'A friendly spirit gave me a great gift' (From The Northern Echo)

'A friendly spirit gave me a great gift'

6:01am Tuesday 6th February 2007

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By anyone's standards, Susan Dunlop has led a fascinating life - including training as a minister, becoming an actress and living in several different countries. She tells Women's Editor Sarah Foster why she's finally settled down as a hypnotherapist in York

BY her own admission, Susan Dunlop has certain Pollyanna tendencies. I'm in her living room in York, where she performs her hypnotherapy, and as she smiles at me benignly, the smell of incense fills my head. It isn't long before she's speaking beatifically. "I've realised that what I have done with my life relates directly to my profession as a hypnotherapist, because hypnotherapy is all about helping people who have decided that they want to make a change in their lives, helping them to find the courage, the vision, the inner motivation and beauty to actually make these positive changes," says the 54-year-old.

"We all have these choices we have to make. It's like the battle in Lord of the Rings between light and darkness. We can choose to feel sorry for ourselves or we can choose to create our lives and make them full of vitality and joy."

I know which option Susan has gone for, then. She is American, which helps explain her effusiveness, and she has travelled widely, as far afield as Israel and the Caribbean. Her first career was on the stage. "I have two bachelors degrees - one in religion and one in theatre - and I was a professional actress and director until I was about 30," says Susan. "If you're in the theatre there are moments on the stage when you step out of time, space and ego into something that's almost holy. In other words, you have these mystical moments of beauty and meaning, so you can see how they are directly related."

Though Susan qualified as a minister, she's never taken to the pulpit. She says that this is not her scene. "Although I've studied organised religion intensively in the course of my life, doctrines and dogmas hold no interest for me - but the spirituality underlying all religions I find infinitely mysterious and beautiful," she says. "I'm ordained as a non-denominational pastoral minister but I don't preach. I'm not interested in that."

Instead of entering the Church, she viewed her training as just a means of spiritual growth. It was an incident in her youth that sparked her interest in this area. "The reason I probably have taken this whole path in my life is because when I lived in the Virgin Islands when I was 17, we had a spirit who lived in our house," says Susan. "She would hang around and she would play the piano downstairs when no one was there. I was the eldest of five children and in the end, the entire family, including my parents, were aware of her presence. She didn't stay very long but when she left I knew that there had been an exchange, that she had given me a great gift, a certain knowledge that life is a process of growth, that we continue to learn and experience after death."

Despite her rosy view of life, Susan hasn't always had it easy. She first got married while in her 20s, to a man she calls "a violent actor", and was a victim of abuse. "I was lucky because I grew to dislike the person I was becoming so much that I was able to break it off," Susan reflects. "I think many women take a long time to learn to love themselves and set boundaries according to what they will and won't accept."

Her second marriage seemed more promising. She had two children, now grown up, and thought her husband was for life - then after 20 years together he walked out. "For the first year I think I had to remind myself to take each breath, but I attended divorce recovery workshops and found them to be so powerful that ever since then I've been teaching them and doing a great deal of divorce recovery hypnotherapy," says Susan.

The marriage breakdown led her into this profession. She started practising in Florida, where she then lived, then brought her business over to York. After years of roving, it seems she's settled in the city. "I came here knowing no one, mainly because I love it here and had decided it was time to grow perennials, have log fires burning, have animals underfoot," says Susan. "In other words, I'm here to stay."

She aims to sort out people's problems, from excess weight to fears and phobias to serious traumas. She works intuitively, employing all her spiritual know-how. "Intuition is a great aid, like in any profession," says Susan. "Lots of hypnotherapists work from stock scripts. I would warn people to avoid that type of technician because every human being's experience is unique and needs to be treated as unique."

She sees hypnosis as a tool, enabling people to connect with their subconscious. It's this that's key to making changes. "When people go inward in this altered state they can perceive their lives and their possibilities almost from the position of their higher self, and all of a sudden, all this vast potential that they had forgotten is revealed," says Susan. "They understand that they could be happy and that they deserve to be loved and that perhaps the next step in their pattern is even the dramatic step of learning to love themselves."

While some may say this sounds like brainwashing, she claims that nothing is more natural - or less intrusive - than hypnotherapy. "Hypnosis is a very natural state - we hypnotise ourselves daily," says Susan. "All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. The hypnotherapist is really just a guide. I normally just talk to people and they lie on the couch and close their eyes and listen. People who don't want to be hypnotised cannot be hypnotised. The hypnosis subject is awake, alert and in control all the time. They don't say anything or do anything they don't want to and in most cases, the subject doesn't need to talk - they just listen."

What matters most is the result, which Susan says can be dramatic. She says some clients are transformed. "Probably 20 per cent of my clients are weight loss clients," she says. "Those who listen daily to the recordings of their sessions lose on average three pounds a week, but what amazes them is how the hypnotherapy affects almost every area of their lives. They report sleeping better, having more energy, experiencing less stress, the improvement of relationships et cetera. Positive thinking is a positive force in your life."

Of this she's certainly living proof. Pollyanna-ish she may be (her children tease her with the name) but Susan radiates well being. The one thing missing is a man - but even this could soon be rectified. "I'm going to meet my soul mate here," she declares, and I believe she may be right.

l A Luminous Life Hypnotherapy, 01904-626047 or 07946-927441. As well as practising at home, Susan offers treatment at The Zentist in Gillygate, York.

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