Anita Raj - Healing through Hypnotherapy

I first met Anita Raj, most fortuitously I must say, almost ten years ago when she had just moved to Hyderabad. My mother was unwell with cancer and in great discomfort and Anita, then known to Shobha, was kind enough to come by and do some reiki healing for my mother. My first impression of Anita was that she was very professional about the whole affair - no extra talk, focussed on the job, on the patient and one could see that she genuinely wanted to help and bring my mother some peace. Those days I was in some kind of a haze - clutching at any straw if it helped - knew nothing about energy healing. Anita was a huge 

support. When my mother passed away she came along with our other friends and I vividly remember the concern she and her husband Raj had for us.

We met more often later - a whole bunch of common friends - Sailaja, Anita, Anil, Lalita and others. She was the tarot expert for the Times of India in Hyderabad and had a weekly column - a celebrity of sorts really. We participated in a few workshops together and I always found her to be great fun. In fact if you met her outside you'd think she was the perfect party girl - full of fun, energy and life. Anita has a great sense of humour, is generally found laughing at something or the other, has a completely irreverent take on life and hardly the serious 'healer' one would imagine. But she is all serious about her work (and she switches on and

off instantly). Raj, she and young daughter, moved to Bangalore later on for professional reasons but we continued to meet whenever she visited Hyderabad. Even when Anita and Raj moved to Germany we would meet when she visited Hyderabad on her annual vacation.

These days when I go to meet Keerti, my editor and good friend, in Bangalore, we often stay with our friends Vandana and Ramesh who live in the same community as do two other friends of ours - Anita  and Raj and Kanchan and Anu. Life it seems keeps us in the loop one way or another and whenever we are in Bangalore we certainly pay her a visit. Over the years I noticed that she has studied and practiced many more healing and energy techniques that help people find peace. I decided to find out more about how she got into this work and how it helps the average person.

To set things in perspective - Anita is an MBA from Xavier’s Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar, with Human Resources as her specialisation. For several years she managed her own HR consultancy

in Bangalore called Career Interface where she helped people find the right jobs. But over the years she gradually moved on to a slightly different route to help and empower people - something far

more deeper than merely connecting jobs to people. As a reiki practitioner, a hypnotherapist, a tarot reader, she now helps people through therapy to deal with problems that seemingly have no probable answers. I was
keen to know her how she went about this transition and how she actually helps and supports people.

What exactly can one expect when they come to you, I asked.
Anita said she uses hypnotherapy to help people find their answers and peace. Certified by the California Institute of Hypnotherapy, Anita has completed her five levels of therapy. Going by her busy calendar,
she is one of the most sought after therapists in Bangalore.

What about reiki and tarot, I asked her. Does she still do tarot readings?
Anita said she does tarot readings and reiki as well. She finds that all the various techniques and tools help her in helping and healing people. Sometimes even before therapy, she uses the tools and techniques she has learnt to settle down energies, dissolve any resistance, and create a better healing space. However, she feels that it is hypnotherapy that works best to solve any issues that people may carry.

How did this unconventional journey start, I asked.
Anita said that it started during her days as a HR consultant where she felt the need to understand people better, to find them the right jobs. Sometimes she felt that people had unrealistic expectations and were getting stuck in jobs they were not suited for. To help understand people better, she would go to well known therapist Saul Pereira in Bangalore to observe and learn as he worked with his clients. She hoped to use the learning she gained in her HR recruitment process. This period helped her in the path she later took in her life.

Anita wound up her recruitment agency when she moved to Madras with her family. That was when she saw an advertisement to join tarot card reading classes. She joined, thinking it would be a one week course.

Anita recalls how her teacher Gopal, a young and erudite person, patiently taught her all about energy, how it moves, and how it can be used for healing. He taught her much more than just tarot she feels. What started as a small foray grew into a 9 month long learning journey for Anita. During this period she learnt what it means to view the world as one, to travel in time and to manipulate energy. Anita found it a deep and fulfilling experience and it set off the otherwise light hearted and fun loving girl into taking this work seriously and help
those who found no conventional answers.

How did she actually start consulting, I queried.
When Raj and Anita moved to Hyderabad (around the time when I met her) she started reading tarot cards. She recalls that on their 13th wedding anniversary Raj gifted her a copy of Louise Hay's 'You can heal your life' – a book that she found highly empowering. She used Louise Hay’s techniques on a couple of persistent health issues and miraculously her problems disappeared - one a chronic and long standing issue - which completely vanished. Impressed by the power of the mind, she sought out Sailaja (a certified workshop facilitator who trained with Louise Hay herself) and made her to conduct a 'You can heal your life' workshop. Anita felt that the workshop really empowered her. And the seed to meet and help and heal people was sown.

What did she find in her years of work in the energy field, I asked.
Anita says emphatically that almost all psychological and neurotic problems have their basis in the person feeling 'not being loved'. She went and met the famous regression expert Dr. Newton in Hyderabad - an

experience that left her with an understanding that 'neither the king nor the pauper is different and that she has been both.' That experience expanded her world view and gave her a wider perspective to life which she applied to herself and to her clients. Regression helped her and her clients gain a different perspective to death.

How did the journey progress further, I asked.
When they moved to Germany Anita could not continue her tarot reading mainly because of the language issue. She however used her time to learn more and went to the guru of regression Dr. Brian Weiss (author or many books such as 'Many Lives,Many Masters' and other bestsellers) and attended a 5 day workshop in Boston along with 300 strangers. The experience left her with a fuller and deeper understanding of energy work and its positive effects.

Back in Bangalore after her German stint she attended the hypnotherapy course conducted by the California Hypnosis Institute and completed 5 levels of hypnotherapy. (She now proposes to do her Hans Tandard

course which is far more advanced level of hypnotherapy.) It is a structured and certified course which is monitored.

How does hypnotherapy help, I asked.
Having seen and studied many different ways to deal with people's issues Anita feels that hypnotherapy is shorter and more effective than cognitive therapy which takes longer. It helps shed baggage. For
one, it changes the frame that one wishes to look at life in, and helps look at oneself and what one really wants. It helps regress one into a happy life. It moves the person from thinking that it’s always

someone else's fault (we never think that we're like that too).

All sorts of issues can find some resolution through hypnotherapy. Especially those to do with deep rooted beliefs and blocks. It can encompass any area of life - health, relationships, career and so on. However where hypnotherapy cannot help is with schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, depression, bipolar personalities - anyone who is not in their senses such as autism, retardation, cerebral palsy. It is not advisable for those less than 8 years of age.

How does it work, I asked.
What it does is bring in the trigger from the sub-conscious mind which is considered 8000 times more powerful than the conscious mind. The triggers can come up from the past life to the present life. Therapy
is prescribed to get a better result that the client hopes to get with the issue.

Where does one learn hypnotherapy in India, I asked.

The two places one can learn hypnotherapy in India are at the Hypnotherapy institute of India, Delhi and the California Hypnosis Institute, Mumbai.

How has her experience as a healer been?

Anita feels that in any form healing it is important to remember that the healer is only another human being. All the healer does is surrender to that person's highest good and the healing energy does its work after that.
Typically her clients come to her after trying everything else. She also feels that these days people are recognising that other forms of healing complement the allopathic medical process. Anita says a lot of doctors come to her for pain management (for themselves as well as for patients) where hypnotherapy works well. That itself is a big validation.

Where does she see herself going from here, I asked. What she considers her purpose in life.
Anita says that one of her main missions in life is to demystify death. People want the perfect death. They don't allow the person who is dying to go peacefully with their lack of understanding of death.Understanding death will improve our perspective to life.

What is her big learning that she wants to share with others, I asked.

That we are spiritual beings in physical bodies says Anita. Also that one can understand and tap into our own healing and spirituality by spending time with oneself. Sit quietly by yourself and a lot can happen she says.


That concludes the rather brief interview I had with Anita on a rather vast and intriguing subject that is finding more space in these times as we look for more ways to cope. The website of the California Hypnosis Institute of India states that hypnotherapy is a safe, highly effective method of facilitating healing solutions for most part of the century. It is considered especially useful to stop habits, manage anxiety and stress, induce psychological and emotional well being, improve physical conditions and also for personality development.

As a practitioner of hypnotherapy, but more importantly as someone who understands energy work from several view points and practices techniques and tools such as reiki, tarot and more, Anita is well on the way to help people heal and find their own peace. She is someone who has genuine concern for people, someone who acts instantly on her intuition and someone who sticks by her belief. Her commitment to people's welfare can never be doubted and I for one have experienced it first hand. (And, she is always good to have a laugh with as well!)

Here's wishing Anita a deeply satisfying, enriching and successful journey down her chosen path and I am in no doubt that she will affect many lives positively. For those who wish to contact her please call her on 097413 99482 for an appointment.