As a psycho-spiritual hypnotherapist of many years, I used to work a lot with people who were sensitive and naïve about energy. While I had the occasional ‘clinical’ straightforward types of sessions with clients in terms of habit resolution, like quitting sugar, most people found me to work with a level of energy we cannot often see, but can certainly feel.

‘Rosemary’, came to see me because she was feeling lack-lustre, her energy dissipated and her head foggy.

What she wanted out of her session with me, was clarity, a sense of direction.

A hypnotherapist has a huge responsibility to not have their own agenda out there, when working with a client. The power of suggestion, especially within a hypnotherapist’s hands, can often result in a heavy-handed and manipulative approach, a situation in which the hypnotherapist holds the power, and the client, none.

So, I never used words like ‘Now, I want you to….’ As that would disrupt their individual focus and bring it back to outside authority.

All I would do, instead, would be to create safety, add protection then open a door and hold up a light for my clients to see their own way, and to walk their own steps.I was simply the tour guide, holding the space for the client herself to delve into her own intuitive processes and recover the jewels single-handedly.

As I work within the fields of soul retrieval, spirit releasement, past life and the new, exciting area of inter-life work – the amazing and much unexplored space between lives – I am always on the lookout for certain other energies to pop up during a session.

Now someone with a ‘low energy state’ as Rosemary had that day, might indicate a wide range of different causes – from depression and illness through to low spirit energy or, in this case, the lodging of an entity within her.

There is a precise process within spirit releasement hypnotherapy that allows me to discover and identify the presence of attached discarnate spirits or entities. Having done this, I dialogue with the spirit, and discover its history and reasons for being there.

Now, when one thinks of ‘entity’, all sorts of dramatic images are conjured up – twisting heads et al. There is a huge difference between working as therapist to a stuck entity rather than a scolding priest brandishing a crucifix.

The truth is, an entity is actually a dark clump of energy that dissipates our own energy. It can often have a persona, with its own name and face, and usually moves into our space when we are at a low point in our lives.

One reason entities move in with us is because the low, depressed or ‘negative’ energy we are putting out, is attractive to their vibrations. It’s one of the Natural Laws – one we put out, we get back, remember?

This is why it is crucial to remember that every thought-form is powerful, and that it is in the accumulation of our ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ thoughts that results in things happening to us and around us. It’s therefore important to practice releasing ‘negative’energy as cleanly and as quickly as we can, rather than allowing anger, resentment or grief to build up and congeal within our bodies in readiness for a future illness or entity to thrive upon it.

In my conversations with entities during hypnotherapy sessions, I have learned that, for the most part, they join with the client during a traumatic time, often in childhood.

After Rosemary had settled into a light trance – a gentle state of relaxation in which part of you is here in present time, and part of you is not – I began to discover, through various questions and intuitions, where her session would lead us today.

It soon came to my notice that I was having this session with more than one person. At first the entity was reluctant to talk to me at all, and a process of building up a relationship of trust began. Later, when the entity felt more secure with me, he introduced himself as Tarquin, and told me that he had attached himself to Rosemary when she was eight. I have heard this many times from these spirits that, at the time of attachment to a human being, regardless of the human’s age, these entities have felt needed.

This was true in Tarquin’s case, also. “She needed me,” he explained. “There was no-one else to protect her from everything that was happening at home.”

So the initial intentions of an entity, when it moves in, are to help. There is a sense that the human being cannot do it alone, and the sense of responsibility for the welfare of the person is assumed by the entity.

Tarquin expressed his frustration with working with “such a difficult person”, who never listened to him anymore, and that he was beginning to feel all his efforts were no longer valued.

As my goal, as hypnotherapist, is to convince the discarnate spirit to be released into the Light, and out of the client’s energy field, so that she can be freed up to continue her growth and reclaim her energy, a counselling process follows.

Often, as a clairvoyant and clairsentient, my work in the past has involved working with ‘trapped’ souls – belonging to people who have died very suddenly, and who are still in shock and disbelief about their transition into spirit from the physical world.

The process of having them begin to notice their choices and to move towards Light, are almost the same for entity work. Gradually, a spark of understanding appears as they realise that they do not have to sit in this place of confusion and pain, and they automatically then begin to see loved ones in spirit and spirit guides who are waiting to guide them on.

This happened with Tarquin. Through our process, he learned to trust me enough to trust my vision of the Light and the Guides waiting to take his hand. At first, he was deeply fearful, like a child who is too scared to move on, and too reluctant to stay. But finally, and ever so gently he found some courage, grasped the hand of a Guide he now trusted, and moved out of ‘Rosemary’s’ energy field and out of the room.

For a moment, my hypnotherapy room was suffused with light. Rosemary suddenly sat up, still in her hypnotic state and gasped “I’ve just lost a leg!” Knowing that the removal of an entity that has been part of our energy system can be felt, I knew this was simply her noticing the absence of this unhelpful energy that had diluted her power for so long. I moved her back into a relaxed state and as the energy shifted, I sealed in the protection around ‘Rosemary’, myself and my space, and gently drew my client back peacefully into present time and space, back into the room.

She returned, feeling hazy, and not recalling anything other than my voice suggesting she relax at the start of our session together. After a few minutes, she added that she felt empty, as if she was missing something, and that she felt a little sad.

Often this can be a natural feeling after spirit releasement. It’s a feeling of empty, but it’s a good empty! Unsurprising, really, when one considers that the two of you have been together, as one, for often years and years.

As Rosemary experienced it, it really might feel a little like losing a leg – it will itch for a while and you will feel the loss.But as she continues to build up her energy again, she will learn to fill that space with lighter, more powerful energy.

Whenever we ‘clean’ out our space and let things or people go that no longer serve us to hold on to, we have the choice to fill that space with more deserving energy that assists us in moving ahead.