Guy Spiro: Linda, please tell us how your good work around Chicago evolved; how did you come to be who you are?

Linda Williamson: About ten years ago, I got interested in hypnosis again, after having a long real estate management career. I retired from that and decided that I wanted to help people with the life skills that I had learned, primarily through my own self healings that I had needed for myself. My husband saw an ad that a hypnotist was needed. I wasn’t certified at the time but I replied to the ad and they helped me get certification.

GS: You had studied hypnosis earlier in life and not gone on with it?

LW: Right, I had learned about it in my Master’s training at Western Illinois University. The psychology program offered some self-hypnosis courses. That was unique at that time. I didn’t know how unique it was, it was just the program I was in. I took the courses, enjoyed them, and used them right away in my life. I had profound experiences, helping myself with all sorts of body related problems and health issues.

GS: What healings did you do on yourself?

LW: At the time, I was getting the herpes 2 virus, where you get the cold sores, and I used to get them bad, not just around my mouth, but they would go up into my nose and eyes. It was from stress. As I learned self hypnosis, I was able to relieve that. I used it for studying, for exams and things like that. I was involved in a bad car accident, and as they were trying to put me back together, there was a series of operations and they found they had mistakenly addicted me to morphine.

GS: That was pretty common back then.

LW: Yes, it was. Morphine was the only general anesthetic that there was. They told me that they were not able to proceed with the operations on my hands because all they could give me was a local anesthetic. They said they were probably going to have to remove my hand, which was really not an option for me.

GS: No, I won’t be signing up for that either.

LW: It was terrifying. But I remembered from my self-hypnosis courses that it was most effective for pain. I asked the doctor if I could try to use the self-hypnosis, and he said it was the only option I had. In the ’70s, it was still approved for pain management. In the ’80s, it got removed from the AMA’s approved techniques, after having been approved since 1958. They let me go for it and I was able to use the self-hypnosis that I had learned, with the help of a nurse there, to get myself through the operations that I needed. They gave me the local anesthetic, but the rest of it I had to do with the self-hypnosis. It was powerful and scary at a young age, but I learned to use my mind to get what I wanted.

     I went into research psychology, and then went into the business world once I graduated, with my hands fully intact. I continued to use hypnosis with myself and family, and when I retired from my business life at 45, I got certified and never looked back. I help people to use it for real issues in their life. I see myself as an inspiration and a catalyst to help them realize how powerful their mind really is.

GS: What are some of the typical uses that you put it to?

LW: I work on the regular habitual things, weight loss, stop smoking. All of these things are the same as with my herpes 2, which is stress, it just manifests in different ways. I’m always working on better management of a client’s stress or negativity and how they’re reacting to things. People come looking for relief from chronic pain. They’ve been told by their doctor that there’s nothing that the medical field can offer them, which was similar to my situation with my hands.

GS: People sometimes get to a fairly desperate place before they’re willing to try seemingly alternative things.

LW: Talking with them on the phone, I identify their desire, their level of desire. You have to be willing to focus a lot. It can’t be a once a week or even a once a day thing. It needs to be incorporated into your life. It can eventually not have to be an absolute focus every single day, but that’s over time. In the beginning you have to be focused on it to get what you want.

GS: Are you primarily teaching self-hypnosis or are you hypnotizing people to the ends that they’re seeking?

LW: Both. I begin hypnotizing them, but my goal is for them to be able to take care of themselves on their own through self-hypnosis.

GS: So it’s empowering.

LW: Yes. I’ve proved it in my own life. I love all this opening up of the law of attraction information in these times. In hypnosis, we call the law of attraction the laws of the mind. Everything you hear about in the laws of attraction, hypnotists have known as laws of the mind. So, great, we have another way of explaining this to people.

GS: It’s all never really been a secret.

LW: Right. People just haven’t been aware of it. Mass consciousness is at such a place now that more and more people are wanting these alternative ways to control, not just their health, but their lives. Look at the economy, the reason it’s going the way it’s going. And what’s a more important issue right now than money, when we’ve got to have it, almost like we have to have air, is to bring us to a new level of consciousness. We’ve got to figure out how we control our financial life, our abundance.

     I’m a firm believer that for anything you are really seeking, your mind has ways to help you with that. You have to find an approach that is positive and that feels better. As you feel better, you are creating that more positive chemistry. With that more positive chemistry, you not only have better ability with your body, better health, better stamina, better energy, but also you have better clarity and focus with your mind.

     Those are the kinds of skills that I’m offering when people meet with me privately. I teach courses as well, for those that aren’t seeking the personal, one on one work. It’s the law of mind that like attracts like. Those who study hypnosis are studying how the mind functions. Whatever you are focused on, and giving attention to, becomes your mind’s goal. It attracts more of it. So when you are focused on your health and well-being and your strong immune system, or prosperity or any other good thing, it offers to your mind a goal.

GS: All too often, people are dwelling on their fears and negativities, misusing the mind in that way. It’s true that worrying is praying for what you don’t want.

LW: Getting our mind to focus in a new way, rather than on the negativity and fear, is the answer. I just taught a class and someone brought a question about worry. He had so much in his life to worry about and he couldn’t come up with an answer. I explained the technique that was offered through Willis Carrier, who was the brilliant engineer who came up with air conditioning and founded the Carrier Company. As he was developing his work, he was spending much of his time in worry. Then he had something really terrible happen to him and he got very worried and he knew he was making himself sick with worry. He came up with a technique to help keep his mind from just looking at all the negatives and festering on those. It is a simple three step technique. The first step is to think of the worst thing that could happen. You might think that’s negative, but as you’re choosing one thing, then you’re not focusing on all of the other what-ifs. The second step is you reconcile yourself that it really could happen. The third step is, what am I going to do, how can I plan to get myself out of it. Now you’ve switched to the positive.

     I read the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale when I was twelve years old. My mother had his material around our home and I was the only one who paid any attention to it. As a twelve year old, it didn’t appear religious to me. I took it as if you do this, you’re going to get that. I enjoyed it, used it right away, and I learned that I was getting what I wanted in my life at the young age of twelve. That was instrumental to me. In addition to Norman Vincent Peale, I love the work of Martin Seligman, Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay, the Abraham-Hicks material, and Candace Pert, she’s a neuro-scientist who came to a spiritual answer. I present her work, and that’s what I’m presenting at the Mid-America Hypnosis Conference. I combine their different works and take their most left-brain techniques and step by step processes, and use them in my own life. Then I offer them to others.

GS: You teach in a variety of contexts.

LW: I offer the certification course for hypnotherapy out of the Garrett Wellness Center in Chicago, and I teach through continuing education in Districts 211 and 214, and hold my own classes called Interactive Discourses in Palatine, Illinois. The hypnotherapy certification will begin this fall in September. Then I’m also speaking at the Mid-America Hypnosis Conference in October. My presentation is “Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind.” It’s about me helping myself work through another diagnosis I received, Parkinsons Disease. I went from not being insurable at all to be completely insured last October. Over these years of helping myself and finding my wellness again, the work of Candace Pert most closely matches how I did it. I used my own visualizations every day for a period of about twenty minutes over a period of ninety days, and in that time I was able to create the same thing that Candace Pert says we have to do neurologically in order to have that kind of a change. In my presentation, I share all of the details to that.

GS: This conference is mainly for people involved in hypnosis?

LW: It’s open to the public. People can sign up for the different one hour sections that are marked for the general public. Anyone who focuses their mind consistently and knows how their mind is working can use these skills to make major changes in their life.

GS: I come at it in a seemingly different way, but it’s all the same thing, I think of it as spiritual technology. Earlier you were talking about Norman Vincent Peale. Some people might find him to be too religious, but when, in these times, we more or less rightly reject religion, we should not reject the spiritual technology that it formed around. I found it interesting how you described, at twelve, being introduced to this and getting it. You got it and you kept on using it. Similarly, I learned to meditate from a comic book when I was ten. That’s a big part of how I came be who I am. There’s an interesting similarity there.

LW: I would like to mention how much I’ve enjoyed participating in The Monthly Aspectarian. It’s read by a wide variety of people. People see me many, many places. I’m offering this information anywhere people will sit and listen, and they recognize me from my ad and that is priceless. They feel like they already know me because they see it consistently. I would like to have this included in the interview, that I really appreciate and I feel like I have, through the help of the magazine, had an opportunity to reach people that are like minded and want this kind of information and ideas in their life.

GS: Well, thank you. You’ve done it the right way. You came in for the long haul and stuck with it a long enough time to bear that kind of fruit. We’re talking Advertising 101 here, but it’s the truth, people need to see you month after month, year after year.

LW: I believed you. You helped me to understand that you need to build a presence and The Monthly Aspectarian offers that to those like me who are seeking others who like to talk about this kind of stuff. Within a year, people were saying, you look familiar, and we’d figure out that it was from the ads. But now, they feel like they know me. I know you, you advertise in The Monthly Aspectarian and you do the hypnosis. It is a pre-introduction. Or they notice my flier or information somewhere else and they’ll connect the flier to the magazine. It reaches out in so many ways. It’s out there, and we are in the Universe, and it’s another way to connect with people. I appreciate that it’s there. There’s a lot involved and you come up to the plate every time.

GS: I often say, for the lucky ones, and you and I are among the lucky ones, our careers are really just being who we are.

LW: I love that. I just want to share what I know.

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