More than meets the PENDULUM
- bey0ndM@gz!ne
- April 12, 2021
- Trending
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Meet Sonia Samtani, founder of All About You Wellness Centre, and one of Hong Kong’s most popular hypnotherapists. Having practiced for 15 years, Samtani shares the transformative nature of hypnotherapy when leveraged as a tool to heal, address their past and grow.
What inspired you to begin working in your field as a life coach, trainer and clinical hypnotherapist?
Like many other people in the wellness field, my personal journey was my biggest inspiration. As a shy young girl, I thought the route to my happiness would be to change my behaviour and people’s perceptions of me. While that did make a difference, it was a temporary fix and didn’t generate that deep innerconfidence that I’d hoped for. I then realized very early on that no amount of changing of the outside would suffice, and the biggest source of my dissatisfactions were my own belief systems. I began my inner shift by reading books on how the mind works and attended courses on personal development. This led me to the opportunity of working for the world’s most famous life coach, Tony Robbins, and finally learning hypnotherapy.
During this time, I took a good look at my personal beliefs and began to shift my self-criticism to self-acceptance, a change which gave me more peace and freedom than I’d ever thought was possible. I began to understand that my contentment was not about changing negative beliefs into positive ones, it was much deeper than that and more about moving out of judgment altogether, and towards being okay with “what is”. I found that hypnotherapy gave me the most profound tools for transformation; I gained an understanding of why I was the way I was, I got the opportunity to release past pain, and the wisdom to create new interpretations that served me. As I was evolving myself, I had people coming to me asking me to practice what I was learning on them, and I saw them going through similar shifts in their self-esteem and healing of past pain. My conviction in this field grew and I knew that this is what I was meant to do. My work grew very organically from the very beginning.
It started with a few sessions for a growing clientele, to opening an institute to train others to be therapists, to then opening up a wellness centre that hosts other therapists. I have now been practicing for 15 years, and have a wellness centre called “All About You” where I host a suite of practitioners who offer private sessions, workshops and training programs.
How has it been being a woman, working in and as an entrepreneur your sector?
I have found that being a woman is an asset to my industry; I have had many clients say that they feel a sense of comfort and safety in sharing with a woman-therapist. It is important that we cultivate a private space for people where they feel safe to go inwards and face their inner-demons. People tend to relate sensitivity and acceptance more as feminine qualities than male qualities, which has worked in my favour (although I am now educating people to understand that both men and women can possess ‘yin’ qualities)!
From a business-owner’s perspective, being a working woman has had its own challenges; breaking away from the conditioning that “men are the providers, and thus their work is more important,” an ideology that most of us pre-millennial Asian women grew up with and believed in. It took some time for me to decondition myself from those viewpoints and create my own value system that works for me and my family.
What’s the most important piece of advice you’d give to a woman thinking of starting a career in hypnotherapy?
As a hypnotherapist, you are the facilitator of consciousness; you support people in moving through their pain towards more acceptance and peace. In order to do this, you don’t have to be perfect, because that doesn’t exist. However, it’s important to maintain the integrity of constantly doing your own inner-work. You are and will always be your own client, and the journey of your own spiritual evolution is ongoing. Keep applying to yourself what you are facilitating for your clients, and watch the magic of this work unfold for all.
You work a great deal with healing your inner child. What does it mean to have an inner child? Why is this so important to heal?
An inner-child is a part of us that is stuck in the pain of the past and hasn’t moved forward. We all have inner-children, because we have all had painful experiences in our past which we haven’t dealt with at the time. Pain is an inevitable part of life. If we can allow ourselves to go through pain with awareness, and actually feel those uncomfortable emotions, then the experience is complete and we are not stuck. However most of us don’t like to feel sad, angry, hurt or scared, so we develop coping mechanisms to suppress these feelings; in turn this suppressed part can remain stuck in our system for years and eventually be the cause of disease. The name we give to that stuck part is the ‘inner-child’, and healing it can give us an immense feeling of freedom; space where we can finally move forward with peace, and prevent our bodies from carrying all that emotional toxicity.
What are some of the misconceptions about your role? Tell us about hypnotherapy and what sorts of issues can it target.
The biggest misconception with hypnotherapy is that it is mind-control, and that you are bestowing all your power to a therapist who can “make” you say or do things beyond your control. It is actually nothing like that at all! In fact, hypnotherapy works the same way as meditation. The therapist guides you to focus intently on something, which induces a trance-like state where the body relaxes and you feel like you are day-dreaming. Your conscious mind is aware of what is going on the whole time, while the therapist makes guided suggestions to take you to the root of your issues to help you achieve your therapeutic goals. In the hypnotic state, your brainwaves turn to theta (which naturally happens every night before you sleep), your defences are down, and you are more susceptible to suggestions that in your conscious state you may brush-off.
Hypnotherapy can resolve all issues related to the mind including but not limited to: releasing emotional toxicity, changing habits, dealing with loss, resolving fears and anxiety, healing inexplicable physical pain, enhancing sports performance, gaining clarity, overcoming eating disorders, resolving relationship conflicts, overcoming patterns, knowing your life purpose, and generally becoming more accepting of things.
As a woman, how important is developing a strong mind? And how does one take steps to achieve this?
Mental strength & wellness is the single most important thing that shapes our life. It’s important for both men and women to have strength, but of course we have different challenges to overcome in order to develop this strength. I would like to define the word ‘strong’, which will also reveal what it takes to have mental strength. Mental strength to me is about:
- Doing what you have committed to do, even when you don’t feel like doing it
- Being courageous enough to be vulnerable and say when you don’t know something, or when you are feeling disempowered.
- Having the faith that you have the tools to handle what life brings to you.
Just like we consistently need to go to the gym to build physical strength, we consistently need to work on commitment, courage and faith to build mental strength.
What do you hope to achieve with All About You Wellness Centre?
I would love my center to be a platform that supports mental wellness and spiritual transformation in Hong Kong, and in the world. My intention with All About You is to inspire people to understand that your life really is “All About You”; your thoughts, interpretations, and beliefs which have created your current reality. Life mastery simply requires you to become aware of what you’ve created, and accept all that you have previously judged. Through private sessions, workshops and training programs, I hope to provide a space where people feel safe to reveal their deepest truths, heal their deepest pains, and experience a profound sense of transformation. I am planning to keep expanding with more programs, more practitioners, and more opportunities for people to live more consciously. My vision is to empower individuals with simple, yet powerful tools to navigate through the ups and downs of life with awareness and acceptance, so that they can tune into the magnificence of who they are.
There are a lot of misconceptions about balancing yin and yang, femininity and masculinity, specifically that feminine energy is seen as a weakness. How do you address this perception?
I have a workshop specifically designed on this topic so people can truly understand what yin and yang means. Yin and Yang refer to the polarities of the dual-natured world we are living in; masculine and feminine is only one expression of this duality. Due to judgment and pre conditioning we have a tendency to judge and compare which is better, yin or yang. If we were to stop comparing we would instead be able to see the value of both yin and yang. The point lies in understanding that both yin and yang need other, and that one literally cannot exist without the other. Men need women to exist, and women need men to exist. Light needs darkness to understand what light is. If we look at it in this way, we will stop judging and start understanding how we can utilize the qualities of both the masculine and feminine principals to navigate through life. Every human has both yin & yang energies, and we ultimately need to embrace both parts of us to be in balance.
What are some tips that women can implement in their day-to-day lives to better their state of mind and start to heal their inner child?
Some tips for women to implement could be
- Before sleeping, to review your day and accept what has happened. Releasing emotional charges and sleeping in a state of peace prevents us from accumulating more toxicity in our minds.
- Do something to express your ‘Yin’ energy regularly. The yin is the more creative energy that moves and flows. You could express this through art, dancing, singing, designing, expressing your true feelings, touch, or any other activity that gives you pleasure.
- Adopt a routine of giving & receiving appreciation daily. You don’t even need to involve anyone else in this process, simply tell yourself something you appreciate about you every morning, and appreciate one thing about another person during the day.
