speaker-0: I'm Mahima Razdan. I am a rapid transformational therapist and hypnotherapist. And I'm also training to be a psychoanalyst in NPAP. So we call us candidate psychoanalysts. those are all lots of big words, but basically instead of working with behavior or communication styles or that sort of stuff, I help people try to understand what's going on in the subconscious layer. What are they doing that they're not aware of? What are the stories that are not aware of that are driving their lives and their outcomes? ⁓ And so why they get stuck, but they can't see why.

speaker-1: Yeah. Before we get to all that, I want to ask, can you tell me a little bit about your own mental health journey?

speaker-0: Absolutely. So I did not have a very traditional entry into this career. I used to be a consultant first at Deloitte, then at Accenture. And the reason I got into this was actually I was going through a really difficult breakup. And it was a very dramatic end of a relationship that ended one day when we were coming back from vacation. And we had some sort of small argument and they left me. in the airport at 1 a.m. and in a huff. And it was a nightmare to get back because they had my wallet and my phone was dead. So I had to borrow money, get a bus back and all the way through while I was on this bus, I kept texting them and saying, sorry, sorry, sorry, which was ridiculous when you think about it. And I was aware, like as I was texting, like, why am I seeing so I'm like, this is ridiculous. And so I realized that was when something was wrong and we decided to separate. But I wasn't, while, you know, rationally, I was aware this was not the right relationship, these were not the right behaviors, we were not stable together, lots of arguing back and forth, I just couldn't quit them. And I went into this really big depression and confusion. So, you know, it was constantly on again, off again, confused at the same time, just in a cloud, I call it a fog. And I tried different things. So I went to a counselor, ⁓ At the time, the company had this kind of group of people that you could choose from. So I did CBT. I did a whole bunch of different things, weekly psychotherapy. And nothing was really moving the needle. Because I knew the things that they were saying to me, this is not good. This is that. This is this. I read the books. I had all this theory, but the emotion every time this partner would come back into my life, I'd still feel that attraction. And I even did the spiritual stuff. OK, what is going on there? And nothing changed until I worked with a hypnotherapist and they were able to take me back to the feelings I felt and they used that to take me back. you know, they regressed me and they would be like, okay, go back to the source of this pain. And I went back to a couple of memories, but one memory is really clear where I was three years old ⁓ and my parents had left me with my aunt while they were apartment hunting in New York. They'd just moved to the U.S. ⁓ And as a three year old, felt like they, that I'd done something pissed them off and they were gone. And that feeling in my body was like, ⁓ shit, like this really deep fear of abandonment. And also at that moment as a three year old, realized I have to be really, really good. Otherwise I'm going to be abandoned. And so what this partner represented in that moment was this feeling of not wanting to be abandoned. And so they abandoned me. They just became, I just. was doing everything to not feel that, not necessarily to be with them. And so that was really, really powerful, that realization. And the next time I saw them, it was just like seeing another person and I was like, I'm done. And it was such a relief because it's like, I don't need to think about you ever again. And so was like, what is this magic? And so over the years, I then trained, trained, because I was like, this is crazy. This can change your whole life. like within a few sessions, one session, two session with all the knowledge and information, like this just moves something emotionally. And so I started to train as a hypnotherapist, I started to see patients, and then I decided, ⁓ I want to learn more about how these memories, emotions, the subconscious works. And then I said, okay, let me try and get extra training in the subconscious and why we store these, how this happens. But yeah, that was a crazy start to the journey.

speaker-1: Yeah, from being a patient with hypnotherapy to helping others. How did that come along?

speaker-0: ⁓ It was just like a calling. So I did work in people transformation. ⁓ And I just got an option. We got some funding. I saw this course, I decided to do it, did it part time. And then during the pandemic, as many people did, ⁓ I started to see more people like friends, family referrals, and then thought, you know what, I love this so much because there's such a difference that you can see in an individual. The impact is so huge. that I just want to keep doing this. And then I decided 2022, I'm going full, full time and not look back since. And then I've just been training, yeah, and different things and getting, upgrading those skills.

speaker-1: So what is a rapid transformational therapist?

speaker-0: Yeah. So it is a school of hypnotherapy ⁓ that is focused on really, so it combines NLP and hypnosis, and it also uses CBT to change your habit of thought. So what you do in a session is you go back to three memories. So if somebody comes in for smoking or weight loss, or they can come in for, you know, relationship, any sort of behavior that they're really finding difficult. But you choose a specific area of your life. The more specific you are with something you want to change. So people have come in and said, look, I have ADHD and I struggle to focus in the morning. Can you help me? And because of that specific area, you know, focus, you would go back in case of what makes you distracted in the morning. And it'll usually go back to stories about rejection. So you'd go back to three scenes, you'd reframe those scenes. And just re-experiencing like a memory is so transformative. And that's why it's kind of wrap it and you then go into suggestion to finish that and then for 10 minutes you'd say, okay, now you don't need to feel this anymore. That's the past. These are the behaviors you want instead. And that becomes like a, what would, you most of the therapists don't do that. They'll give you suggestions, but they won't go back to the past and they won't give you a recording at the end, which is something you've listened to for 21 days because consistent research has shown that it takes 21 days of thinking something for it to become a. or 21 days of doing something. So you're like breaking the association of mourning, know, work, rejection, stress, all of that stuff is an association in your mind and your mind, you're mourning, relaxing, things get done, you feel great, you know? ⁓ So you're changing the voice in your head, but understanding where it came from. So just really powerful to get.

speaker-1: And you said a few things like ⁓ weight loss and sometimes you think first of taking care of your body and all that. But how does your mind come to play with losing weight, feeling better?

speaker-0: This is is this is such a crazy, you know, my experience with this has been so crazy, because there's so many people who have. So when you talk about weight loss, there's an exercise element and then there's eating. Right. But all of those behaviors are not driven consciously. So overeating is often like when I work with especially women is people overeat because they've had some history of sexual trauma at some point in their life. I found is when they regressed back. And this is like two, three years old and you take them back. They've had a really terrible experience and unconsciously their body, you know, their body's trying to keep them safe or their young child is like, I'm unattractive, no one's going to look at me. And so they'll overeat. They won't want to go to the gym. They'll skip. So there's so many things we automatically do that it's such a struggle to overcome with willpower. But to hypnosis, you understand, okay, so this is what I'm trying to keep myself safe from. And it's just so... healing, it's crazy. And people just drop weight. Like, I somebody who came in for something else. They, I can't remember what it was. I think it was again, procrastination or something and to get over a divorce. And they just, because once they released the pain of a divorce, they lost weight. Like she was like, wow, I lost like 20 kgs. did that happen? I'm like, yeah, because sadness, we hold those emotions on our body. body mind is so, so connected and these little things. You just don't know the butterfly effect if you work on one area and then suddenly you realize, ⁓ okay, something else has shifted.

speaker-1: And with hippotherapy, a lot of people think what you see on movies and TV. But what is it really like?

speaker-0: ⁓ no, it's not like you, it's so, a lot of people keep telling me, was I hypnotized? Cause I was awake. And I'm like, yes, you were. So basically hypnosis is the way that they identify is it's in a specific brain wave. There's a theta brain wave. So right before you go to sleep, have alpha waves, beta waves. Alpha is really deep sleep. Beta is when you're awake. Theta is when you're just in that kind of space between awake and asleep. And you're very, creative. So this is why people, when they have dreams or they wake up, they have all these ideas and they jot it down in a journal or people in it, you they say, oh, you get really creative in your sleep. So when you're in that specific brainwave, you're just really open and you're creative and you have access to a lot of memories. There's less defense. And so you go into that naturally. So if you're focused on reading a book, you're automatically in a different, you know, because you're just focused on that book, you lose sense of what's going on around you. and you're kind of imagining what's going on in that book, or when you're really focused in the gym, you automatically go into this brainwave during the day without realizing. So hypnosis is just the process of getting you to a relaxed state. get, you know, it's also the same state as meditation. So you're visualizing these things and you're just relaxed. You're detached from the environment, but you're still in control. So very often if people are experiencing something that they're not ready to, so if they're like, okay, I don't want to go to this memory and I'm telling them, okay, go back, they'll be like, okay. I need a pause or I'm not going to go into this memory. I don't want to describe this. Can we go to another memory? You're in complete control. You're just very, very relaxed. It's like all the tension of the boss and the whatever else and build, all of that just vanishes away and you just become really objective. That's how I would describe it. And it's like similar to meditation.

speaker-1: How does helping others help your own healing process?

speaker-0: It helps me believe that, so I think as an adult, you kind of lose that sense of magic and you kind of lose your like stuff is happening to you. And you can almost feed out of control. What I love with doing this work is you realize how much is actually in your control. ⁓ And it just makes you feel like this is, there is magic out there and you know, you are more powerful than you thought. And to witness that again and again. is reassuring for me personally as well because I'm like, no, you can do what you want to do. There are many, many ways you just have to open up your mind and your mind is working for you. So even, you know, just ideas and just moving forward, moving from pain, like it's all possible and you are powerful. I think that's amazing to witness, not just in my experience, but just from in everybody's life. And the more you see it, the more you believe, okay, there is magic.

speaker-1: Have you seen your clients confidence level rise as they go through the process?

speaker-0: ⁓ I've seen them like change into like completely different people. I've seen them quit relationships. I've seen them meet people, lose weight, like which they've been struggling to do for years. I've seen them, ⁓ you know, get, you know, start businesses, quit their jobs, start businesses and the business becomes profitable just because the blocks that they had of not, you know, the self-sabotage goes away. So I see them like, achieve all these things that they've always wanted. So it's crazy. It's lovely. I think the strongest thing, so one of the suggestions that we're taught in our school, that's the base of every suggestion is I am enough, which is it doesn't matter what your bank account is. It doesn't matter what your wake scale is. It doesn't matter whether you're single. It doesn't matter what your job is. You are enough. And when you see people fill themselves up with that feeling, it's just transfer. everything transforms, like everything starts from there.

speaker-1: You've talked about change in relationships, relationships, but I want to talk about another relationship, which is your career. How can you get in the right alignment without all this extra stress or burnout?

speaker-0: So it's really interesting because I have found that people... So one thing I noticed with people coming in, because the way that I started was, you know, kind of working in the corporates, a lot of people would come for burnout or, you know, procrastination. Those are one of the two things that a lot of people started to come for in response to career. And a lot of people who were burning out, wasn't just about the number of hours they were working. It was a sense of... Number one, like safety, did they feel safe at work? If they didn't feel safe at work, they would burn out. But if they had good teams or good colleagues or felt connected or were able to voice their opinion and, you know, felt that they had like a kind of safe landing space, didn't matter how many hours you work, you wouldn't burn out. And the second thing that was a cause of burnout was meaning. So if they felt that their work was meaningless and pointless, they would burn out faster. So burnout really isn't about how much you're working or anything like that. It's about these two things. And when you realize and you start to regulate that nervous system where you say, okay, I am safe. I am capable. If it's not this job, it's another job. And when that sense comes in, when I am enough, it's title doesn't matter. That aligns a lot of people to okay, so if I'm enough and then your brain starts to get creative and you're like, okay, so what do I really want to do? And then that helps them find their purpose, whether it's this job, another job, another career even. ⁓ So I really work a lot with just helping them find that sense of safety internally, and then moving from there.

speaker-1: What do you do to help your own mental health?

speaker-0: So usually I always, so whenever I'm choosing a therapist, I always ask them, you in therapy? Because we always need to be, ⁓ especially when we're training, but also outside of that, I do have my own therapist because it's helpful to keep being in the process. Otherwise, how are you working with people if you don't believe in what you're doing? So that's one thing I really, really stand by. And I do a lot of yoga. It's like a daily practice for me. Because again, the body like holds so much stress and just moving turning Stretching makes such a big difference. So these are the two things that anything else can go can go but those two things will not go. Yeah

speaker-1: Where do you want to see your mission in the next, say, three to five years?

speaker-0: When I look forward to the next three to five years, what I would love to do or create is like more awareness around hypnosis and different techniques, because it's not a widespread technique. A lot of practitioners, they'll do EFT or they'll do EMDR, but this sort of practice is 3000 years old, but because of the media and these scary stories, you know, it's not something that people know that can help them. So I would love for people to have more awareness and spread awareness about how powerful this is and how much this can change your life. And the second thing I would like to do is combine hypnosis with somatic movement. So there is a little studio in Chelsea and we try and do this class once a month, which is a mix of hypnosis and dance movement just for people. this is usually a bunch of women. I want it to spread beyond the women, but. people come in that usually 10, 15 people and we'll practice like a scream together, which is so healing and then do the hypnosis to relax the body. But I think if I could spread more awareness and do more things like that, that would be the goal in the next few years.

speaker-1: I actually want to know more about that. So how does dancing and hypnotherapy come together?

speaker-0: ⁓ it's, it's, it's so the first, so the first thing is we're not aware of our bodies, right? We don't know what it feels like. So we're aware of pain or whatever, but we don't know where the emotion sets what's going on. And there's so much emotion in our body. Like people will say, I feel heavy, but they're not in the, in your daily life, you switch it off. So the hypnosis part comes in the awareness. Okay. I'm enough grounding experience. And then also it helps you loosen up the dance movement is just doing wild movements together with people. And just shaking stress from different parts, because again, we don't move our body. We're in desk, either we'll work out or go to the gym. We go back to the desk or maybe we'll go for a walk if we have a dog, but we don't really, we're not, we don't use our body as much as we do our minds. that class is such a way for release because you start to increase the tempo and you realize you've kept stuff so people will have shoulder pain or whatever else it is. And they'll just shake it off at the end. They'll be like, this was such a release because you carry Especially in this city, so much stress. We need to be fast, we need to be on time, we need to be switched on. Everything is expensive. Relationships are harder, stress is harder, rent is higher. So all of this stuff we carry everywhere, like we're stiff here, our leg is stiff. We're just not aware of it. So it brings awareness and then just the shake off is just really powerful.

speaker-1: What advice would you give people going through tough times, stress, rent, all that stuff?

speaker-0: stuff. You are more powerful than you realize and tell yourself, if you can, if you tell yourself daily that you have incredible coping skills and that you are enough, your life circumstances might not change immediately, but your ability to deal with it just shifts. ⁓ and trust that you are powerful and you can get through it. And the more that you know that the less ⁓ Stuff will keep happening, the less you, you know, pain, you know, the Buddha is saying is pain is ⁓ unavoidable, but suffering isn't. You can avoid suffering. You don't need to make it mean, okay, I've lost my job. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna starve. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna, you know, if you tell your mind that story, it's just gonna become harder for you. Whereas you've lost my job, good things will happen. You know, I have these capabilities. what ways can I get creative? That you open up the brain's ability to get creative. And so just keep telling yourself those two things. You are more powerful than you realize, and you have incredible coping skills, and life just becomes easier.

speaker-1: How are you doing now?

speaker-0: Now? Oh, I'm great. I feel like I'm building something. I think I'm building a, before I think I was in a space where I was more, I have a job. I feel like now I'm in the part where I have my career, a career that that's really meaningful. So it's really lovely to talk to you as well. You get to meet new people and do really cool things.

speaker-1: So how can people reach out and learn more?

speaker-0: ⁓ so I kind of see people in person in the studio in moving body studios in Chelsea, in Manhattan, and I work online. and so they can either reach out to me on Instagram or on my website. It's panawin.com. The name means sanctuary and it's about finding that inner sanctuary. So they can either find me on Instagram or the website.