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My Teaching & Coaching Background

Besides being a hypnotherapist, author, and nature photographer, I’m a retired teacher, instructional coach, and university professor. I retired seven years after my accident to adopt a more healing lifestyle and began writing books and working as a private coach and hypnotherapist. At this time, my hypnosis practice focuses mainly on healing and spiritual work in general hypnotherapy sessions, Past Life Regression Therapy and Life Between Lives, as developed by Michael Newton.

Education & Awards

I earned my master’s in teaching (1992) and a doctorate in curriculum and social inquiry (2005) from National-Louis University. I was an elementary education classroom teacher for 8 years,  coached in a K-5 school for nine years and taught research, teacher’s ed, and writing at the university for 7 years (IL State and National-Louis). 

As classroom teacher, I won an Illinois State Teaching Award and a Christa McAuliffe Science Teaching Award. 

Hypnosis Certifications

While I was healing, a trusted spiritual advisor recommended that I study hypnosis. My dentist had hypnotized me when I was 27, and I was a somnambulist—able to be deeply hypnotized and anesthetized. So I was already a believer. But what I learned about healing was much more powerful when I began studying hypnosis.

My hypnosis certifications include the National Guild of Hypnotists where I studied with Linda Williamson, Karen-Hand-Harper, Larry Garret, and others. I’m also certified with Wellness Institute’s Heart-Centered Hypnosis, which focuses on healing regressions. I studied with Paul Aurand and Mark Johnson through The Michael Newton Institute for my Past Life Regression and Life Between Lives training.  

I’ve taken many additional trainings including medical hypnosis, pain control, caring for cancer patients and their caregivers, advanced self-hypnosis, and others.

Health Coaching Certification

I studied with Joshua Rosenthal and his expert staff at the largest nutrition school in the world, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, to become a certified health coach (2014), and completed my advanced coach training as well as a Gut Health Mastery training in 2019. 

My family constellations training came through The Hellinger Institute with trainings from Judy Wilkins-Smith, Gail Cloud, and Mark Wolynn.

Restorative Yoga and Children’s Yoga 

Since the early 1990’s I taught children’s yoga and yoga nidra, first in a meditation center and later in K-5 classrooms and school clubs. I took certification trainings for children ages 4-12 at Global Family Yoga.

I earned my RYT-200 yoga certification at Heaven Meets Earth Yoga Studio, and did my restorative yoga training with Bliss Baby Yoga (Levels 1 and 2) and Steph Mitchell, Yoga and Ayurveda Center. I offer private restorative yoga sessions and group classes, which you can learn about here.

Meditation and Inner Work

My experiences of Oneness began in childhood. But my inner work began in earnest in the mid-1980s, when I learned to meditate. In 1987, I had a spontaneous kundalini awakening, and from that day forward have devoted myself to the evolutionary process under the guidance of various spiritual teachers.

If you are devoted to your own healing and evolutionary process, I would love to work with you.

My Approach to Healing

Golden Words®
Positive Change, One Word at a Time®

I was told after my bicycle accident that I would likely end up in a wheelchair on a morphine pump managing chronic pain. But I knew from a prophetic dream that wasn’t my destiny. People who knew me then and know me now say I’m a walking miracle. It didn’t happen overnight, but each day I took a step toward recovery. Some days were filled with miracles, and some days were agonizing, slow, and challenging. But each day I looked for the words, tools, strength, and support to change pain into ease and health.

Each day I took another step until walking down the hall became walking down the street. Walking down the street became walking around the block. Walking around the block turned into a one-mile walk, then two, then three, then four, then five or more miles.

This is how I approach goals with my clients. We can accomplish most anything—one step at a time.

You Make The Road By Walking

You Make The Road By Walking. When you walk, you take one step, then another. Each step is a movement toward the change you want. Think of it as the Yellow Brick Road. Each word is like a golden brick you use to build the road to the Oz of your personal choice.

Is your Emerald City of Oz a pain-free state? Is it a new job? Is it a healthier body? A successful business? Writing a book? Is it a peaceful life with good friends? Is it a particular accomplishment you want to achieve in your career as an athlete, an artist, an author? Is it understanding who you really are and your life purpose?

Along the way, disappointment and trauma can be something that stinks up our lives or used as fertilizer to gain strength and bloom again.

We change our lives by changing the words and feelings that make up our life habits. Words are alive and become flesh—one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one habit, one feeling, one step at a time.

A penny may not seem like much, but all big bills are made up of small change. In the same way, small changes add up to big transformations.

You have a right to be happy & at ease

Because of my personal experiences, research, and training,  I fiercely believe in each person’s right and ability to live a happy, content, and peaceful life.

I work with both children and adults, supporting your highest intentions for living a life of health, well-being, fulfillment, significance, connection, and fun.

I look forward to speaking with you,

Love & blessings,

Sally

Something Personal

During my recovery from a disabling bicycle accident and near-death experience, I gained a profound understanding of the living power of words. Our words and thoughts not only affect the way we feel, the way we function, and what we manifest in our lives but can aid us in overcoming what others consider hopeless.

After many doctors shrugged their shoulders at my condition and said I’d likely end up in a wheelchair on a morphine pump, I reclaimed control over my own healing process using complementary medical technology (Vecttor and HBOT), positive golden words®, tools from hypnosis and meditation, and a personalized approach to diet and nutrition that I created for myself based on personal research and subsequent training as an Institute for Integrative Nutrition health coach. Laughter Yoga is the icing on the cake for experiencing embodied, radical joy.

The Magic of Nature

In 2007, my dad had a stroke. I rode my bicycle to the forest preserve to connect with nature and my Higher Self. On the way, I had an accident.

I rose up out of my body and saw it lying on the ground. At first, I was shocked. “Am I dead?” I wondered. Then my awareness turned up, away from my body, and I experienced deep peace, bliss, and unconditional love.

I experienced the earth and trees around me breathing and showering the pure energy of unconditional love. I felt Mother Nature’s love pouring over me and experienced Oneness with all of Nature. I traveled to other realms of existence where I experienced my ancestors, angels, my soul’s origin, the stillness and eternal nature of my soul-Self, messages from a Light Being, and the nature of energy.

Subsequent to this profoundly joyous experience, I spent nearly two years with the breathtaking pain of a rare nervous system disorder, CRPS/RSD, before beginning the pain relief journey.

Using complementary medical technology, hypnotherapy, EMDR, nutrition, and strict but compassionate self-care, I began to heal. I took my first outdoor walk almost two years after the accident.

I was so happy and grateful to be on my feet, walking in nature again, I wept and kissed the ground. If you love the outdoors, as I do, you can imagine how healing it felt to be outdoors again. I began spending as much time as I could in nature. We know from science, now, that nature does communicate to us and does help us heal.

I had taken nature photos when I was younger, but now I began taking photos again, in earnest, to connect to the Divine light, love, wonder, healing energy, and inspiring beauty.

Over several years of healing, short painful walks turned into hours of pain-free walking outdoors with my digital Canon camera and assortment of lenses. My photos have won several photo awards including Audubon Top 100Chicago Botanic Garden, my local library, and Emily Oaks Nature Center. You can visit my photography website here: Nature’s Healing Images

My Books

The Golden Words® Series

My first book, Golden Words: The A to Z Toolkit for Changing Your Life One Word at a Timewas published in 2015

Golden Words®was inspired by my near-death experience and is about the transformative power of words as communicated to me by angels on the other side.

The words we say to ourselves and others creates the way we feel and colors our lives with their energy. But Golden Words® are not about wearing rose-colored glasses and pretending everything is alright. Rather, Golden Words harness the tools of meditative self-hypnosis to soothe and uplift ourselves when times are tough, walk the path to our dreams and goals, stay balanced in challenging situations, and learn to relax even in rush hour traffic. Tough, but do-able!

The companion journal, Golden Words: The Journal for Changing Your Life One Word at a Time, provides journaling pages with a step-by-step process from the book for creating meaningful life changes in body, mind, and spirit.

Like the golden bricks used to build the hopeful Yellow Brick Road to Oz, Golden Words® make sturdy building materials for writing mantras, affirmations, and autosuggestions to manifest our goals. When we make our self-talk golden, we take charge of our healing and life experience. We connect to spiritual guidance, step into the rhythm of intuition and flow, tap into our creative energy, develop talents, deepen friendships, reduce stress and pain, overcome bad habits, build a healthier body,  and perhaps write a book, build a business, and cultivate unshakeable inner strength to create a life of contentment—according to our own values.

Book Awards – Golden Words has won five book awards including the Silver IPPY Award in Self-Help, the Silver Nautilus Award in Body, Mind, and Spirit Practices, The Top Ten Launch Your Dream Book Award from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the silver Reader’s Favorite award, and a Gold Indy Human Relations Award.

Children’s Books

I Am a Butterfly shares the monarch butterfly’s miraculous metamorphosis, a metaphorical journey of a human being’s experience of change.

The vivid photography and whimsical story engage the reader in the monarch butterfly’s story of big changes from a tiny egg to a beautiful nectar-drinking butterfly.

The butterfly’s story is one of courage during unexpected and radical change. A butterfly can show the way because butterfly wisdom teaches that after the dark chrysalis comes the beautiful butterfly. These concepts are integral to my healing philosophy. 

Nature lovers can also learn how to attract monarchs to their own backyard, which can help to bring back the declining monarch population.

Resources and action points are suitable for teachers, parents, and children to become actively engaged in helping the monarch at home or at school.

I Am a Butterfly won the first place Purple Dragonfly Award and silver Nautilus award in children’s books. This book is for anyone who needs a reminder that change, no matter how scary may result in beautiful wings!

Teaching resources, purchasing information, and a free butterfly print are available here.

 

IPPY Award 2016   Nautilus Silver Medal 2015

Occasional Newsletters Includes:

  • Blog Articles— stories, research
  • Audio Hypnosis-Meditation Downloads
  • Coupons & Free Book Offers
  • Events
  • Publication Updates

Free Book Excerpt &
110 Golden Words Art

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