QHHT - Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique

I can’t sleep.

This is the new norm. Lying awake, mind racing, as the clock ticks closer to morning and I wonder how many times I can count to one hundred before I’ll finally drift off.

It’s a few weeks before my QHHT session, but the work is already in full swing. My psyche is busy clearing debris in preparation for the big day, and I’m glad. I’m also tired. Every night my mind flips through scenes from my past until I’m either sick of looking at them or I finally realize I don’t need to carry the anger, guilt, or shame from things I did when I was young and dumb and didn’t know any better. Particularly “fun” was the night of the exes, when I was visited by all the boyfriends I had wronged over the years—and there were many—until I concluded that I’m almost forty and don’t need to feel guilty for things I did when I was fifteen and not fond of commitment.

Many, many childish and bothersome issues have been falling by the wayside.

I had been reading Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life when I went to a workshop on Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT). At the workshop, Matt Schmidt, a QHHT practitioner, went through the different parts of the body and what it means when they experience pain or dis-ease. It corresponded perfectly with what I was reading in You Can Heal Your Life. The idea that the location of pain/illness in the body is linked to specific mental and emotional conditions was not new to me. The fact that it was coming up in both the workshop and the book I read on the way there seemed like a neon sign begging me to pay attention.

I have the chiari malformation in my brain to thank for my jump down the rabbit hole of healing. Over the years I’ve tried it all: reiki, shamanic healings, meditation, cleanses, more meditation, yoga, singing bowl therapy, sound/frequency therapy, and purging fire ceremonies. I’ve watched documentaries, read books, and completed a plethora of online classes. I’ve traveled to another continent and spent weeks in a spiritual sanctuary, visiting sacred cleansing waterfalls, taking crystal baths, and placing my healing in the hands of a higher power. More recently, for another kind of healing, I turned to the hallucinogen/psychedelic Ketamine.

Nothing has been as intense, as physically jarring, or as emotionally obliterating as QHHT.

The strange (or maybe not-so-strange) thing I’ve learned from my attempts to “heal” the chiari is that every time I enter a new healing venture, the chiari is the last thing to come up. It’s basically an afterthought. Why?

The chiari isn’t the problem.

We’re sick in the head (or heart) before we’re sick in the body. (I might’ve stolen that—or something like it—from someone else. It certainly isn’t my wisdom). The chiari and all its misery isn’t the source of my pain, it’s simply the outlet by which my inner pain chooses to express itself.

Enter QHHT.

Close your eyes

Imagine holding a ball in your hands. Any kind of ball. What does it look like?

It’s a…ball of yarn.

Move it back and forth between your hands. What is it doing?

Unravelling.

I arrive for my session on a brisk, February morning full of snow and sunshine, box of tissues tucked under my arm, ready to work. Matt greets me like an old friend. He reminds me of one of my brothers so it’s easy to trust him. I expect to work hard today. I am prepared to go deep.

I was unprepared for how fast the tears would flow, or the actual physical pain and discomfort (discomfort makes it sound like I had a rock in my shoe, or something. In truth, my head felt like it was about to split open and I almost threw up) during the almost five hours we spent traversing the tumultuous waters of my subconscious. From a hypnotic state, with Matt as my ever patient, ever intuitive guide, I entered the dark corners of my mind with a floodlight. Some of the creatures hiding in the shadows were familiar. Others made me openly sob for how awful and sickening they were, and how long I’ve been carrying them around.  

The chiari, as in the past, was not the focus of the session. When it came up a few hours into the hypnosis, I laughed. The answer to the chiari mystery was funny and ridiculous because I felt silly saying it out loud. While I have come to see the chiari as my barometer that tells me when I’ve gone off-track to help me course-correct, it’s actually more of a compass nudging me (sometimes violently) to my true North, a gift from a higher power that saw fit to make the back of my brain just a little too small for everything to fit so I would always have a channel by which They could reach me. Instead of figuring out how to rid myself of the affliction (one of the uses of QHHT is to get to the emotional root of your physical ailments, pull them out, and go forward dis-ease free), I decided to keep it. Not that I needed to live in chronic pain, but that I could accept it for what it was—my compass, my gift—and let it guide me to live the life I was meant to live.

I left the session feeling stripped bare and raw and utterly exhausted, my head still throbbing down into my jaw, and wobbly and wide-eyed as new fawn. It’s not an exaggeration to say it was like being reborn, reentering the world with a slate that’s been scrubbed clean and ready for a fresh take on the world.

The work continues. The monsters I found clinging to life in the darkest corners of my brain are on full display now. A few taunt me because they are strong (and they know it) but I am more than they give me credit for, and it’s my choice who runs the show.