SWIHA Blog

When asked about their favorite Southwest Institute of Healing Arts instructors, many students exclaim “Linda Bennett!” without hesitation. Linda Bennett, Queen of Hearts, and Certified Clinic Hypnotherapist, is a Senior Curriculum Specialist and the Hypnotherapy Program Director for SWIHA’s On Campus and Online Hypnotherapy programs. Linda is also a Board Certified Hypnotherapy Instructor and Certifying Examiner as well as a Certified Life Coach. She has almost 30 years of experience in the fields of Higher Education Development and Corporate Training. Linda’s passion is making learning a comprehensive and fun experience that is engaging to all students, whatever their learning style.

“There are a lot of different types of coaches out there and a lot that spent more time learning marketing than how to be a strong coach,” Tami Sharp, creator of The F You Point, tells us, “For me, life coaching is like hiring a personal trainer for your soul. Sure, if you want to get in shape you can do it on your own. However, if you want to expedite the experience, have deeper and more noticeable results in less time, you hire someone that's been trained to help you push past your limits and holds you accountable for achieving your goals.”

“After having a hypnotherapy session from a student in the clinic, I knew that SWIHA was the place for me,” Kaye Bahr tells us, “After my session, I felt such a great relief from the stress and anxiety I was experiencing and I wanted to provide a similar experience for others. My very first session put me on a path to a new career.” 

Kaye made a brave leap from her fifteen-year role as an elementary school teacher to enroll in the Mind-Body Wellness Practitioner program and pursue a path as a  Clinical Hypnotherapist. She began her business Aspect Wellness, where she is a Performance Coach who works mainly with female business owners looking to grow their businesses, and yet finding that there is something holding them back.

Once upon a time, Michele Root worked as an employee for a large company that supported veterans. While attending a leadership program where each participant was assigned a coach, Michele was introduced to the concept of Life Coaching. 

“I found myself coaching my coach!” she tells us, “I immediately knew I needed to learn more."

As Michele thought more about it, she felt called to help military men and women transition back to civilian life and needed to find a program to help her attain that.

Since she was a teenager and even after becoming a stay at home mom, friends would seek out Lori Beard for assistance. “I enjoyed sharing my guidance due to my life’s experiences and interest in human behavior and the roots of those behaviors,” she tells us.

As the mother of eight children, Lori was ready to go back to school when her youngest child went into kindergarten. She received her Life Coaching and Clinical Hypnotherapist certifications from Southwest Institute of Healing Arts out of her desire to guide, transform and impact lives.

When Jillian Holper first enrolled at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, she kept telling everyone she knew: “‘It’s as if the Universe materialized a school just for me’. I was almost in shock the first couple of months!”

Jillian completed the Mind-Body Transformational Psychology degree program and believes Life Coaching and Hypnotherapy have been the tools with which she’s created the best version of herself.

“It has allowed me to understand the way humans operate on a deeper level than I could've ever realized,” she says, “Most importantly, it’s given me the absolute honor of seeing what incredible things we can do when someone holds the space for us to heal. Miraculous things occur when we connect to our own innate wisdom and healing.”

“I fall more in love with the work every day,” proclaims Linda Bennett, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and the Program Director for SWIHA’s Hypnotherapy programs, “I have been involved in this field for 25 years and I’ve seen incredible transformation occur through the use of this modality.”

“For me,” she explains, “it’s all about connecting the head and the heart. When the two are disconnected from each other, imbalances take place and there is illness of some sort.”

We pass hundreds—even thousands—of people on the street every day, usually without a second look. Yet, that’s not quite the case for Ann Marie Rubertone, who possesses the gift of “seeing” energy. "I can see and feel the frequences that others radiate, so I understand 'energetically' what they are thinking," she explains. 

This powerful form of seeing and empathizing perhaps evolved from Ann Marie's difficult and diverse background, which includes overcoming domestic violence, abuse, infertility, multiple sclerosis, and drug addiction. Although Ann Marie once felt that she was never good enough and that she would never fit in, her journey of recovery has been inspiring.

If you find yourself on the home page of Life Coach and Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist Sandy O’Neal’s website, you’ll notice a single quote printed across a beautiful lavender and pink sky:

“If you want to change your reality, then it’s time for you to change your mind…”

Changing minds and realities is indeed what Sandy is all about as she serves the world through her coaching and hypnotherapy business, appropriately called A Transformed Life. Her objective is to help her clients deepen and expand their lives through her specializations in fertility support, anxiety/stress reduction, weight reduction and movement, fears and phobias treatment, and pain management. She offers private sessions in-person at her Mesa, Arizona, studio and remotely via phone and Skype, as well as weekly and biweekly meetup groups which focus on managing anxiety, stress, and depression, promoting well-being and mindfulness, increasing self-confidence, and practicing healthy habits.

According to Life Coach and meditation teacher Bill Gisclair-Sullivan, authenticity requires practice: “It is a conscious choice that we must make about how we want to live our lives every day. It is a collection of our choices and decisions, and it requires us to show up, be present in the moment, and to be honest with ourselves.”

The truth is that authenticity usually has to be re-learned because so much of our lives have been spent mastering the many masks we think we must wear to be approved of or to fit into what we imagine is expected of us. A quote from Coach Bill’s website captures his life coaching mission, which emphasizes how we can step into our truest self: "Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we truly are."

Bill is so passionate about this work because it mirrors his own life journey. “It took me many, many years to discover my authenticity,” Bill explains. “I spent most of my adult life working in management in the hospitality field. After making some dramatic mistakes and trying to climb the corporate ladder, I lost some important parts of myself along the way.”