“Hi, I’m clinical hypnotherapist
Stephanie Voss.”
I’m delighted to help you make up your mind. Schedule a call and I’ll answer any questions. You deserve to feel comfortable with someone you’re inviting into your head.
Hypnosis changed my life.
I may be the last person anyone would have ever imagined becoming a hypnotherapist. My first careers were as a newspaper reporter and licensed private investigator. Basically, I was a professional skeptic.
Then, a San Francisco investigator I was working for who ran the business out of his home, decided he didn’t want operatives smoking on the premises. So he sent us to a hypnotist for smoking cessation.
What a trip! After our single session, I quit for some time.
Years later, I was working in Los Angeles as a union stagehand doing lighting, props, and sets for television and live events. I was working hard, but irregular sleep and too many doughnuts soon had me seeking hypnotherapy for weight loss. Again, it helped.
My experience with hypnosis inspired me to change careers.
I realized that much as I loved the sweaty glamour of technical theater, I missed connecting with people. And the same skills that had made me successful in previous jobs would apply to hypnotherapy, especially listening in a way that invites people to open up about their lives.
So, I started training. I did several base-level courses, because I knew that I’d need more than one technique.
I stopped smoking again – this time permanently – while at The Hypnosis Academy of America in Santa Fe. My life-long digestive problems mostly disappeared after a special training in hypnosis for IBS. And I applied what I learned about relaxation and hypno-anesthesia as a Hypnobabies Childbirth Hypnosis instructor to my jaw-clenching TMJ issues.
Then I went on to study mindfulness, medical hypnosis, NLP, and more. I continue to learn and be delighted by advances in neuroscience, mind-body therapies, and virtual reality.
I’m still not particularly “woo-woo” and work from evidence-based techniques. The changes I and my clients experience, along with the science, inspire me.
I have a life outside of work.
When I’m not getting carried away with enthusiasm about the power of the mind, I enjoy kayaking, cooking, reading and theater.
Oh, and I also love making things for cats Nick and Nora, who allow us to serve them. They joined the household in 2022, after a hypnosis mentor helped me overcome a cat allergy. (Drats! back to that enthusiasm again!)
Qualifications & Training (Highlights)
- Member, International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Association
- Smoking Cessation Specialist, Northern California Hypnosis Academy (Ken Guzzo)
- Founding member, The Addiction Project (Wendi Friesen)
- Co-creator and Instructor, Mind-Body Pain Management Techniques CEU Training for Nurses, 2017, Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena, CA (Pierre-Etienne Vannier)
- 5-PATH & & 7th PATH Certified Practitioner, Banyan Institute, 2010.
- Hypnobabies Certified Hypnosis Instructor (HCHI) #137, 2009.
- Medical Hypnotherapist, (Seth-Deborah Roth) Oakland, CA, 2009.
- Certified Hypnotherapist #108-153, American Council of Hypnotist Examiners,
from the Hypnotherapy Academy of America, Santa Fe, NM, 2007. - IBS Hypnotherapy Certificate, 2007, Alabama Hypnotherapy Center.
- Ericksonian Hypnotherapy Certificate, April 2007, Dr. Eleanor Field
- Certified Hypnotist, March 2007, Hypnosis Motivation Institute, Tarzana, CA
- Medical Hypnotherapy Specialist, 2007, American Board of Hypnotherapy ( Melissa Roth & Paul Durbin)