Not just on Earth for Excel documents
Some insights don’t take hours to sink in. Sometimes three minutes are enough. Paul Vossen had worked in IT for about 27 years when he underwent a hypnosis session himself.
Soon, he uttered a sentence that would open a new chapter in his life: “I didn’t come to this earth just to create Excel documents.” After the session, he knew he wanted to make a change.
He began looking for a training program to become a holistic therapist and delved deeper and deeper into personal development. The rational world in which he had worked for years slowly gave way to a world in which feelings, intuition, and the unconscious also played an important role.
“I wanted to be able to feel that I was alive, rather than just being able to reason it out.” For Paul, hypnosis thus became much more than a therapeutic technique. It became a gateway to a different way of life.
His sister’s stories were like fireworks
The first hypnosis session got Paul started, but it was his sister who ultimately introduced him to the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands. She had already begun the Hypnosis Principles 1.0 course and told him about her experiences during the lessons.
Paul was pursuing his holistic training at the time, but noticed that his sister’s stories awakened something different within him. “What she told me was truly mind-blowing,” he says.
The changes he saw in people and the power of the demonstrations piqued his curiosity. He wanted to learn more about this. That’s why, about four years ago, he began the Hypno Principles 1.0 program himself.
Although he was initially unsure of his own abilities, he noticed during the exercises that people were indeed responding to him. “My mind might have told me I wasn’t good enough at all, but reality showed that something was happening after all.” That gave him enough confidence to move right on to Hypno Pathfinder 2.0 after completing 1.0.
Exciting exercises and spectacular demonstrations
Since Paul took his first courses during the COVID-19 pandemic, the lessons and practice sessions took place largely online. That didn’t make the transition to actual therapeutic work any less exciting.
Especially at first, practicing felt like quite a challenge. Still, his curiosity outweighed his uncertainty. “I found practicing very exciting at first, but it was also incredibly educational.”
What he particularly enjoyed about the courses were the demonstrations. There, he saw time and again how quickly and deeply hypnosis can set things in motion.
For Paul, it sometimes felt almost like magic. “The demos were always spectacular, right up to version 3.0.”
As he practiced more, his anxiety subsided . He learned to trust the process, his client, and, ultimately, himself more and more. The training not only provided him with techniques but also allowed him to experience that he could truly make a difference in others’ lives.
Starting a practice together
After completing the 1.0 course, Paul didn’t wait years until he felt he was“good enough.”Together with his sister, he started a practice almost immediately. She had already completed the 1.0 course and was working on the 2.0, which allowed them to practice together, share experiences, and guide clients.
“I actually started right after completing the 1.0 course,” Paul explains. In addition to hypnotherapy, they had both completed Reiki training, which allowed them to offer this form of treatment as well. For Paul, hypnotherapy was the most concrete method among everything he learned.
The holistic training program took longer and covered multiple topics, but at the HIN, he learned techniques he could put to use right away. “The hypnotherapy training was the most practical, so we were both able to get started immediately.”
Later, Paul further expanded his own services to include massage and breathwork. This led to the creation of a practice in which not only the mind but also the body played an important role.
To the place where it is truly felt
From his practice in Hoofddorp, Paul worked with a wide variety of clients. Yet he noticed that certain issues came up more frequently. Because of his own experiences with fear of death and panic attacks, he felt a connection with people struggling with similar issues.
He also regularly saw clients with experiences related to sexual abuse, rape, or incest. These are issues that affect him deeply, partly because sexual abuse has also occurred in his own family. “People with a fear of death and panic attacks definitely come to me.”
It is precisely with such deep-seated issues that he believes it is important not to limit the conversation solely to the rational level. “When people are very caught up in their thoughts, it’s easy to get caught up in that too, but that isn’t helpful for the therapeutic process.”
According to Paul, you can only guide clients into their bodies as far as you yourself dare to go. That is why he sees his own personal development as inseparable from his work as a therapist.
Hypnosis, massage, and breathwork reinforce one another
Not every client feels comfortable with hypnosis right away. Some people find it nerve-wracking, while others are so caught up in their thoughts that it’s difficult for them to let go and surrender to the process.
In such cases, Paul may choose to use breathwork or massage. Sometimes he even combines multiple forms of treatment within a single course of therapy. “Hypnotherapy, breathwork, and massage can reinforce each other very well.”
Through hypnosis, something from the past can be accessed and brought into consciousness. Paul noticed, however, that the associated tension can still linger in the body afterward. Breathing exercises can help release that tension.
“With hypnotherapy, you touch on something, but energetically, it may still be present in the body.”
Special conversations and unexpected moments also regularly arise during massages. In his role as a massage therapist, Paul can sometimes share a little more of himself, creating a connection of equals and allowing clients to open up in a different way.
The Hypno Pathfinder 3.0 brought both deeper insight and confusion
After completing versions 1.0 and 2.0, Paul waited a few years before starting the Hypno Pathfinder 3.0. One practical reason was that, after completing this training, he might be eligible for reimbursement from health insurance providers. In the end, he didn’t pursue that, but the 3.0 program proved to be much more valuable in another way.
“Once I got started, I realized that as a therapist, I still had quite a bit of room for improvement.” Paul completed part of the training online because he was simultaneously enrolled in an intensive one-year program on ancestral work.
Still, he also attended several in-person modules. He found the feedback on recorded sessions particularly instructive. That feedback initially threw the participants off balance. “After the first round, everyone thought: ‘Are we really incapable of doing anything at all?’” It was precisely that confusion that revealed where there was still room for growth.
Among other things, Paul discovered that he should pay more attention to the initial consultation—an aspect of his therapeutic work that had been somewhat neglected until then.
An exam his ego wanted to run away from
The training may have been fascinating, but the exams were certainly no walk in the park for Paul. For the Level 3.0 exam, he had to take his first in-person exam. The night before, the pressure became so intense that he was already mentally preparing to cancel. “My ego said to me that night: I’m just not going to do it.”
He had even already thought of the text he would send to cancel. After falling asleep anyway, he got up the next morning and, almost without thinking, went to the exam after all.
“I really hated it, but I did get through it.” That very moment shows what the courses have done for him. Anxiety doesn’t have to disappear completely before you take a step. You can acknowledge the fear, explore where it comes from, and then decide that you are now more than just the fearful part of yourself that wants nothing more than to run away.
The Subconscious as a Faster Form of Knowledge
The training program teaches that the subconscious is genius. Paul has experienced what that means. According to him, when you learn to get closer to the subconscious, a form of knowing emerges that works much faster than a thorough rational analysis. “If you can tap into the subconscious, you, too, become a little bit of a genius.”
That doesn’t mean the mind no longer has any function at all. It mainly means that you don’t have to reduce every choice to arguments, calculations, and lists of pros and cons. “That sense of feeling and knowing happens much faster than when you first try to do a cost-benefit analysis.”
During his therapeutic sessions, Paul learned to trust those signals more and more. Sometimes this led to a simple memory from his current life, but sometimes it also led to experiences that are difficult to explain rationally, such as a regression in which a client found herself reliving an experience involving her own mother.
Everything you do is also about yourself
Paul began his therapeutic journey with the idea that he hadn’t come to Earth just to work with Excel files. Now, he’s looking even deeper. He believes more and more strongly that helping others is also connected to your own personal growth.
“Actually, everything you do is also about your own growth.” His work with clients, his additional training, the Hypno Pathfinder 3.0, his experiences with trading, and even a forced break after the snake bite keep bringing him back to the same question: Why do I do what I do?
For Paul, there doesn’t need to be a definitive answer to that right away. “The question ‘What am I actually doing this for?’ has given me a new perspective on my practice.”
Perhaps his work will take on a different form. But the journey that once began on a couch remains the same: moving away from mere thinking and ever closer to truly feeling.
More information about Paul and his work can be found at vrijuitzijn.nl.
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