Room to breathe

MOSES LAKE — Chriss Webster isn't out to make anyone stand on a chair and quack like a duck.

Many people have the idea of hypnotherapy as entertainment hypnosis, but she says there's no correlation between the two.

Webster opened her business, Breathing Space, March 15 at 214 Alder St., Suite 111.

Breathing Space offers counseling, hypnotherapy and breathing workshops available to area businesses.

Webster had a practice in Enumclaw for nine years, and moved to Moses Lake two and a half years ago upon her husband's retirement.

She would have opened the business sooner, but she was caring for an ailing stepmother in Seattle, using hypnotherapy to help her with pain control and nausea.

Webster's neighbor allowed her to use a guest house as a temporary office last year, where she offered her services free to friends and family to keep involved in the occupation, and was encouraged to open her own business in town.

Webster was involved with hypnotherapy for more than 30 years, when she decided to quit smoking, and she got her degree in 1991.

"I have the type of mind where it's very hard to quiet it down, the critical mind," she said. "You want to shut down the critical faculties, so I've been into hypnotherapy, meditation, whatever worked."

Webster uses hypnotherapy as a tool to help her clients with positive thinking, weight loss, chronic pain, phobias, fear of childbirth and stress management techniques.

"I enjoy making a difference and helping people, and it's also very helpful to me," she said. "It's definitely a mutual thing. I have to be in the zone, be relaxed, be calm, be there. In other words, I have to walk the talk."

Webster's neighbor, Delores Gregg, said Webster helped her through extreme pain after she fell and broke her hip on a cement floor, using techniques for about 20 minutes while they waited for an ambulance.

"Right now I'm terrified of falling again, and she's getting me over some of that, so I don't fear the falling but I'm still careful," Gregg said. "I think I'm going to continue with Chriss on some weight loss."

Hypnotherapy differs from psychology or psychoanalysis in that one might need to touch base with whatever's responsible for creating a phobia, for instance, Webster said, but she does not dwell on the past, calling it a "living in the now" therapy.

Webster loves it when people call hypnotherapy "New Age." It's been accepted by the American Medical Association since 1958, she said.

"It's in the Bible, it's in Egyptian hieroglyphics, it's been around since forever," she said. "In all of history, it comes up everywhere — China, Egypt, India, all the religions talk about it. And it's all natural. That's what people have the misconception about — that you're out of control, that I'm doing something to you."

Webster sees herself as a guide, one more tool her patients use to help get through whatever they need to do. She promotes self-hypnosis, something all hypnosis really is, she said, so her clients will be able to go to sleep better, lower their blood pressure or anything else when they finish their appointments.

"When you're driving home from work and every day you pass the same bridge or the same store, and all of a sudden you're home and you go, 'Oh man, did I go over that bridge?' that is a form of hypnosis which you're in the alpha state," she explained. "When you read a book or watch a movie and you get caught up in the emotion, your critical mind knows you're just reading a book but it's your subconscious that is reacting. Hypnotherapy helps you quiet the conscious mind and go directly to the subconscious to change those patterns you want to change."

For more information, contact 509-764-5366.