You may have had the experience of sitting with your back to the door reading or writing or involved in a project. You don’t hear anything, you don’t see anything, but you know someone is standing in the doorway. And you turn around, and, indeed, someone is there.
Article: Quack Like a Duck
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Hypnotherapy is an ancient art. The Ebers Papyrus from 3000 BCE describes the way it was used as a “sleep cure” to help with a variety of ailments in ancient Egypt. In Greece, hypnosis was used to treat soldiers returning from war who were suffering from the effects of being exposed to the trauma of the battlefield.
More recently, Western Europeans became exposed to the art of hypnotherapy through their colonization of other countries with ancient healing traditions that contained hypnosis as a treatment option.
Article: Hypnosis: The Secular Sacrament
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
I often think of hypnosis as a secular sacrament. At first glance, “secular sacrament” appears to be an oxymoron. How can something sacred, and therefore traditionally a part of the religious community within a society, be the same thing as something secular, and therefore a part of the political and socioeconomic community of a society? This chapter will show how hypnosis functions as a secular sacrament, yet remains outside of the trappings of the larger cultural and social realities.
Article: Opening the Doors to the Self – The Shamanic Journey
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
We understand the breadth and depth of the self in many ways through many types of experiences. Often, we come to understand our experience as human beings by directing or projecting parts of ourselves either outward or inward. The self at a soul level reveals, through the language of images, which parts of ourselves are seeking understanding at ever-deepening levels. In relationships with others, we project these parts outward in the form of images. In dreams, we project these parts inward in the form of images. The reflection we receive back gives us information on which we base our sense of self.
Article: Opening the Doors to the Self – Dreams
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Widening our definitions of reality to include phenomena which are regularly perceived by the unconscious can help us find the path back to the self at a soul level. This is true even if these phenomena are discounted by the conscious mind. Dreams provide a valuable perspective on this journey and their messages are available to us on a regular basis. In order to decipher those messages, we must allow the defenses of the conscious mind to rest. This allows us to use its acuity to organize the information we are receiving in dreams. By using hypnosis to gain access to dream images generated during sleep, we can perceive that we are actually developing a relationship with profound and utterly personal guidance.