EP34 – What do Hypnotherapy and Ayahuasca have in common?

Matthew J. Brownstein hosts Lani Gonzales in this special episode of Illuminated Mind®. Lani Gonzales worked through college and law school and is now a practicing partner in a successful law firm in Tampa, Florida. A world-traveling, volunteering, energy-healing, aspiring hypnotherapist, Lani is committed to using her light as a beacon to help others find theirs.

Welcome everyone to the illuminated mind podcast with me Matthew, Ramstein founder and lead instructor of the Institute of interpersonal hypnotherapy. I always love bringing on guests who are into consciousness and in this case, Lonnie Gonzalez, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, so glad that you’re here with us. Let me introduce our listeners to who you are. I’ve got an email that gives us info and then your website is wonderful. So Lonnie published a book. She’s a student at our school right now, yes, she is an attorney. But you’ve had some real significant spiritual awakenings. So in your book, you discuss your journey through ayahuasca, the trauma and grief that was in our mental spiritual and physical health, healing through nature and meditation. And one of my favorite topics, astral travel. You were born in the Philippines came here quite young when you were two. I lived in Virginia, kind of near where I live there. Now you’re practicing law in Tampa, you know, where I lived and work with other attorneys as well. And yeah, I have background experiences with Ayahuasca. I’ve been to Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica and Brazil. So I’m very connected to Pachamama energy and love to hear more about it. So let me just start by telling us about you. Who are you? What are you all about before, just give us the general overview?
Sure. Um, so my name is Lonnie Gonzalez. I am very happy and very proud to say that, I believe myself and my family are part of the American dream where we immigrated to the United States with absolutely nothing. We shared a one bedroom apartment at one point. And now I am an attorney. I am a partner at a law firm in downtown Tampa, and I have my own house. So things have been good. However, part of my journey and I think a lot of people’s journeys that people don’t talk about are there are things in the shadows, there are things that we don’t talk about. And for myself, life has not always been kind. I’ve had some difficult experiences. By the time I was four years old, I had been raped. I had trauma abuse, I had seen suicide, I had suicidal thoughts myself for a very long period of time, I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, chronic PTSD and various forms of eating disorders throughout my life. And one of the things that has brought me to my book and part of my journey is I always knew I wasn’t well. So as soon as I went to college, and they provided mental health counseling, they’re free or the reduced price I started counseling from 18 years old, consistently. That is helped tremendously. And I will say another thing that really helped me and inspired me was hypnotherapy. I did not know how to meditate. I did not know anything. And the truth be told, I probably went to hypnotherapy for a boy, I had my heart broken and I went there, but we went deeper. And I went to a place and that was the very first time I actually astral traveled. And even though I went there heartbroken about some boy, I stopped having suicidal thoughts altogether. And I thought that was my life is I would constantly just have a suicidal thought. think to myself, Okay, I don’t want to die. I’m just unhappy and move through it and constantly do that for the rest of my life. And hypnotherapy really, really freed me from being able to continuously go through that cycle. So I have been on my healing journey and one of the things that ultimately called me was doing I Alaska. I don’t do drugs. I don’t like caffeine. I don’t enjoy taking Tylenol or anything like that. I don’t drink I don’t smoke. But yet iwoca is not recreational and is actually something that people do, particularly in the Andes, in South America is considered a spiritual cleansing, and it also heals a lot of trauma. So, I wrote my book rebirth of the stage to discuss what happened during my process and the things that really poisoned us. For myself, I have been in in and out of hospitals, so constant medications, I’ve had meningitis three times that life threatening illnesses and surgeries. I also thought that was my life. That was what life was supposed to be like. And then I realized doing Ayahuasca even though my mind says, I’m okay, I’m fine. Everything’s good. Look at my beautiful, perfect life that I can put on social media. I realized doing Ayahuasca there’s a lot of things trapped. I cried, I read, I yelled. And when I left those things out, I felt better. And it felt like releasing poison. And I realized that’s what really poisons us. That’s what all the medications are for and all of those things. I was poisoned. The body can only hold so much poison until it starts to have physical illnesses as well. And when I really learned to release all of that trauma allow myself to feel that my body learned how to heal itself. And I am well I know suicidal thoughts, no harmful behaviors, no compulsion, I no longer take medications. And it almost feels like before I was a puppet on strings, trauma does does this compulsion to be worthy does this and now strings is cut, and I feel free. So I wrote my book rebirth as a sage and hope to help others free themselves as well. And I really decided to do hypnotherapy and pursue that as a career as well, because I know we can’t all go to the jungle and poop and scream and throw up. And we need a way to be able to do that on a regular basis in the comfort of our own country. So hypnotherapy is definitely a way to accomplish something very similar to Ayahuasca.
Such a powerful story, thank you for sharing both the light and the dark side of it. And we I’m sure you’re ready as listeners feel closer to you saying, Well, you know, all the way from four years old, what you went through and all the suicidal thoughts. And then yeah, like, look where you got to yet you didn’t just do it, like you said, but just make your life look pretty. You dug deep and realize there’s a largely through I don’t know if you call that a grandmother, but when I did ceremony, I was called grandmother. So it’s like, yeah, through grandmother through ayahuasca, but also through hypnotherapy. And I want to talk about the similarities, like the purification process that people go through. Yeah, it was, it’s such a great story. So wanting to talk to us about what it was like when you went on the journey with ayahuasca and you talked about like crying and screaming and all that stuff that happens probably getting well you know, when you throw up, I don’t know if you ended up puking during the experience.
So well, I thought I was gonna be great. I thought, I’ve been to counseling. I have hypnotherapy meditation, my sound bath energy, like, I’m just gonna go there and connect with God. That’s what I thought I was very wrong. What actually happened is, for a while, I thought it wasn’t working, but then started sniffling. And I’m like, What is this? This is odd. And my body, something inside me said cry and like, we’re not crying. We’re in public, how dare we cry. But then all of a sudden, the tears start flowing. And from there, it all kind of devolves and I realized I was crying. All of the tears that I had not cried, I needed to stay strong, I needed to focus on my goals. And instead of focusing in honoring my needs to cry to be upset, it all stayed trapped. So I walked open that door, and slowly tears came. And then I realized it wasn’t just mine. I cried tears for my own suffering. But then I cried tears for my parents, because they had to stay strong to and I look back even further, and I saw things from my grandparents and my ancestors realizing that we like to think we’re all okay. But if we don’t heal ourselves, it will pass down and it will continue and continue until someone says, stop. So for me, I Alaska was a way to say to all of that harm, all of that hurt that I have carried in my family who’s carried. And it really put a lot of things in perspective, I don’t consider myself as angry person. I very rarely feel anger. And just because I don’t feel it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And it existed deep inside. So after my crying, I’m all of a sudden, growling and screaming and so the sky sound that I’ve, I’ve come home and I tried to replicate the sound that I made there, like nope, I can’t do it. I don’t even know how to do that way. But I needed to release the anger. And when I released the sadness, and the grief and the anger, the only thing that was left was forgiveness, and love. And I learned how to forgive my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors. But the most difficult part was the forgiveness for myself. The shaman and there was a healer there. And this is part of my story. They’re a big part of my story. They asked me if I forgave and my body continue nodding. And finally that Do you forgive yourself? And I could not answer and I slowly descended and stopped breathing. And I realized sometimes that’s the hardest thing to forgive is the transgression. For some people, sure, but the transgressions against ourselves. We owe ourselves such a duty to honor ourselves first. And when we don’t do that, sometimes it’s really hard to forgive. So through Ayahuasca I learned how to forgive and accept my past, I learned how to forgive myself. I went on a second day and then that second day, it was learning that I can create something better than that I actually hallucinate and that I had a child. But a lot of times people say that that’s metaphor. metaphorical is having a child and bringing in new life. And the lesson that I really got from that and me are not our past, we can create Get new life so just because you know trauma and grief and poverty and so many things that doesn’t define who we are and when we unbury our afflictions and they stop controlling us we can live new and better lives so that’s my journey in a nutshell I definitely through other places I you know had diarrhea here and there that’s the process and that’s actually thing they say is a good thing. The body is releasing toxins in every way it can cry, scream, throw up pee, it’s all your body’s toxins being released.
Good job. So good to hear. Right? Yeah, again, I’ve been through ceremony, I know what it’s like and such a great story so led to your book, rebirth, obviously, he was that that was called.
It is. So the first part of my book really discusses my journey there is being able to reconnect with Pachamama and reconnecting with myself, and also a reconnection with God. I’m not particularly religious, but I learned that there is a higher power within everyone as well. There is a God within each and every person and being able to honor that God. And another part of my book is something that’s not online that I wish was online before I did it. I did a lot of research before I did my iOS to ceremony. And what I did not know was the hardest part of Ayahuasca is not the ceremony, it is coming home, and realizing you are a changed person and learning how to integrate that change person into a life you had. And that has been a very large struggle. And my book talks about that as well. In within plant medicine community, we call it the integration process. And I was not prepared for the integration process. I thought, Oh, I go home continue work. It’s like I can’t I no longer lead by compulsion. I no longer fueled by trauma. So what what should my life look like now. So a lot of it is learning integration and how to reconnect with yourself, honoring your body slowing down or pace, our body knows how to heal itself when we let it but when we give it Castine when it feels tired, our body slowly stops talking to us. When we stop honoring our signals, our messages that our body tells us. We slowly descend into illness, and learning how to come back from my Alaska to integrate and no longer silence my body and honoring myself was a really big part of the experience as well.
Beautiful and why do you call it rebirth of a sage? What does that word mean to you, sage?
So it’s come up a couple of times, I’ve traveled the world. I’ve been to 27 countries, many of them by myself. I went to India very recently to learn from people there. I went to a city called Rishi cash. And they call that Rishi which is a sage because a master someone who has acquired wisdom and experience and in the place where I did Ayahuasca there is a sign above the temple and it says, Silence please. This is where the great sage meditates. So to me, a sage is somebody who has acquired experience and wisdom and not just wisdom within this life, but over many lives, the wisdom we carry from our parents, and their parents and the wisdom that if you believe in such a thing, our own past lives, so I call it rebirth to the stage because my experience has felt to me that I have been finally reborn into knowing my higher knowledge and higher power and being able to walk in that light.
I love it because my whole life is dedicated to spirituality. And it’s just like, I, when I was 19, and I woke up spiritually. It’s can be a lonely journey, in a lot of ways. Even though you know, I met people, I lived in spiritual communities, I still just go meditate by myself. And it kind of like you just like the spiritual path is very much this inner process, right? You’re working through your own stuff. And now that I’m running this school, I’m seeing like 1000s of people going through these types of trainings and these awakenings it just seems to be like I just had an interview with someone recently in 2012 just a huge spiritual awakening. It changed her entire life and I get in a lot of podcasts myself, and they asked me, you know, what are you all about? And I said, before I woke up spiritually, I wasn’t about anything, life was meaningless. Once I woke up spiritually, everything made sense and for you, one major powerful Ayahuasca experience one powerful awakening, and I hear the hypnotherapy and I’m sure it’s not just that but you know, I hear that basically, you woke up spiritually and you’re not the same again, I appreciate you talking about and you have to integrate that into your life. So yeah, I love talking about spiritual awakening, but let’s go a little bit deeper into your in your hypnotherapy training now. So what’s that been like? Let’s talk hypnotherapy in relationship to spiritual growth and awakening. So what are your thoughts you’ve been you’re almost done with our training, and you’re about to take the final exam so awesome. Congratulations. But yeah, what are your thoughts on Hypnotherapy and spiritual growth.
Here’s the truth. And I’m gonna give you the full story. I first was hypnotized in law school when I there was a school counselor there and he was trying it. And he exposed me to it. And he was like, What do you think? And I went, I hate it. I didn’t want that I wanted to talk about my feelings and not be hypnotized. So my initial experience was hesitation. However, a few years ago, I went to a Hypnotherapist. Her name is actually Michelle Butler, she recommended your school. She is an incredible hypnotherapist, and I sat with her for hours. And she absolutely changed my life. In many ways. I was not good at meditation, I didn’t know how to meditate until I was hypnotized. It was literally overnight, magically, because I could access that place. I knew how to sit with myself and return to that place. So almost like saying, I’ve been to the grocery store, show me once and now I get better at each time I go to the grocery store, and faster and faster getting to that space. Hypnotherapy was the first drive to the grocery store. And now meditation is much deeper for me. And I’ve realized that every answer we need, every antidote we need is somewhere within. I know we like to look for help with life coaches, some people go to psychics and various sources, but the highest knowledge, the highest truth is in us and I decided to do hypnotherapy and I want to share that with other people. Because I want them to know I don’t want your left to be your life coach, I don’t want you to come to me every week. If you do, certainly, that’s fine. But I want you to know the real source of wisdom is within you. And that is something that I think will change the world. If one person at a time can honor their highest wisdom and their highest truth. I believe that that will change the world. And specifically what I would like to do is eventually, starting next year, January actually is when I’m going to be launching this is helping people go through Colombia, take Ayahuasca but come home and integrate and part of that integration will be hypnotherapy learning to access those parts continue. You don’t need plant medicines to access those parts, we can access them through hypnotherapy. And one really big part of what I’d like to do with hypnotherapy specifically is astral travel, or astral projection, as some people like to call it. So what I say by that, for people who don’t know is there is a part of that there is a consciousness that is there. And you can move it, it can go to certain places. And what I personally believe is, we are born divine, we are perfect exactly as we are. But through our life we learn and there are fragments that call them fragments, their spaces, there’s time, or harm and injury, a transgression and abuse. And that brings us away from that divinity and we forget who we really are. So through hypnotherapy, I believe we can astral travel, and I will take you to that place. And we will fix that fragment and we will bring our love and our light into those fragments of our parts. So for me, hypnotherapy is a way to really help people connect with their inner selves to bring those to those to those places so that they can heal. And when you heal yourself in those past places, the results in present day are rapid. So that is Michael to share that life and love with people in the future.
I love it. I couldn’t ask to hear anything more than somebody’s going through our training really, really gets it you do and you haven’t even gotten to by the time people hear this, you probably have graduated. But just to be transparent. Yeah, you’re still going through the training. So you haven’t even gotten to the breathwork part yet, which is where like to me, I Alaska is like breath work on steroids. But breath work essentially purges what’s inside of you. And then of course talking about astral travel, which I teach in our transpersonal section, which you haven’t got to yet so I hope you’ll enjoy as you hear me talk about body experiences, but let me hear about yours because for me, the spiritual path has been like I said, everything but leaving the body has been the most profound because that’s when you really know from your own experience, I am not a body, I am consciousness. I am soul and spirit. I’m not bound to a body. So no matter how much faith you have, no matter how much you believe, until you have that experience, you’re really going on faith. But once you’ve had enough out of body experiences, say Okay, I am definitely not a body. Your whole worldview changes. So talk to me about astral projection, astral travel, what’s it like for you and you’re leaving your body and, and he can talk about all those types of experiences depending how many you’ve had, but maybe share a little bit about Yeah, what’s happened to you and what it’s like when you’re leaving your body.
Sure. So the first time it happened, I actually did not know what I was doing. So it was through a hypnotherapy session with Michelle Butler and we went to a place and I now call my higher kingdom and I saw certain things I spoke to my inner child for the very first time. And after that experience, I went back to Michelle. And I was like, This is odd, because this is how I described it. I went on vacation once to Spain, and I have such vivid memories of going to Spain. And I told her the place where I went, when I went through that hypnotherapy session felt just as real estate, it felt just as real as anyplace. And I told her, I swear, I felt grass rubbing on my legs, and I remember feeling things and it felt like I was in a real place. And she said to me, What if I told you, you were? And I was like, wait a minute, what do you mean by that? She goes, there are many. And she explained to me that there are many other places here. And this is not just our place, we are something greater than a body. And what I like to say counseling, they don’t knock it. I love counseling, I have a counselor, I recommend it to everybody. But there’s more to that counseling is something that I consider within the territory of thoughts. You range within the territory of thoughts you heal, to the extent that the territory of thoughts can provide healing, but there is deeper healing when you go beyond the territory of those thoughts. So when it comes to astral travel, like you said, with breath, work, breath work is really important to being able to still your body, still your mind, being able to visualize and what I like to tell people who asked me because they asked me all the time, how it works is start small is close your eyes, be in a quiet, simple space and see yourself, try to see yourself looking at yourself right across the room or sitting next to you, what do you see what do you feel, and slowly going further and further. For me, it was easier because I had a hypnotherapy session that was so powerful that again, is like I went there, I can go there again. But when it comes to physical for astral travel, one thing that I like to do is I sit with myself. And my intention is take me to the place of my highest good. I have no intention, or specifically to go and just simply say, take me to the place of my highest good. And I’m surprised sometimes at where I go. So I’ll give you an example of my surprising place I went is there was a moment where I was really sad. And relationships can be difficult, especially when you did not have healthy examples of them growing up. And I said, I feel mad that my parents did not set a good example and show me how to love. So when I sat down and I did astral travel, I said take me to the place of my highest good. And where I went was in a playground and I was a child and I was watching myself play with worms and worm. What is it and as a child, I absolutely loved worms. And I realized if I could love something as dirty and slimy as a worm, love is not my problem. Learning how to love is not the issue learning boundaries, learning self respect, learning how to say no how to put myself first. Those are things perhaps that needs to be taught, which can be taught over time. But learning Love is not a thing I need to do or anything that anyone needs to do because love is our pure stake. So in that place where I felt like I did not know how to love, my highest self said let’s take you to a place to show you who you are, you are in love you were born love and that is your highest state. There is also astral travel in the sense of seeing into other people. But that is more of a I like to say you ask permission and you don’t necessarily ask that person to their face, you can ask their higher selves. And you can actually engage with somebody else on that plane in a way that you cannot engage with them face to face, because they’re not ready to have those conversations. But a part of that may be so a lot of my astral travel has been trying to heal myself and on occasion, coming across people in my life that I’ve wanted to talk to about forgiveness, we’re helping them find light in their own lives as well.
Beautiful. Thank you again everywhere. Do you say yes, yes. It’s all such good stuff. Yeah, when I was leaving my body, my early 20s especially. And then I had this one experience where the saint Sai Baba appeared. And he said why are you not seeking God? And it was so humbling, because I was just flying around playing. And it was like, so you said like, what I forget the way you verbalize it, but it’s like, what is my highest good, you know, take me into the highest. That really became my mantra in a sense after that experience was okay. And in terms of my body, I’m just gonna say, God, and just God knows whatever she’s called the it doesn’t have to be the word of God. But you know, the intention is what matters. And I’m just gonna God and then experiences started to be mind blowing, you know, beyond what I could have imagined. And I love what you said about love that you don’t have to learn love, like in A Course in Miracles. It’s beyond what can be taught. It’s just who you are, but developing the boundaries and all All of that. Yeah, let’s speak about the most important thing, love. So what is that, you know, after this whole journey are in, not after? Because you’re done with the journey, but at the stage of your journey? What have you concluded about love?
I like to think that love is simply who we are, it is our natural and highest and purest state. This is not an original thought. But it is something I believe in that there are only two true emotions, there’s love, and there’s fear, and every other emotion is a derivative of either love, or fear. So I always like to sit and ask myself, Am I acting from a place of love? Or am I acting from a place of fear. And when it comes to definitions of love, there are many definitions of love, you can hear in different contexts. But for me what love is and learning to listen to my highest self, it’s an actual feeling. Unfortunately, in this day, and age, and things move so quickly. And we’re constantly drinking caffeine and trying to go even though we’re tired, we lose connection to our body. But for me, my body tells me what love is. And I feel it in my gut, in my solar plexus, as some people would call it, if you believe in energy healing, and when I feel love, or I feel truth, I feel something that’s higher, and it shakes. And when something is not love, it is fear, it’s anxiety, it’s the wrong direction, it feels dense, and it drops. So for me, I don’t necessarily need to have a specific definition for love. I’m sure we certainly can, but my body knows. And I like to believe that everybody knows what love is and what love isn’t to be learned to simply listen to yourself.
Yeah, it’s beautiful. And you’re relating to how it relates to your body, right. So like in our school, we go into the technique by Dr. Jin gal who can learn about focusing, right, so if you feel that negative body felt sense, and it’s not open and expansive as love does, you know, it’s gonna be fear based, right? It’s constricting, and it’s based on your hurts and your sadness and your fear. And that stuff can be cleared, right? And what’s left when it’s all said and done is the love and I love the consistency of what you’re talking about. And if you’ve seen that as well than anybody who gets the place you’ve got into, we all say the same thing. It’s not like you’re talking about well, my truth is underlying fears. The nature of the universe, like people who wake up tend to say, Love is the underlying nature of the universe, we are not a body, you can leave your body, your consciousness, you can be healed. Have you noticed that there’s just a consistent message across the board from people who have moved into seizure if you want to use that term, what you do?
Absolutely. So after doing ayahuasca, like you said, the spiritual journey can sometimes be a lonely journey, because you have seen things and I have seen things that other people have not seen. And when you try to approach people with these experiences, this new knowledge newfound light, and they have yet to see it, and they don’t understand it is even more isolating. So what I have done is, thankfully, through the nature of the present time, and you can connect with people and meet us in various groups, I’ve met a lot of people around the country who have had spiritual awakenings, specifically through taking ayahuasca and plant medicine. And everybody says the same thing. We all have different messages, different lessons, oh, I need to forgive my grandmother, or I need to do this with work. But at the end of the day, the underlying message is, we are all connected, we are all one and we are all divine. And we’re all love. And we simply need to purge away everything that does not feel like love, because that’s not our true state. Those are things we are taught to keep us safe. And we need to be grateful for those things. They kept us safe, they took us to where we are on our journey now. So let’s not shame those parts, but understanding we don’t need them anymore when he reached that part. But the universe has guided you to that part where you are ready in your spiritual awakening to realize that we don’t need those parts of ourselves, we can shed those layers and be more connected to ourselves to other people. And everybody says that they realize you’re all part of the same force. And that force is love.
Nice. Thank you. And do you feel that people need to go to other countries? I mean, I’ve been to India too. I get it. I totally get it. That I’m sure some people are like, oh, and tell them get a plane ticket and get down to Colombia. You know, get down to Peru and let’s till I can do Ayahuasca I’m not going to be free. What would you say to somebody who’s maybe listening and saying, Oh, I was gonna say the answer to all my problems. Is it
okay? It is not I Alaska is not the answer to your problems. In fact, if that’s how you feel, you probably should not do it. So you don’t need a Alaska you don’t need to travel to India and bathe in the Ganges or go to Peru, or anything like that. The answers are inside of us. And there are different ways there are different paths. There are different journeys to get to that information for some people, traditional counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy works for other people, perhaps Do you need hypnotherapy? And for some people, they choose Ayahuasca that was my path. It’s actually not a path all people can take because you have to be certain certain conditions are excluded, so you can’t take it for everyone. So I would say that that path to like enlightenment and feeling free is not a drug, it’s not a location. Or if it is a location, that location is within us. And it’s finding your way and your truth in order to tap into that information. But I will add, one thing that helps is perspective, I don’t think you need a plane ticket to somewhere far, far away. But sometimes taking yourself out of your regular day to day life or your regular environment gives you a little bit of perspective. So I would not say it’s a plane ticket or a location. It’s a change in perspective. And sometimes it means a little weekend getaway or a staycation or even just taking a mental health day to look at the perspective of what your life looks like when you’re not hustling to nine to five. So I don’t believe that there is any one particular way to find that truth.
Yeah, I know, I would give the same answer. And at the same time, you’ve been to India, I’ve been to India into all these countries as well. So it’s great, right? I had it was on an interview recently, the woman said, sounds like you’re doing a lot of external searching. And I said, No, honestly, I was looking for a place to sit still, like me living in monasteries and ashrams. It wasn’t like looking for answers outside. Anybody who’s had some spiritual awakening knows, oh, that’s inside, right? I’m looking for the love inside. But having a place where we can actually go through these types of processes, or having plant medicine to help expedite these processes, yet, it really comes down to you’re gonna wake up tomorrow in your own bed, and you know, what is tomorrow morning look like? So for you what type of spiritual practice what do you do now? meditation, hypnosis, like, what do you do that keeps you in alignment, because obviously, you can’t be doing and nor would you want to be doing Ayahuasca every day. So it’s like the general maintenance stuff that you do at this stage.
I am a big fan of waking up early in the morning. The reason I like that is, I’ve seen it before. And I’ve lived this life where you wake up and the alarm buzzes and shut off that alarm. And you’re constantly rushing to get to the next thing to work to every single task and on all the things on your to do list. And I realized I needed to slow down. So I like to wake up early. And the first thing I do, and this is a habit that I’ve always done is a gratitude journal, I have three things that I’m grateful for, that I will start the day with. And after that I do my own meditation practice. What I like to envision for myself is the chakras, and moving that energy, creating that energy and projecting my own energy. So instead of protecting myself from the world, protecting myself from other people’s potentially negative energy, I project and I start my day with creating that space, I think of a fire within myself and I projected out and I envisioned projection, I set an intention for the day, I like a good cup of tea. And that’s how I have my day. And because I’ve learned to be connected with my body, I can sense my heart rate is going up, I don’t need to wait years upon years, when I have a heart disease or some sort of heart issue I can feel within the day to day, oh, something’s off, I need to sit and be still. And some people think, Oh, you need to be in a quiet room or quiet space, perhaps at the beginning, but you’ve been fit for a couple of minutes. And when you intentionally breathe, it slows everything down. I like to say that there are things in our life that poison us, if we have difficulties if we have fights with people or anything stressful just with work. If we don’t let it out, it poisons us. So I like to say you have to find your own way through at least the poises. So if you’re a swimmer and you love to swim, perhaps you need to make time to swim on a regular basis. Or if you’d like to walk you can walk. So for me there’s a multitude of things I absolutely love. Sound that there is something to that. And there are studies about how sound can be therapeutic as well. I’ve also continue to go to hypnotherapist, both of which have gone to your school, Michelle Butler, Christina mafia and St. Petersburg as well as a sound bath on the beach and they’re amazing. So being able to intentionally make time and I like to tell this to people, you will not find time for wellness, you must make time for wellness. So I always plan out my week to make sure I have something that is simply honoring me and reconnecting to myself. And I like to absolutely end the day with if I’ve carried any energy from people kind of just releasing it for myself and releasing anything difficult or negative and making sure I’ve learned from things and things have passed through me that I can’t record yet. But just making sure I also end my day with time I have what I needed to learn from that day. So I start with gratitude. And I end with what was the best part of my day? And what did I gain from my experience today?
Thank you for sharing all of that. And I have to say, It’s so heartwarming to me to be so passionate about all this work, and you’re working with our graduates. And, you know, as I’m getting older now about turned 50. And I, you know, it’s like watching my life’s work. And it’s not like, you know, setting up corporations and all that it’s people like you and the graduates you’re talking about. They were killing each other and getting out there and healing the world. So my goal we were not able to measure yet, but I’m really working towards it. I want to know what that 1000 graduates are seeing 15 or more finds per week. That’s 15,000 hypnotherapy sessions that happen every week. It’s probably happening now. But we just can’t measure it yet. But I want graduates like logging their hours somehow and get them to do that. Because Can you imagine, I don’t think we can really know the ripple effect that occurs when you have that many people healing, awaken people healing that many minds and helping to awaken them. So you’re had an attorney now, which is great. We’ve had attorneys go through the training, and I have my corporate office in downtown Tampa and the top one those skyscrapers. So, you know, I get to work with a lot of campaign attorneys and what Who are you going to be when you grow up? What do you like when you when you graduate? Do you plan on leaving law and going into full time hypnotherapy? Or what are your plans?
So the intention is, I have multiple intentions is step one, I’ve already started to integrate this within my own workspace, bringing in that light, bringing in that freedom to my own workspace because unfortunately, mental health in the legal profession is something that is often neglected. There are statistics recently issued by the Florida Bar and the amount of people that have said that they suffer from anxiety, the amount of people who have admitted to having suicidal thoughts was alarming to me. And I tried to integrate that within my own workspace. So my own workspace has a little van den, we have aromatherapy and I tried to tell people to really focus on their intentions and try to be well with the things you’ve accomplished in the day. Because there’s always so much going on, we’re never going to necessarily think we have completed everything on our to do list because the practice of law simply doesn’t work that way. So step one is integrating more of that into my workspace. And set two is creating multiple programs. So I have a company it’s called astral ascension, and we’re going to carry things a little further. So in addition to my book, rebirth of the saints, I will be doing retreats in April, July and December of 2023, where I believe I’m going to do my walk up the right way, a way that I wish someone had guided me in the sense that we’re gonna sit down, we’re going to talk about our intentions, we’re going to learn to ground because when you’re doing ayahuasca, there have a lot of things are really difficult. How do we reconnect with our breath, reconnect with our body, be still when we’re going through that experience. And then the most important part, one of my of that program is we’re going to do integration, have a one on one conversation again, because like you said, it is isolating, to have that enlightenment, it is freedom. And unfortunately, that freedom comes with the price of loneliness. So to have a community where I will be meeting with people one on one, where we were meeting as a group regularly so that we can integrate together and not feel so isolated. So I’d also like to integrate that hypnotherapy session into I know, there are many different types of hypnotherapist, and they all have their place. But my goal is to focus on teaching people how to astral travel. I believe that we are all our own healers, and I want to teach people how to heal themselves. And I am also part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. And what I’d like to do is introduce teaching mindfulness programs as well to children because let’s start young, there are very easy things we do. We can sit with children and have them close your eyes, whether you’re in a program or you have your own child, what do you smell? What do you see? What can you taste? That’s the very first step of mindfulness and learning how to stay connected to your body. So that’s what I want to do when I grow up. What I like to say, is, I read this quote, and I really like it. Every snowflake in an avalanche pled not guilty. And the reason I like that is a lot of people think they can’t change the world. It needs to be people like Martin Luther King or Gandhi or it needs to be our government who changes the world. And I respectfully disagree. I think that each of us can play a role and if we do a small thing, if we all have our light, and that light helps other people shine their own light, we can become that avalanche together. So I have many plans about what I want to do with hypnotherapy and also the practice of life but my ultimate goal is to be a snowflake that helps other snowflakes become part of that avalanche.
Well keep up the good work, because it’s so wonderful to hear. Really impressive, awesome vision. And yeah, if there’s any way we can collaborate, I’m happy to support you in any of that work with you. Beautiful. So how can people reach you if they want to eventually you be a graduate doing private sessions? I’m sure you’re amazing right now, if somebody’s got to work with you. So how could people reach out to you if they want to go on a journey or whatever? How do they reach you?
Sure. So right now, my website is Lonnie gonzalez.com and lanigondles.com. There’s information about my book and a way to contact me as well. I have also created a tic tac because apparently that’s what the kids do these days. And instead of providing you with dancing videos, or lip synching videos, talk about real life things such as suicide, anxiety, mental health issues, meditation. So those are two big ways to reach me is to follow me and get more information.
Nice. Thank you. And I can talk to you all day yet. We’ll have to wrap it up. So if you have closing words, for anybody who’s listening, like your highest words of wisdom, one profound message you can offer the world, what would that be?
thing that I would like to tell people and the most important message if I could leave one message is we are absolutely resilient. And no matter what happens, we are constantly and always intimately connected to the divine. And everyone is as well. So I encourage everyone to honor their own light search for their own light and own truth within themselves.
Nice. Thank you so much, Lani. It’s such a pleasure. I love you every word that came out of your mouth and if I ever need an attorney who does aromatherapy, I wish. I wish I had so much love and light to whatever. Yeah, I’ve worked with attorneys with but yeah, I look forward to hearing how your career develops with hypnotherapy and I Alaska and work with children’s beautiful. So thank you so much. Keep up the great work and yeah, I look forward to continuing the journey with your hair but that goes
perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you