Hypnosis for Sexual Problems
By Susanna Sweeney, MSC, MBACP, CHT
Master Hypnotist Kaz Riley Introduces Sexual Freedom Hypnosis
If you are looking for hypnosis for sexual problems, Kaz Riley is the hypnotist for you.
I had the privilege to interview Kaz and she talked to me about her program- Sexual Freedom Hypnosis. Watch the interview in my closed captioned video, or read it in the article to find out what sexual freedom hypnosis is all about and what it could do for you.
Hypnosis for Sexaul Problems- Kaz Riley Introduces Sexual Freedom Hypnosis
Susanna Sweeney: Kaz you're very welcome, Kaz Riley in Huddersfield in the UK joining me for a chat. It's lovely to see you. How are you?
Kaz Riley: I'm very well thank you. How are you?
Susanna Sweeney: I'm great. And Kaz, tell me We'll start straight into the stories. How did you get involved with hypnosis when you started first?
Kaz Riley: Well, it's kind of- I've had a lifelong obsession with hypnosis. So my first introduction to hypnosis, believe it or not, was Scooby Doo. And I saw a cartoon when I was a child, and where there was Scooby Doo and a clown and I was just quite fascinated by the idea that you could hypnotize somebody, and it kind of all kicked off from there.
So it's been something that I've always had an interest in and when I went off to university in the 1990s to study biology. At the same time, I was also I was a sufferer of IBS and I had horrendous anxiety. I was very, very shy, very, very withdrawn and took myself off to see the university counselor in Liverpool. And it just so happened that this guy was a hypnotist and I came out the other side of it a completely different person.
I'm not known now for being shy, for example. So it obviously worked and that kind of one thing led to another and I knew then at that point, that's what I wanted to do. So that's where I trained and I've been a hypnotist now for 20 years. So yeah, in a nutshell, that's how I got into hypnosis. It's all thanks to Scooby Doo.
Susanna Sweeney: And thanks to your bowel. So and and yeah, and there is a lot of scientific research actually behind IBS and hypnosis- it seems to be very helpful.
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. Yeah. Even though the NICE guidelines recommend hypnosis now, they don't allow it on the NHS but it's on there. Actually. shown to be effective, I think it's an 80% of refractory cases. So when nothing else has worked, hypnosis will work in 80%. So that that's pretty cool.
Susanna Sweeney: Oh, that's right. I saw that recently there's- something has changed on the on the guidelines that they actually now, when after a year, the medication hasn't worked for you, they kind of say go for hypnosis.
Kaz Riley: Yeah.
Susanna Sweeney: So do you work with IBS clients at all?
Kaz Riley: I do. I do. It's it's not...
Susanna Sweeney: It's not your specialization, but we often...
Kaz Riley: It's not my specialization. It was one of my first specializations. So my first two kind of niches were fertility and IBS. And actually both of those kind of evolved and led on to and I actually use techniques I learned with specialist hypnosis for IBS, some of those have been adapted into sexual freedom hypnosis program actually.
But you know, it's it's something that I used self hypnosis for a lot until, actually, years later, I was actually diagnosed to celiac. So I actually managed to control a lot of my own celiac symptoms, but certainly with IBS, you know, it's normally for up for the way I do, it's four to six sessions over a couple of months. And you know, people don't realize I think how debilitating something like IBS can be.
Because, you know, people are terrified of not being near toilet and you know, things like going to the cinema being trapped in theaters, all that kind of stuff really kind of plays into that. So it's great when people get control of it, and they can kind of enjoy life again, isn't it? You know, things like that can be very scary. If you're worried that you're going to have an accident at any given point. It's it's quite an anxiety provoking thing, IBS, so...
Susanna Sweeney: Sure not to mention the pain levels...
Kaz Riley: It can be for some people yeah, absolutely. It's just so uncomfortable isn't it can but we know we know don't we as hypnotists, our heart, our head I've got there's more serotonin and neurotransmitters in our gut than there is actually in our brains. So, when we talk about that gut reaction, it's a it's a, you know, it's a true thing. You know, it's we talk about as if it's not a real thing, but actually, it's a true physical thing. It's not even just an emotional thing.
Susanna Sweeney: Hmm. Yeah, you colon is, the emotional organ. I think some people say that now, some people, you know, it's kind of beginning to sneak its way into more accepted circles. But it's often the way I think what what therapists see in action, it takes years and years for that to feed through into the medical world, right?
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. Well, when we just think about it, you know, I think every hypnotherapist general practices based on anxiety symptoms that are around anxiety. And when people come there that say they feel their anxiety here we think about hypnosis working here, and it does, but their symptoms, the symptoms that the client have got, we talked about the churning stomach and- they say where do you feel anxiety, they go like this don't it's their chest and their tummy.
So, you know, we kind of know you know, what starts in the mind moves in the body and what's in the body moves into the mind. And, you know, that's what's so great about the work that we do as hypnotists, isn't it is that we can, you know, work with both if you like, it's not just one thing or the other thing. It's it's a more holistic thing, I guess.
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Hypnosis for Sexual Problems- Kaz Riley Interview continued
Susanna Sweeney: It's holistic. Absolutely. So tell me then your current specialization, this is what you're really big with, right? It's all the the the sexual theme. So tell me how you got into that.
Kaz Riley: Well, on the back of a lot of the anxiety work that I was doing, I did a training with an amazing couple, an amazing woman she's called Lindsay Eastbourne from Col... from the Colorado hypnosis center, I think. And basically, that's where I started was working with the fertility clients working quite closely with some of the IVF units up here in the north of England.
And what I actually discovered was that many people are having fertility treatment, because they've got a sexual dysfunction. So they've got either erectile dysfunction, but more often than not, is actually women with vaginismus.
So for people that are watching this that don't know what vaginismus is, it's where you get this involuntary cramping of the vaginal muscles when either a penis, a tampon, a finger, anything like that is attempted to be inserted into the vagina.
And that can actually even be a woman's own fingers. It's not necessarily just in a sexual situation. It's this kind of response that they get. And I started working with that it made sense to me to, to kind of rather than just working alongside the IVF.
And also if a woman's having IVF she needs to have a speculum in there, there needs to be egg collection, all that kind of stuff. So we did a lot of work looking at how we could do that. And actually, that's kind of where the IBS stuff came in, where I had learned a technique called gut directed hypnosis where you're kind of looking at all the different muscles and allowing everything to kind of slow down or speed up or relax down or tighten up according what needed to be done.
And I took that concept, of course, a smooth muscle that's in the gut is actually the same that's in the birth canal and applied that principle. And we ended up with something called yoni directed hypnosis and it works beautifully for vaginismus. So you know that it kind of segwayed from one into the other the fertility the IBS and of course, what happens is, when you work with something sexual and you work with sexual dysfunction, and you advertise for it because people, you know, it's the most searched for term with hypnosis is sexual hypnosis.
Susanna Sweeney: Right.
Kaz Riley: And you know, even above stop smoking, anxiety, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, the clients just start started coming, if you pardon the pun, and you know, and then we start working with a lot of other things, things like anorgasmia, and premature ejaculation. And then some some of the other things that we'll talk about in a while. I don't know. We'll see. But so yeah, so it was...
Susanna Sweeney: Yeah, it's a very rare specialization really. I mean, it's not an average hypnotist that dares to go out there and just, you know, and put themselves across as a specialist...
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. It was one of those things that wasn't an awful lot of training out there. You know, a lot of it is a lot of what I've done I always say I'm a coal faced hypnotist because even though I go out training and I go all over the world training, my main practice and my main passion has always been and will always be my clients.
You know, I always say to my students, everything I'm teaching them, my clients have taught me You know, we've kind of worked this out as we've gone along together. And but that's surely the best way of getting something that works, is when you- you know, you kind of refine it so it gets better and better and better. So I always say my niche found me essentially, rather than I kind of looked for my niche, it just kind of evolved that way. I think everybody's niche kind of does that eventually for them, doesn't it? Hmm.
Susanna Sweeney: Well, I've been in the trauma field for for 25 years. I've got I suppose my, my niche hasn't changed. What's happened for me is I've picked up more and more methods to make it more efficient and faster as I've gone along.
Kaz Riley: Yeah.
Susanna Sweeney: So it's, it's been that process of, you know, can I be more comfortable, more comfortable using my intuition more and tuning much more into change and how to achieve that.
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. It's refining what we do, isn't it? I like anything it's practice makes perfect. The more we, the more we do it, the the better we get at it. And...
Susanna Sweeney: That's for sure.
Kaz Riley: Yeah. And hypnosis is just the same isn't it, you know,
Susanna Sweeney: For sure. It's like any other therapy. So tell me- why why hypnosis for the sexual issues? Why hypnosis, why not CBT or something else?
Kaz Riley: Well, I think that, you know, CBT can be great. And I certainly use CBT within my practice. Ahm but the thing about hypnosis that I absolutely love with regards to sexual issues is that, you know, our mind is our biggest sex organ by by a million miles every every bit of arousal that we ever experience starts in here.
It's either something we thought about, it's something that we felt it was, you know, something that we saw something that we heard, it's a memory that's triggered off, and then that kind of feeds into the body either in a very positive beautiful kind of way or in a way that can be actually very detrimental to somebody's life. So if they have a sexual dysfunction that normally is then compounded by masses of anxiety, and what I love about hypnosis is that we can get to those things.
So rather than, you know, I always say to people rather than just trying to rationalize something consciously, hypnosis works at a much, much deeper level. And also we can make re-associations much more easily. So if there is something that's causing a lot of anxiety, so I don't know say for a woman with vaginismus, it might be even the thought of being penetrated or a man who has got erectile dysfunction.
For example, the idea of he's going to lose his erection as soon as he starts to have sex. All of that causes a lot of anxiety so we can kind of reprogram those patterns of behavior. We can, ahm really kind of get get to the kind of the real, the real nitty-gritty of it, but also, ahm it's not just about the physical aspect of sex. It's also about things like permission for pleasure.
There's a massive reeducation part of it. You know, the way that people learn about sex now is is very much on the internet, you know, and a lot of it's just plain wrong. And so all of that, and we can feed all of that in. And so it's not just about kind of rationalizing something, it's about changing how we think about it, how we feel about it.
Getting rid of shame, shame is a biggie with sex because it's a taboo subject, yet, it's the only way any, any human could actually be here, two people had to have sex. And when we start to look at it like that, and we start to take away the shame and the guilt around it, then, you know, it or "shilt" as I call it which is shame and guilt kind of combined.
Susanna Sweeney: I like that word- "shilt"...
Kaz Riley: Yeah. And so it's just a better way to, to really kind of allow people and also they can start to explore some of the things in their mind that perhaps, they've been embarrassed about. Or, you know, I work also as a kink friendly hypnotherapist so people that have alternative sexual practices, or they'd like to explore that they can do that within the privacy of their own mind.
Or, you know, you can experience orgasm with hypnosis, even if you've got anorgasmia. So you get to experience what that's like. And then you can start to train your body to respond in a different way or to, you know, react in a different way or a better way. And you just can't do that with talk. You can't do that. Just start talking to somebody you know, it's- I love the process of it. And the clients love it because that, you know, I think they can feel something different happening, rather than just talking about it.
Susanna Sweeney: Hmm.
Kaz Riley: Well, I think you froze. Oh I think you're back. You're back.
Susanna Sweeney: I think we're okay. So the the thing I really liked was your introductory line into your work is about connection. Right, and that makes so much sense. So where hypnosis is used to create that connection with yourself first of all, before someone else does that, how you look at it?
Kaz Riley: I do because I think the world has with regards to sex has got focused on the mechanics, you know, a penis in a vagina. And actually, you know, when I look at the clients that I've got, you know, I work a lot with libido, for example, and it's all about connection.
It's about how do I feel about this person? How do I feel about myself? How do I feel about my body? How do I feel about this experience? And it's all about communication and connection. And when people allow themselves to do that, when I when I see couples, for example, that, you know, their sex life has disappeared. It's usually about a breakdown in connection.
People talk about communication, and they say they're not communicating. And I always say even if you're screaming at each other from either side of the kitchen, you're communicating. What's happening is, you're not connecting, and you kind of see that light bulb of, you know, it's not necessarily about giving information. It's about that being seen heard and valued, isn't it? And we all need, and we need to do that for ourselves as well.
Susanna Sweeney: Absolutely. And so tell me when clients come to you, you do one to one work, I assume that's really probably most suited to this. And then what what's it like working with you? What kind of methods do you use? What can clients expect?
Kaz Riley: Okay, so, methods that I use are massively varied depending on what somebody actually needs, but I tend to work on a protocol. When I say a protocol, it's five elements, so they're not necessarily in in a particular order.
So we I always start out with a really in depth consultation, and I think that in the case is actually super important because first of all, it starts getting the client talking about sex really openly, frankly, and without the embarrassment. And actually just that processes is very therapeutic.
But it also allows me to truly understand what's going on with them. And also any kind of misinformation that they may have got or misunderstanding. So some of the things that I'll see- ahm I had a gentleman in yesterday who told me he got premature ejaculation because he could only last for half an hour.
And, you know, his his point of reference was what he'd been seeing on the internet. And then, you know, such as someone actually, it's about five and a half minutes, usually before somebody ejaculates. So you are well ahead of the game. And he was like, Oh, really? You know...
Susanna Sweeney: He was doing well...
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. I' thought you know, and I can find out things like and I know I kind of ran off before we started but I use things like this. So this is...
Susanna Sweeney: Tell us what this is. This shiny little object...
Kaz Riley: Yeah, this is a life size printout model of the clitoris. And when you look around...
Susanna Sweeney: Hold it up a bit more... Because it's so shiny that it's... Oh yeah, when you have your hand behind it, we can see that.
Kaz Riley: So when you look at the size of that against my hand, and were taught, and men are taught that there's clutter the clutter, so men can't find it.
It's this tiny little button. And because most of it is internal, and this is in the pre-aroused state, once a woman becomes aroused this engorges with blood in the same way that the male penis does. I know, you know all of this, but just, you know, just for people watching this.
You know,when a woman realizes that, you know, that actually, it's not this tiny little thing and they start to understand their own body and they're educated about their body because still today, certainly here in the UK, girls and women, you know, and we go for the sex ed classes that talks about contraception periods, tampons, painful childbirth, you know, there's the, the, you know, boys will talk about wet dreams.
So they talk about orgasms and condoms, and all the other stuff, you know, the pleasure stuff. This is the only organ in either the male or female body that is purely for pleasure. That's its sole purpose. And yeah, you know, I...
Susanna Sweeney: Here in Ireland, there is no talk about pleasure at all, in fact, you are lucky if you get any sex ed at all because most schools are still Catholic...
Kaz Riley: There we go...
Susanna Sweeney: Because teenagers go to YouTube or dark net to find out about sex.
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. And of course, what they then find is pornography.
Susanna Sweeney: Exactly.
Kaz Riley: Detrimental to women. It's very male-centric, it's hands free. It's all about penetration. There's very little connection on there. Ahm, and if you think about then how that forms in somebody's mind, especially a younger mind, have their point of reference of what good sex looks like.
And also in terms of bodies as well. So, you know, everybody in the porn industry, you know, women are often not always but often, you know, they've kind of been augmented, who have had breast jobs. And even things like the female labia, you know, people have had vagina plastics and men's penises are gigantic. So people are comparing themselves to that.
So right before they've even had a sexual experience. They're, you know, they're in a bad place with that, and that, you know, that kind of feeds in. But I even find people that, you know, are older will find that, you know, they're kind of looking and thinking, well, I've been doing this wrong all this time, or I should, you know, like yesterday, I should, you know, I only last half an hour. And it's like, you know, that that's more than long enough. You know, that's more than long enough, but it's very penetration centric. And of course, great sex isn't just about penetration. It's not just about that...
Susanna Sweeney: No, as us girls know...
Kaz Riley: Absolutely...is a teeny tiny part of it and, ahm, you know, but also that's where girls go to get their sex education. So what they're seeing is, you know, I always say is that being some hole and being bent over a desk and kind of all that kind of stuff going on.
And then, you know, they expect that their bodies will react like that. And of course, that's not how most people's bodies react. So then they make the assumption that something is wrong with them. So, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, that's the first step misinformation and then of course, you get the usual things that we always had in the playground where, you know, somebody's heard something and you know, it kind of whizzes round and that's still, that still occurs today.
But then there's even more out there in the internet. And sadly now of course, you can get most misinformation confirmed on the internet. So if you believe something to be a particular way, and that's what you search for, then you find that that you know, you can be told that that's true even when it isn't. So it's kind of, you know, we're kind of I think, although apparently we're becoming more sexually liberated, the issues are also becoming greater because of that, because of the misinformation out there.
Susanna Sweeney: Mm hmm. And you know these are all valuable points you're making...do you go and give talks anywhere?
Kaz Riley: That's something that I'm looking at. I give talks not to schools at the moment, but I think it would be a useful thing for somebody to actually go and talk to kids about connection. And it's, you know, I always say to, you know, they teach at the moment about contraception, but they don't teach about affection.
And actually, you know, you know, I understand why, but then when you look at European countries, you know, a lot of places like Holland where they have a much, much lower teenage pregnancy rate. And that's because their sex education is just so much better and open and wonderful.
But although saying that I went to Amsterdam last year with with my printed out clitoris and was out on the streets of Amsterdam and asking people if they knew what it was on, in the red light district, and nobody did. So even though we were stood in front of the sex shops and we were stood you know, there was everything that you could possibly... still nobody knew what ta clitoris looked like, which I just thought was astounding.
But that anyway, that's a little sideline, but I do go out and talk a lot ahm... I took a go and talk a lot about libido and things. So a lot of women's groups. And I also go and teach some of the stuff ahm, you know, I go to kind of kink conventions, and I go and talk about what kink friendly hypnosis is, and all that kind of stuff. And so I do go out and speak a lot and to kind of client groups, but I think it would be great if we could start getting some of the youngsters and just give them better information sooner, because I just think that will help them to make better choices as well.
You know, it's that if we demystify something, then it allows them to make informed choices rather than ones that are based on what they saw on YouTube, which is never going to be good, is it?
Susanna Sweeney: Absolutely. And so you started into- you've talked a little, I assume this is what you've talked about what you see as the causes, right, of sexual issues. And is there anything else that you think on a personal level that you see, you know, in, in individuals, you've talked about the societal level of that...
Kaz Riley: Yeah, what the the several things I mean, things like guilt and shame, like we've already touched upon, and personal experience is another one in terms of just what kind of experiences somebody has had. So that could be very negative experiences like assault or abuse when they were younger, but that can also just be you know, even things like somebody's cheating on them.
One that I see a lot is where somebody caught an STD. And then they felt terribly ashamed about that for you know, their carry shame around that, you know be no because somebody wasn't, you know, gave them something that they didn't know, you know, and often that's in kind of early sexual experiences. One of the biggest causes of sexual dysfunction actually is antidepressants.
And, you know, people often don't realize that, you know, because low libido, for example, can be an issue or a symptom of depression, that often people they're not asked by their doctors, when they're taking antidepressants, how their libido is, and we also know that it causes things like delayed ejaculation and anorgasmia, to the point actually, that they do use antidepressants as a method of treating premature ejaculation.
So you know, it's some- this is why I love to work holistically is because we look at the whole thing rather than just erectile dysfunction, for example, we look at the whole person and it's, you know, it could be, you know, how they're how they're interacting within their relationship.
It could be that they've had a bereavement, you know, it's all all the things actually, that we work with every day as hypnotherapists, but people don't ask the question, and how's that affecting your sex life. And actually, I always said to people, you know, whether you choose to work with sexual issues, per se, you are always working.
If you're working with adults, you're working with sexual people, and therefore by default, you're working with sexual issues, because if somebody is anxious, that that has an impact on their libido and on their sexual function, if somebody is depressed, that has an impact on their libido and their sexual, you know, their sexual function, and it has an impact on their relationships and how they connect and you know, so many things and they're very stressed at work if they're not sleeping, you know, all of these things we see every single day in our offices, don't we all, or online as we are now...
Susanna Sweeney: Sex is the hidden piece nobody talks about.
Kaz Riley: This is the thing. And often it's the thing that people really want to talk about. But they're embarrassed to, or they're worried how the therapist might react. And this is why, you know, if you go to any of my websites, it's kind of everywhere. I'm happy talking about this.
And you can approach me about this. Because, interestingly, and you know, there are still a lot of therapists that are uncomfortable talking about sex. And, you know, that's kind of one of my missions, even if somebody doesn't want to work with it. nobody's saying that you have to work with anything that you don't want to work with.
But you have to be able to ask the question to understand what's going on with the client, even if you then refer on to somebody, because our sexuality and our ability to connect and to have great sex is actually very fundamental to adult life. And you know, we need to just accept that and get on with it, I think...
Susanna Sweeney: We have to accept that we're sexual beings.
Kaz Riley: Absolutely. We are though, aren't we? You know, it's part of being human. It actually is. Yeah.
Susanna Sweeney: Such a big part. And tell me have you written a book about that yet about your sexual specialization?
Kaz Riley: Very nearly. So. umm, I know, I know, we spoke- I'm actually severely dyslexic. So ahm writing a book is actually the hardest thing for me. Ahm but we're, I am actually nearly there with three books.
So there's one that's aimed at hypnotists, so, hypnotherapists, which is about a lot of the techniques I use, ahm that's nearly there. And we've I've nearly got a book done about working with- about libido, because that's one of the most common things and then there's one that's very looking more around female sexuality because the women kind of get left to one side you know, when you look at the research around sex it's all about men, you know, and if we look at it, you know, and, you know, and the men need help, too, and we're not we're not saying that men shouldn't have the help.
But, you know, a lot of the studies that were done on men were just then kind of applied to women. And of course, we're very different, you know, our bodies work differently. Our arousal works differently our libidos, you know, fed by many different things. And, you know, we're still in a place where, you know, women are, you know, told that we should have lower libido than men.
For example, and, you know,I've had woman women come and see me, because their libido is higher than their husbands' or their partners', and they want to do something about it. And you know, I have to point out to them very gently that, you know, you would never find a man that came into the office and said, "My libido is higher than my wife's, so I need to do something about this." It's about them not feeling bad. Mm hmm. Crazy true as you know, so we still have a lot to learn...
Susanna Sweeney: So for women, I missed that. Oh, yeah, there's a little break up. We'll just give it a moment to come back to normal there. I think we're back now. But it's like that, isn't it for women, that's when you have a lot of libido, this shame attached to that, which would never happen with a man, never...
Kaz Riley: No, not at all. And just ridiculous things. I mean, ahm two of the two of the most recent things that I've heard, ahm one that I always I always mention, one is that you know, ahm ah my partner says, I must have a very slack vagina because I've had sex with 50 men. And I remember saying to this one, well, how does that different from having sex with the same man 50 times? And she's kind of like, well, it doesn't. I was like, exactly. This is about controlling women.
This is about shaming women shaming women, and had somebody else a gentleman that phoned me up and he said, I would love it if you could make my wife ahm more kind of open so that she's a lady at home, as she always is, but then is a slut in the bedroom. And I said, Well, let me just say what you've said. I said, traditionally, a slut actually is somebody who was paid to please man who probably wasn't having a great time, but put on a great act, that she was.
And I was kind of like, is that what you really want and he was like, oh, my goodness now, and I was like, we need to think about some of the terminology. You know, if a woman wants to be called a slut, that's fine. But you know, just because a woman has a healthy libido, enjoys sex that just makes her a woman that enjoys sex, it doesn't make her a slut, and we're still, we're still today... whereas if men that, you know, go and have lots of sexual partners, that's just seen as what men and boys do, isn't it?
Susanna Sweeney: Ah hey, that's like, great, if they do...
Kaz Riley: Good lad! Yeah, you know, and it should just be the same for both sexes, really, you know, so, yeah.
Susanna Sweeney: And women get shamed for it or...
Kaz Riley: Yeah, yeah. And they I'll see women coming into this office who you know whether it's for fertility or if it's a sexual dysfunction or something saying I wonder if I'm being punished because I had a lot of sexual partners?
I am like, no, you know so what you no matter that's what you that might be what you that might not be your choice now and even if it was your choice now so what is your choice it's your body and you wouldn't ever hear of a man come in and say "I had a lot of sexual partners I feel terrible" or not usually, even now you know now I'm now I'm in my 40s I feel it must be because I did that when I was in my 20s and you just they just you know just wouldn't happen with it. So there we go. We've got work to do still. We've got work...
Susanna Sweeney: Fascinating, though. Fascinating. So tell me you train people as well. Right talk a little bit about that.
Kaz Riley: I do. I am I train- it's a sexual freedom hypnosis- it's a practitioner program is for people that are already trained as hypnotist and we don't cover any kind of basic hypnosis in there.
Um, you know my background as a biologist as well so I teach people things to like hormones, what you shouldn't does, what testosterone does, what oxytocin does, you know, how all that kind of stuff how kind of fear and anxiety play into sexuality. And then we look at various areas, we look at female sexual issues.
So things such as vaginismus, and things like low libido, obviously, that's male and female, and painful sex and, you know, even things like sometimes I get women that have got things like vulvic psoriasis, who, you know, and we know that skin conditions respond very well.
So everything that people do generally in their hypnosis practice all kind of feeds into this. Ahm male sexual issues, which are usually premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, but also we get sexual confidence and all that kind of stuff. I look at couples stuff so I teach people how to do mutual hypnosis. If they're working. That's a connection kind of process. So we've got a couple that are in hypnosis together.
And we can get that communication flowing, which is a really beautiful kind of thing to watch, and all kinds of other stuff. And then I also cover the ahm LGBTQ plus stuff. And all of the stuff that we do everywhere else is obviously completely relevant because people are just people. And but it's also about things like confidence to come out and things like supporting somebody as they go through transition, you know, things like inner child stuff.
Obviously, if you're working with somebody who is transgender, often they have male and female inner children just for example. So it's just how to adapt to work with things like that. And then I also cover the kink family stuff that's a lot about education, what is consent, how that works, and how the law stands, all that kind of stuff.
So it's a two day course at the moment, I suspect it's probably going to get bigger it ever grows it evolves as long as we kind of go with it, and but, you know, there isn't, as far as I'm aware there's been a lot about psychosexual dysfunction but this is much more than that. It's looking at how the mind and the body work and, and also about the current trends and thoughts because as things become more acceptable people don't feel bad if they're not doing them.
So I always say to people, you know, if you're a person that wants to have all the sex, that's fine, but if you're not, that's fine, too. So it's also about being able to say no, as well as say, yes.
Susanna Sweeney: Wonderful. I think every hypnotist should take that course.
Kaz Riley: I would agree but I would.
Susanna Sweeney: And is that available yet online? I saw you had something, some kind of an online training?
Kaz Riley: We do and we are going to be teaching it I think probably it's gonna be a little bit later this year. And I'm just kind of waiting to see, I have still got some in person teaching booked in, but it's going to depend on what's happening with the Coronavirus and whether it's safe and you know, all those kinds of things.
But probably later towards this year, I think probably in September, and I'll be looking at doing it probably actually over four half days. And I think it's just nice little chunks and it gives people a chance to go away and think about and try stuff out and then come back and do it. So I think that's probably the way I'm going to do it.
Susanna Sweeney: And is that, did you say, in person, or online, are you doing...
Kaz Riley: Online, this will be yeah, look. But I have at the moment, I'm still scheduled to be teaching at Hypno Thoughts in Las Vegas in August. And I'm teaching at the mid America hypnosis convention in Chicago in October so we'll just we'll just see what happens...
Susanna Sweeney: If that's going ahead.
Kaz Riley: I just have to wait and see but...
Susanna Sweeney: You have, there was an online training that you had advertised recently that was kind of permanently online that I get that wrong?
Kaz Riley: There is one there is one and with the via the European Hypnosis Academy, which is a recording of so it's just a recording of the, the sexual freedom hypnosis that I taught in Belgium a year last March, though and so that that is available and but we're looking at doing like a live online training in September so people get the opportunity to have that, that the questions and answers also, you know, things have evolved a bit since last March, but we can get people updated.
I have a policy, once somebody is trained with me, they always get the updates because this is an ever evolving thing. And they get those forever for free because, you know, I want, I want sexual freedom hypnosis to evolve. And of course I've got the most amazing students so they go and do something, they make it better they tell me about it and then we can make it better for everybody. So That's how that works.
Susanna Sweeney: Just sounds amazing your work. And so tell me this is my concluding question that I ask everyone. Kaz, if you had a magic wand and you could change the future of hypnosis, what would you look to achieve with your magic wand?
Kaz Riley: Oh that's a that's a great... I think I would just kind of take away the mystery of it as in you know, the kind of the the shroud that of skepticism around it. But I would keep the magic of it because it's such a magical process. And I think the clients really love that, you know, they kind of go through that kind of process.
But if I could take away some of the stigma around it and I see the future of hypnosis has been extraordinarily bright. You know, I know whilst and you know, whilst we've been in lockdown for example, I know hypnotists have been doing pretty well, because we work, you know, everything worked so beautifully, you know, the things like hypnosis downloads, for example, the sales of those have skyrocketed, views on YouTube have gone through the roof. So for me that would be it is just to make it much more acceptable and accessible for a lot more people.
And for what I would really love to do with it as well is to is for people to if I could just kind of rather than people saying it doesn't work or they don't know anything about it and making assumptions it's just give people the knowledge so that they just know that all that research is out there because it's so heavily researched. And and it is so effective. So yeah, I think had just kind of I am on a bit of a mission to do that anyway, that's kind of my thing.
But um...yeah, yeah, I mean, there's just so much that we can do with it isn't there, you know, it's, it's not the panacea for everything but to really, I don't know, just to take away that kind of mystery around it, but keep the magic of it. If we're able to do that, I think will be my would just be wonderful for our craft.
Susanna Sweeney: Sounds great. So Kaz, thank you so much for joining me for this chat. And we wish you all the best for your trainings. Hopefully that those conferences won't be canceled now with Coronavirus and that you can move forward to the next stage really soon with your books and so on. I'm certainly very curious. I want to own them and look forward to reading them. So thank you and we'll chat again soon.
Kaz Riley: Thank you for having me.
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Kaz on hypnosis for sexual problems. Please leave a comment underneath and let our community know what you think.
Regards,
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Hello Venturer,
Welcome to my Online Hypnotherapy Clinic.
I am Susanna Sweeney, accredited psychotherapist and hypnotherapist.
I have been helping people to overcome their blocks and move forward for 30+ years.
Along the way, I have fallen in love with hypnotherapy.
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