Getting To The Core

By Chez Valenti

GETTING TO THE CORE

So many of us are locked in repeating patterns of self-defeating behaviours. Maybe we have even succeeded in breaking free for a while, but we always find ourselves slipping back into the loop.
In his engaging style, renowned hypnotherapist Chez Valenti shares with us the dramatic case histories which led him to discover how these patterns are caused by the unresolved trauma of past experiences — even from past-life personae still very present in our subconscious.
More importantly, he shows how by “Getting to the Core” of our subconscious beliefs and issues, we have the power to move from pain and anger to understanding and forgiveness; from self-recrimination to self-esteem. And we can find the inner strength to free ourselves from the bonds of our own creation — forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chez Valenti is a hypnotherapist in private practice in Sandton, South Africa. He is a certified practitioner, registered with the South African Institute of Hypnosis and a member of the International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Association (USA).

www.chezvalenti.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chez Valenti
• Release date: Mar 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9780620712798

Book preview

Getting to the Core

Healing the past, freeing the future

Chez Valenti

Getting to the Core

Healing the past, freeing the future

Chez Valenti

Copyright © 2017 Chez Valenti

First edition 2017

Published by Chez Valenti Publishing at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Author using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Printed and bound by Novus Print Solutions

Edited by Lorna King for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to my editor, Warren Scott, whose expertise and writing skills have been invaluable. He was able to truly grasp the essence of my message and help me crystallise my thoughts in words.

I would also like to thank all the staff at Reach Publishers. Your professionalism and hard work in preparing this book for publication and distribution is much appreciated.

Thank you also to my loving family and friends who have been there for me throughout this journey. Especially, I want to thank my wife Vanessa for her support at all times, and particularly for her encouragement in writing this book.

Last but not least, to all of my clients. We have learned many lessons together and explored many worlds. You have all been stepping stones in the creation of this book.

A Note to the Reader

As a therapist, I am totally committed to maintaining the confidentiality of my clients. Although the people mentioned in this book have given permission to have their stories told, I have nonetheless thoroughly disguised their names and identifying details. Therefore, no identification with actual persons is intended or should be inferred.

I also want to clarify at the outset that although I am a certified hypnotherapist, I make no claim to be a medical doctor or psychotherapist.

Contents

Acknowledgements

A Note to the Reader

Chapter 1. The Core

Chapter 2. The Core of Courage

Chapter 3. The Core of Self-esteem

Chapter 4. The Core of Confidence

Chapter 5. The Core of Healing

Chapter 6. The Core of Mind/body

Chapter 7. The Core of Forgiveness

Chapter 8. The Core of Power

Chapter 9. The Core of Inner Child

Chapter 10. The Core of Wisdom

Chapter 11. The Core of Relationship

Chapter 12. Getting to Your Core

Chapter 13. Ripples on the Pond

About the Author

Chapter 1

The Core

If a stone is thrown into a pond, it creates ripples. Let us not focus on trying to calm the ripples, but on finding out what the stone is. As you remove the stone, the ripples will disappear forever

Chez Valenti

Have you ever seen someone toss a stone into a calm pond and watched the ripples swim away?

It’s amazing how far the ripples can travel – so far that a person standing on the other side of the pond won’t be able to see where they came from, especially as the stone will have long disappeared beneath the surface. But you can understand the core reason for the ripples because you have seen the stone disturb the surface as it fell.

People often only come to see me after they have tried all sorts of therapies – even medical intervention. Although these methodologies certainly have their place, so often they can only help in calming the agitated ripples on the surface of the person’s life. But the ripples are still there. Only when a person is able to see with his own inner eye the stone hitting the surface and sinking into their subconscious mind, can he begin to deal with the core.

Ever since I can remember, I have been a fascinated observer of the patterns in human behaviour. It always intrigued me that some people seemed so carefree and happy while others were senselessly repeating the same negative patterns. These often were intelligent people, but somehow could not see that they were stuck in a rut of their own patterns.

All this was swirling around in my mind, but it took a personal issue to crystallise everything and push me to make the quantum leap into my present path. Sometimes the Universe sends you messages in peculiar ways. My message had to do with a phobia I just couldn’t shake off.

Everyone has little phobias of some sort. Who knows – perhaps even Superman lays awake at night thinking about green kryptonite! But my phobia was really not a joke because it interfered with my life in many ways. I had a massive phobia of hospitals which I could not figure out and which tormented me for as long as I could remember. It was so extreme that if I visited people in hospital, I literally ended up in the bed next to them. I remember visiting my father after an operation, thinking that I could psych myself up by giving myself positive affirmations and being in the moment, only to find myself being resuscitated by a nurse on the floor of the lift!

I carried the problem throughout my childhood, and it provided me with a good share of really awkward moments as a teenager. When it became clear I wasn’t simply going to outgrow it, my friends and family suggested various therapies which reportedly helped others, but unfortunately only made me even more despondent. I was a 28-year-old adult, competent in so many ways, yet unable to get beyond this humiliating nonsense.

Then, the love of my life, my wife-to-be Vanessa, turned my life around with her wisdom. She helped me understand that sooner, rather than later, I would have to confront the dreaded beast. What would happen if we were blessed with children? Would I miss out on being at my wife’s side and experiencing the exhilaration of embracing our baby as he came into the world? That was the clincher.

I sought out doctors and therapists of all descriptions, and there were times when I felt I had slain the beast. In fact, some of their methods worked for a while, but only superficially. I am grateful to this day that I was exposed to some wonderfully insightful people during that time. I learned a great deal from them which I later incorporated into my practice. Unfortunately my own phobia did not yield to these strategies.

Right around that time, a friend of mine suggested Regression Therapy under hypnosis, which had helped her resolve a deep-seated issue that had been troubling her for a long time. I was intrigued, but resistant. I’m not what you might call an alternative type by nature, and also, my Italian Catholic background inclined me to be sceptical and conservative about alternative therapies. But Vanessa’s wise words were still ringing in my ears, and I finally plucked up the courage to give it a try.

I am grateful to this day that my steps were guided to the right person, an amazing individual who specialised in Regression Therapy. To my surprise, sceptical me proved to be very susceptible to hypnosis, and already in the first session we were regressing back to my childhood and exploring and understanding the roots of my issue.

This is what I discovered.

I regressed back to when I was a happy two-year-old. I was running around the house, and suddenly I fell, severely damaging my nose. My parents, of course, rushed me to the local hospital, where the doctors wheeled me – screaming and shouting – into the emergency room. My hysteria was intensified by them having to send my mom and dad out of the room.

In that first session I relived the trauma of the severe pain and the desperation of being held down with force as they tried to stop the bleeding by shoving cotton wool up my nose. I remember feeling dizzy and eventually waking up after apparently fainting on the bed. I don’t want to judge, but I think doctors nowadays are a little more sensitive than they were in the 70s.

As I was brought out of that first hypnosis session, the mystery of my phobia disappeared in a vapour. Plainly, it was this traumatic experience – suppressed for so many years within my subconscious mind – which was still plaguing me at the age of 28. I suddenly understood that it was my two-year-old self, still very much present in my persona, who was reliving the trauma my conscious mind refused to remember.

In just a few sessions we identified the root cause of the issue and were able to completely shift the phobia to the point where I helped deliver both my children. Ironically, for more than 10 years my rooms have been in a medical centre, but before my change, I would never have made it through the front door without passing out.

But that life-changing experience, amazing as it was, was only the beginning of a chain of events that compelled me to study psychology at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and also to enrol with the South African Institute of Hypnosis.

Overall my studies were very broad, and at the time I was a little impatient with having to master so many subjects and techniques when I was attracted so powerfully to Regression Therapy because of my own personal experience. But they say an artist has to study the Old Masters before he can strike out on his own. Looking back, I am actually grateful for the solid background I received from these wonderful institutions, and I can honestly say I have been able to integrate a great deal of the insights, techniques and perspectives of my formal education into my own synthesis.

After finishing at the Institute, I immediately opened a practice. Understandably, when I started practising hypnotherapy, I engaged in some of the textbook treatments people expect: Weight loss, nail biting, sleep problems. This was what I was trained for and what clients were asking me to deal with. I believe I did a good job and was appreciated by my clients.

However, I knew that the way I was going about it was not much more than a band-aid. Statistics and my own intuition taught me that the strategies I carried in my tool box only engaged a narrow bandwidth of personality and behaviour, and it would not be long before the people would revert back to their deep-seated patterns.

An analogy began to form in my mind. I had read about the futile efforts of mankind to tame the great rivers and divert them from their paths. With all of the genius of modern engineering, after a time the river would force its way out of its chains and reclaim its ancient path. This powerful analogy haunted me. I began searching for strategies that would deepen the effects of my therapy and make them more enduring.

I had explored Regression Therapy as much as I could, but it was only part of my syllabus at the Institute. Yet, at that point, I didn’t have the background and experience to connect the dots and see how to implement it effectively with my clients. Like everyone else, I had also read Dr Brian Weiss’ Many Lives Many Masters with my mouth gaping open in amazement. But there was very little in the way of practical guidance available in this nascent branch. I had to proceed with caution until I was able to build up a library of strategies drawn from my own experience, from networking, and every resource I could muster.

I was also cautious because of the influence of my psychologist friends. Many of them worried that dredging up past traumas could easily be distressing in itself and ultimately harmful to the client. The belief was: Why open up cans of worms from the past?

You may be surprised when I tell you that I respect this concern even today. Unless someone has invested time and training in developing strategies to deal with the material once it has surfaced, he should rather steer clear of engaging with it. It is a form of therapy that not only took me quite some time to master, but must also be utilised with intelligence and caution. Don’t try this at home!

As time went on I realised I was uncomfortable with being labelled as only a hypnotherapist. Although hypnosis remained a major tool in my evolving approach, I have developed, adapted, and refined strategies of my own that have worked with startling effect.

I have become so passionate about helping people get to the core that I very rarely engage in other hypnosis applications. Recently I received a call from a woman who had lost some jewellery and needed someone to hypnotise her to help her remember where she had misplaced it. I appreciated her predicament and commiserated with her for a couple of minutes. But then I quickly referred her to someone that could assist.

In another profound way, I found myself veering away from conventional mainstream therapies. In so many of these approaches, a person is told to accept the past as unchangeable and rather to focus on the present and future. This approach definitely has its place. A person can wallow in