SWIHA Blog

Hypnotherapy, often referred to as guided imagery, is a powerful instrument for healing. It works within the subconscious mind of an individual, helping to resolve issues such as chronic anxiety, weight gain, fear and insomnia. It can also help change negative or addictive behaviors.

Bob Chamberlain, a graduate of the 100 hour Certificate of Excellence in Hypnotherapy at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA), has an undeniable passion for hypnotherapy and guided imagery. Once Bob completed his 100 hours of training at SWIHA, he immediately took his skills and experience to Banner Estrella Medical Center in Phoenix, along with SWIHA’s Hypnotherapy Program Director Linda Bennett.

In January of 2015, Banner Estrella launched a pilot program called the Guided Imagery Project. This is a volunteer based program in which Bob immediately began volunteering, along with a dozen other graduates from SWIHA’s hypnotherapy program.

Most traditional, or allopathic, doctors and medical centers have not previously used holistic or integrative therapies like hypnotherapy with patients. However, recently the use of more holistic therapies such as hypnotherapy, massage therapy and even yoga have proven beneficial for helping patients.

In 2011, Laura Wilkinson had hit her version of rock bottom, and was desperately in need of some kind of life shift. Having looked into the Life Coaching program offered at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) previously, Laura explains, “After the rug was pulled out from under my feet I knew it was time to do something transformational,” she said. “I had a clean slate and I needed to build a solid foundation. Life Coaching was the perfect place for me to rebuild from.”

Laura enrolled in SWIHA’s online Mind-Body Transformational Psychology program, where she not only studied Life Coaching, she also took courses in Hypnotherapy, Holistic Nutrition, Aromatherapy, and business courses including Writing for Publication.

Once she completed her program (with a 4.0 grade point average!), Laura was ready for the next phase in her life. Inspired by her program, and armed with the knowledge that there were many others in the world just like her, who went through experiences similar to hers, she decided to start a business. Laura’s mission was to help healers who were stuck in their minds, holding themselves back from reaching their full potential.

Laura launched The Wilkinson Effect, an integrative practice that applies Life Coaching, Transformational Hypnotherapy and Holistic Nutrition into customized client sessions.

By Guest Blogger Laura Barnes

Life Coaching is a dynamic process of purposeful empowerment that sparks transformational change.

Life Coaching develops trust through the journey inward.

A masterful Life Coach helps you to listen and receive information from deep within and to trust and then act on that information.

Life Coaching requires a journey inward. This encourages a sense of rigorously honest confidence and authenticity that is rooted in trusting and believing in you.

For this journey inward, a masterful Life Coach will use a portfolio of artful coaching tools and techniques such as meditation, visualization, mantras, affirmations, the development of mindfulness, music, sounds and frequencies, colors, prayer, breathing techniques, empathy development, storytelling, signs and symbols, body awareness, dreams, archetypes, developing creativity and much more to awaken the mind.

These tools and techniques essentially help to de-clutter, calm and quiet the mind so that you can tune out all the distracting noise and nonsense and tune into your own essential truth that is available and accessible in each and every moment. This inner truth offers the humbling opportunity to guide your life in more purposeful, meaningful and joyous directions.

The ‘earth’ without art is just ‘eh’ . . .

. . . according to Holistic Wellness Practitioner Heather Krompacky, who works in the town of Talkeetna, Alaska, at the base of North America’s tallest mountain, the magnificent Denali.

Imagine . . .

. . . entering a room for a holistic session with a new practitioner, someone you have never worked with before. There are colorful candles burning, the light is low due to the salt lamps placed strategically around the room. Soft music is playing and a lovely, aromatic fragrance is wafting through the air. You begin your session with your practitioner; maybe you experience hypnotherapy, nutritional coaching, or aromatherapy, all as an aspect of a holistic life coaching session with a competent and caring practitioner. You feel a sense of comfort due to the open and honest space from which the ‘Change Artist Extraordinaire’, as the practitioner is known, works. At the end of the session, you are offered a soul-coaching card, to provide continued insight and affirmation.

Wow! Mind-heart-soul expanding, right!

Yes, the above is a small example of what a session would be like with Heather Krompacky, owner of Sunshine Wellness, a dual business -- part wellness center, part organic health food store. The wellness center is housed above Sunshine Organics, her organic health food store, located at the confluence of three Alaskan rivers, the Susitna, Chulitna and Talkeetna.

How Great Graduate Kelly T. Smith Created a Successful Holistic Wellness Business

Intuition. We all have it, and some of us might be more in tune with it than others, but it’s there. It’s that gut feeling, that little voice inside our heads, the answers that live within our hearts and souls.

As a natural intuitive and trained Life Coach, it makes sense that Kelly T. Smith created a life coaching business that helps clients look inside to reach their fullest potential. A graduate of Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) Associate of Mind-Body Transformational Psychology program online, Kelly combines the many tools she learned in her program into the work she does in her business, Intuitive Life Coaching With Kelly. “I feel my intuitive abilities really came forward because SWIHA was a safe place to honor this side of me,” Kelly says about her journey with SWIHA. “I am a life coach, intuitive and hypnotherapist and I use all these tools together to work with people to reach their fullest potential, discover their spiritual gifts, and move past their limitations to live life to the fullest.”

Kelly says that she found the online program at SWIHA through a series of “synchronistic events.”

As fairytail-ish as it sounds, Diana Atenco knew one of her life’s callings was tobecome a Toe Reader. She just loved the opportunity to sit with people, listen to the stories of their lives, often pray with them, and always have the opportunity to help them make new choices about how they would step forward powerfully into the world.

Diana completed a series of classes at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) starting in 2007 and became a Registered Toe Reader. From the very first class she realized she had a gift; without ever fully understanding how she knew even more than what the toe tissue revealed, she was aware that Spirit was using her as a messenger to people of all ages. Before long she knew she needed to deepen the way she was serving her clients, so she returned to SWIHA to take the Hypnotherapy and Life Coaching programs.

Around the time Diana began her journey at SWIHA, her then teenage grandson horribly injured himself in a motocross accident. He became seriously dependent on prescription pain mediation, which developed into an addiction to heroin. For years Diana suffered as she watched her beloved grandson slowly fade into the dark depths of drug addiction.

“If you light a lantern for another it will also brighten your own way.”

Although these words were spoken more than 700 years ago by Nichiren Daishonin, a Buddhist monk, the same attitude is reflected within the 14 students who will be ordained in a special ceremony on Dec. 5, 2014 at 6:00 pm at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) in Tempe, Arizona. This will be SWIHA’s biggest Spiritual Studies ordination to date.

The ordination will take place during SWIHA’s monthly Gifts and Graces event, held on the first Friday of every month. This event is complimentary and open to the public. Guests are invited to come for the event and stay after to experience complimentary sessions of energy work, spiritual coaching, toe reading and more.

The graduates are Sheila Taylor, Carol Valentino, Diana Claybaugh, Keta Baker, Kathryn Beauchamp, Carole Hewitt, Ronald Tobin, Michael McCaffrey, Lisa Pulce, Tammy Gordon, Brett Getrost, Jeff Cooke, Thalia Randolph and Marika Adams-Vangueety.

Although each graduate will follow a unique path with their ordination, a common thread runs through each one – a strong desire to use a spiritual path to light the way for others.

“I am passionate about the field of spiritual studies and believe it is one of the most important fields of study one can undertake,” said Michael McCaffrey in his essay for ordination into the Universal Brotherhood Movement.

By KC Miller

Monday has a little bit of a bad rap! Often you will hear someone say: T.G.I.F (Thank Goodness It’s Friday); rarely, however, do you hear, “T.G.I.M! I’m over-the-moon-excited it’s Monday!”

Let’s face it – If you are going to begrudge Mondays you have a lot of complaining ahead of you because, hopefully, you have a lot of Mondays in front of you.

So, what’s the answer? F.I.T.Y.M.I – which means ‘Fake It ‘Til You Make It’ – is one possible solution.

While being fake isn’t’ really the message, the use of acronyms or mnemonicscan be a powerful way to remember to adjust your attitude as you face the week.

The word ‘mnemonic’ comes from Greek mythology; there was goddess names Mnemosyne, dubbed ‘the Goddess of Memory’ whose claim to fame was sleeping with the Greek god Zeus and conceiving nine children. The children, all daughters, were known as the muses, or creative nymphs, personifying the arts, especially literature, healing, dance and music. A mnemonic for muse could be:

by KC Miller, Founder of Southwest Institute of Healing Arts

‘Don’t dim my light!’ was the warning Richard Seaman gave me as one of his employers here on earth several years ago. This affirmation was not in the least way said in a threating or condescending manner; Richard was just very aware that his full-time employer was God. Often without warning some amazing force would show up and come out of his mouth . . . sometimes with grace, other times with real raw honesty. Before long it became increasingly obvious Richard was on loan as an employee to the college and that his real job was to be a spirit-directed pot-stirrer. He was in our employ to shake things up, do things a little differently and to prepare for his next assignment.

Richard has been very reliable in showing up to deeply touch the lives of many people, to help heal their stories, and in a very real way, helped to free many souls. There is no doubt his new book, Spiritual Reliability: Are You God’s Employee , is his continued commitment to serve as a teacher and guide for those who are ready to do their own work in recovering and discovering.

By Will Zecco, Guest Blogger and SWIHA Success Center Manager

There are many aspects to the job that I do at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA). The most rewarding is my role as mentor and coach for the graduates, helping them pursue their dreams and offer their gifts and graces to the world in profitable way.

It is my honor to support these individuals from the early stages of their business development and guide them toward entrepreneurial success. This process is always an interesting and eye opening experience because each one is very unique in their chosen path.

The most rewarding part of this is watching the transformation from being scared and overwhelmed at the thought of starting a business, to the point where they spread their wings and soar. For some this is a slow and possibly arduous process, with many starts and stops; things sometimes become stuck and just never seem to launch. I often tell my graduates, the challenges to build and grow a business are the same no matter what the business is. How do we take a product or service and turn it into a profitable business? It takes more than just a great idea; it takes imagination and perseverance to become successful.

It is seeing the success stories happen that makes my job so rewarding. Knowing that I was able to be a source of support to help these things happen is what makes my soul sing!