Meet Program Graduate

Christian Skoorsmith

I graduated from Erika’s training in January of 2017.

I had already been a practicing hypnotherapist for several months, and received two certifications from other schools, but I wasn’t having the success with my clients that I wanted to have.

Erika’s training and the 5-PATH method does that for me - and was the best training I’ve had before or since. I use it every day, and am profoundly moved by the tools I have and the transformations I see taking place in my office every day. 

Whatever career I’ve had, I’ve always wanted to help people be better people. Through hypnosis, I am able to help people get to the root of their problem behavior, neutralize the emotional energy around it, and discover that whatever “issue” they came in with was just a symptom of something they’ve addressed and healed, and they symptom is easy to change after that.  

I have a private practice that has recently expanded to a second office in another neighborhood of Seattle. While habit change and behavior modification continue to be a staple of my practice (~95% success rate with habit changes, and 100% success with permanent smoking cessation), I specialize in anger and stress management, relationship issues, pain management, tinnitus, and working with transgender clients. My work in all these areas is tremendously rewarding, and I’m already seeing a referral base building up from success with previous clients. 

I wanted two things from my training at Cascade Hypnosis Center. 

1. I wanted to have a systematic program where I knew exactly (more or less) what I needed to do with a client at each step of our professional relationship, maximized for their benefit. I wanted my success with clients to be profound, consistent, and efficient. I looked around at a lot of schools and approaches, and I really feel like I made the best choice.

The effects of the hypnosis I do with clients are profound, I see it in the faces and hear it in the voices of every client as they emerge from hypnosis.

The tools consistently produce results: this is evidence-based work at its best, an approach that is proven, reliable, and effective.

Lastly, I wanted efficiency: I didn’t want to waste my time or my clients’ time, no wasted sessions, no second-guessing myself about what to do next, no reinventing the wheel every time I prepare to meet with a client. The tools Erika shared with me make me the best hypnotist I can be, with the least amount of indecision and confusion possible. 

2. I wanted to WOW my clients. I wanted them to be bowled over, blown away by the power of our sessions and their transformations.

It doesn’t have to be about “me” - I wanted them amazed at their own transformation, their healing from something that was holding them back but they hadn’t realized before. I wanted them to leave not just the whole series of sessions, but EVERY session totally jazzed about what just happened, and the new insights they’d discovered. And I am able to do that, every day. I love what I get to do for a living! 

My ideal client is someone who really wants to change, is ready to change, and who just hasn’t seemed to be able to do it yet - whether that’s stopping a bad habit, or getting past an emotional or psychological stumbling block, or motivation to do what they “know” they “want” to do.

My ideal client is also open to using their minds: excited, eager, and interested in using one’s self-awareness to refashion themselves. I’ve had all kinds of great clients, but the one common thread is that they were willing to engage in hypnosis with me, not just have me put them in some state and “fix” them, but actually participate in the process under my guidance. 

You can totally do it. You can change. You can have what you want, be what you want, do what you really want.

The only thing you need to be hypnotized is the ability to follow instructions and the desire to be hypnotized.

And if you’re willing to follow me that far, you can change virtually anything you want about yourself. Because who you want to be, is who you really are right now, just waiting to break out of those misshapen habits and limiting beliefs you’ve taken on over the years. If you’re ready to let those go and step into your brilliance as a human being, then I would be thrilled to be a part of helping you get there. 

1. Is this something that I could really do (seriously, with personal integrity, taking it seriously)?
2. Is this something that I could make a living at?
3. Is this too “woo-woo”? (I’m a pretty straight-laced guy when it comes to this kind of stuff.)
4. Is more training worth the money? There’s so much free stuff and cheap instruction on the internet, is there really something I can’t learn elsewhere for a lot cheaper? 

Through the roof. Skyrocketed it.

After the training with Erika, I was not just phenomenally more confident about what I was able to do as a hypnotist, and not just more informed and understanding about the phenomena and principles in the background, but I was demonstrably better equipped to discuss with potential clients what I do, what hypnosis is, and how it can help them.

I found that I was able to converse intelligently, answer questions simply and effectively, and that I had a great grounding for discussing hypnosis with virtually anyone at any level of familiarity with hypnosis. 

And while I had two endorsements before going to train with Erika, my diplomas from that training are the only ones I talk about or refer to. 

Taking two weeks off wasn’t easy. We have three young kids, and that meant finding someone to pick them up from school, take care of them until my wife got home, and also my wife was at home alone with them for that whole time.

The cost - while looking back now was not just “worth it” but downright cheap - wasn’t insignificant. 

We aren’t rich, and we had to scrape that money together, and borrow some from family, to make it happen. I’m really glad I did, but I honestly wrestled with the decision for months whether to take this training. 

Erika was understanding about the cost, and made sure I knew about every opportunity to get discounted tuition (mostly by registering by a certain date). Once there, I was pleasantly surprised by how much was included in that cost - I wanted for nothing during the training. And the weekend off in the middle allowed me to return home to see my family for a couple days. 

Old-school marketing like a sidewalk sandwich sign was the best ROI, but I also distributed flyers and postcards. I gave a few self-hypnosis classes, which went well. I had booths at local fairs and conventions. And online advertising like Google and Facebook.

Within a couple months, I had outgrown my first location - I needed more space and time - and opened a full-time office elsewhere. 

I knew what to do and how to do it, what to say and how to say it, and what the next steps were. I felt proficient and prepared, knowledgeable and ready for the work. I was more prepared to be a hypnotist by your training then I have ever been prepared to do any job elsewhere in my life - including after four years of graduate studies in my previous field. 

I am doing something that I absolutely love to do, helping people be better people, and I’m doing it well and efficiently. I am honestly thrilled with this life course that your training helped set me on. 

Client came to see me to stop smoking. She had been a smoker for more than 20 years and was embarrassed because she is a school teacher and felt as though she was a hypocrite; teaching students to be healthy, but not following her own advice. She had to sneak out of the classroom and hide on the school grounds in order to smoke and her thoughts were completely focused on how to arrange her day so that she would not be caught smoking. She also realized that for someone her age (mid 30s), she could barely breathe and sounded like an "old person with a lot of problems".

She decided to try hypnosis and contacted a few local hypnotists, but did not care for "their demeanor". She was willing to drive to Bellingham to see me because she enjoyed the way I responded to her on the phone during the initial consultation. She remarked that "this would be easy and fun".

Every time I have a smoking client who reports back to me that they’ve quit, my heart leaps in my chest. 

I had a client that came to me for habitual lying, which was taking a toll on his relationship. He didn’t even realize he was telling white lies, it was so habitual.

Through hypnosis, we uncovered deep insecurities about making and keeping close friends, and pleasing family. In hypnosis, we were able to address those insecurities, bring understanding to those experiences, and my client easily committed to not saying a single falsehood (at any degree, with anyone) for an entire year. I just reconnected with him, and he did it. And his relationship hasn’t been better. 

It is profoundly gratifying and fulfilling. This is the kind of work that I’ve always wanted to do, but in every previous career I’ve had I’ve never quite known how great an impact I’ve had.

But with hypnosis, I see it every session, every day, and I can see the arc of transformation over the series of sessions.

Whenever someone new comes to my office, I am able to speak with clarity and genuine conviction that I can help them, that they will be able to achieve their goals, that they will feel profoundly different and at the same time so naturally themselves. Just being able to share that confidence with people - without feeling like I’m “selling” them or faking it - is a big part of why I do this work.