In a meditation room in the back of Hawthorn Tree in downtown Cheyenne, Joshua Bandy, owner of Full Moon Hypnosis, is helping his client Damien Marcott work through some problems using past-life regression hypnosis.
Bandy believes his clients can find resources in their past lives to help them with problems in their current ones.
Psychodynamic Loop
Bandy said there are a lot of definitions of hypnosis, but his preferred one is a “beneficial psychodynamic loop.”
There’s an exchange of healing between himself and a client, he said.
“So, we’re both going to benefit from it. When you do your healing, I get healing as well,” Bandy said.
On a dresser in the corner of the room sits a metal sculpture in the shape of a bonsai tree, with leaves that are polished stones. A set of candles stand next to the tree and soft music plays from the coffee shop downstairs.
Marcott, a teenager, had a really bad relationship with his stepdad, he said. His mother wanted someone to love her, and that left her too frightened to get out of the relationship for years.
“All I deal with constantly from it now are memories, which I do not like,” Marcott said.
Marcott, who has permission from his mother to work with Bandy, sits at a table clutching his hands together, eyes closed peacefully as Bandy guides the teenager through his past lives.
Drifting Free
Between Marcott’s hands is a token, which Bandy calls an anchor. Anchors can be coins, necklaces or any other trinket where resources across time and space can be deposited.
“I’m going to count backwards quickly, and as soon as I hit one, go ahead and float on up, out of your body into the sky … drifting free … drifting,” Bandy tells Marcott in a soothing tone.
Bandy counts backward and Marcott’s shoulders slump and his face goes slack. Bandy then directs him to reach into his past lives to find positive experiences, such as an academic achievement or a time he mentally overcame something.
“Notice if it’s daytime or nighttime. Notice if you’re alone or with others, what you’re seeing, hearing or smelling,” Bandy says.
Bandy continually drops words of encouragement here and there, and Marcott searches for memories from other lives he’s lived.
Former Skeptic
“I used to be a really big skeptic on this type of stuff,” Bandy said.
He has a background in psychology, which comes through in some of his techniques. While he’s trained under many past-life regression hypnotists, and earned a number of certifications in the process, he developed his own approach to it.
“Most past-life regressions are shitty f*****g trauma therapy,” Bandy said.
He’s a conversational hypnotist by training, which is a technique that guides people into a trance, but it doesn’t follow a rigid trance induction like a psychologist would conduct.
“So I'll hypnotize people, and they will never look like they're hypnotized. They won't realize it sometimes,” Bandy said.
He said amnesia can be a natural byproduct of hypnosis, but it’s not so mysterious as it seems.
“We sit here and talk for 20 minutes, and there’s going to be a lot of the conversation you don’t remember,” Bandy said.
He said he’s had people who feel the session was helpful, but since they don’t feel they were hypnotized, they think they didn’t get what they paid for.
Meditational Session
There’s no science to back up Bandy’s work, and he doesn’t make any claims to having studies or research that prove objectively the sessions works.
But he does say that he has satisfied clients, including those in other countries he’s hypnotized through Zoom meetings.
He does veer off into the occult with the use of Tarot cards, but he doesn’t use them in the way a fortune teller would. It’s more like how a therapist would ask a patient to look at an ink blot.
The images on the cards represent feelings and resources that Bandy’s clients choose to guide the discussion.
Through the session with Marcott, Bandy doesn’t offer suggestions like a therapist would such as jogging or writing down daily affirmations. It’s more a meditation of sorts.
By the end of the session, the teenager’s mood appears lighter, and he’s smiling.
“You feel fantastic, right?” Bandy asks him.
“Yes. I realize I actually felt happy before, and so I can feel happy again,” Marcott replies.
Bandy can be contacted here.
