In Conversation | Lucy Russell x Clementine Myers

About

Lucy Russell practises Integrated hypnotherapy. She lives on the Balearic island of Mallorca and holds in person and online appointments with international clients - both private and corporate. Her work connects people to their unconscious mind, diffusing imprints and unpicking patterns that have proven destructive. Working with Lucy allows for new programs and neural pathways to be created enabling you to purposefully emerge into a place of new and generative possibility.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life
and you will call it fate”

C.G. Jung

Background, Career & Experience

Lucy spent her formative years moving between Europe and the Far East, navigating different cultures and environments through immersion, observation and intuition.

The expansive nature of this foundational experience continued as she graduated in Business, and embarked upon a twenty-year career in marketing and advertising. During this time, she lived in New York, London, Amsterdam and Sydney, where she worked agency and brand side for some of world’s most prominent and creative global organisations such as Tate Modern & Tate Britain, Virgin, Hendrick’s Gin, Heineken and Qantas. She was outwardly successful and content, yet often felt overwhelmed, disconnected and alone, longing for answers and a deeper sense of purpose. She found this purpose through the study and practice of ancient healing systems and later, clinical hypnotherapy.

She attended immersive teaching programs in ashrams in India and The Bahamas qualifying as a Hatha yoga teacher. She then went to Mexico where she continued studying yoga and meditation in silent retreats and was initiated into the Reiki lineage as a Master Practitioner. A move to Australia led to her deepening her interest in neuroplasticity which later led to her studying Hypnotherapy and qualifying as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Master NLP Practitioner. Her broad training and professional career, as well as her personal experiences, have informed her practice and perspective.

‘I was aware of an abstraction that existed between my inner and outer world. I couldn’t reconcile the two until I became cognisant of neuroplasticity and epigenetics, which led me to clinical hypnotherapy, and resulted in an immediate convergence. I left my career, I left a lot in my life, and my profession became my purpose - and this for me is fundamentally an expression of love. To work with mind of another, to indicate the presence of another, is an enormous privilege’.

Viktor Frankl speaks of this love in his seminal text, ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’

“ ….for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love”

Where are you and how are you today?

I am very well, thank you Clemmie. I am writing to you from my home in a small Mallorquin village situated between the Serra de Tramuntana and Mediterranean Sea – encircled by biblical, bucolic landscapes. I have been here for over two years and each day is still a revelation. Before sunrise this morning I ventured down the mountain passing by sheep, goats, wild roses, jasmine, orange blossom and passion flowers to arrive at a self-fashioned yoga deck jutting over the water beneath renaissance skies. At times I fear this may all cease to exist if I avert my eye, but of course such terrain will outlast us all, and I find solace in this certainty. An ephemeral yet perpetual beauty.

“The sense of deep time brings a deep peace with it, a detachment from the timescale, the urgencies, of daily life… a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth”

Oliver Sacks

Does laying down roots for yourself and your practice in Mallorca feel a bit like coming home?

The notion of ‘home’ has been somewhat elusive to me, yet Mallorca does feel as I imagined it to be. Movement was inherent in my upbringing; my family were in the military. I was born in Germany, raised in Brunei and England, and my maternal Grandparents lived in India. Adulthood took me to London, Amsterdam, New York and Sydney each a home, yet impermanent. The poet John O’ Donohue, explores the concept of an inner landscape suggesting that our bodies are mere outlines of a vast and complex interior world. And he often contextualises this through the outer landscape, the visible world. In a figurative and literal sense I feel I have come home on this island There is a sense of inward harmony, imaged by the earthy yet numinous quality of this land and the people I hold dear here. It has felt like an unruly, solitary path at times, but each segue and divergence has brought me to a place of purpose – of acceptance. Our living is in the departure and the return, and for me Mallorca is symbolic of return, of renewal in this stage of my life.

Who or what has been your greatest teacher?

My experience of life itself for it has presented the people and circumstance that formed my experience, which I have shaped and reshaped in the pursuit of understanding, knowledge.

Whilst my childhood was expansive it was also precarious. Love and good intention was there but it was complex, which is not unusual. My body knew fear early on - and I learned how to disassociate from it. Everyone did the best they could within limited conversance and difficult circumstances, my parents made great sacrifices for me to have the opportunities that were unavailable to them, yet the pain of our past knows nothing of reason or rationale, and these imprints can mark generations.

My longing to feel safe and belong would distort my sense of self and I developed mechanisms of control, judgement, people- pleasing and perfectionism, which pervaded my partnerships and work. Suppressed anger would surface when I felt unseen, or sensed injustice, followed by shame that would withdraw me into silence and solitude. My mind created narratives of unworthiness and aloneness and later my physical body revolted against me - imploring me to listen. And I did.

I had a proclivity for exploring the opposites and I knew there was a deeper truth to be felt. Solace was found in the observation of others and the transcendental - art, philosophy, reading, dance, poetry, travel. In my early twenties I discovered yoga which was a doorway into various healing arts such as energetics, ayurveda, acupuncture, naturopathy, gestalt therapy and meditation. Later tempered and contextualised by my work as a hypnotherapist.

There have been significant individuals who have taught me and oriented me towards new paradigms - from classroom to boardroom to ashram - too many to justly acknowledge here but to whom I am forever grateful. Teachings need not transpire from the mouth of a sage or academic or scientist, the most potent are effectuated by the direct and familiar - from our relationship with ourselves, our bodies, our minds, one another- and how we respond determines our experience.

“Freedom does not mean escape from the world; it means transformation of our entire way of being, our mode of embodiment, within the lived world itself”

Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosh

“Taste everything but only swallow what fits”

Virginia Satir

“What counts is what we are, and the way we deepen our relationship with the world and with others, a relationship that can be one of both love for all that exists and of desire for its transformation”

Italo Calvino

“The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through”

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

One of the things people often say about your work is that it's unlike anything they've ever experienced therapeutically. Why do you think your practice is such a unique experience and has such a significant effect on people?

My work directly responds to my client’s unconscious mind through hypnosis. For this reason, the approach has also been described as ‘self generated’– that the therapeutic process is not being ‘done to them’ but ‘with them,’ which I feel is a good summation. You don’t need to subscribe to a system or ideology, you don’t need to imbibe anything or even to have the words to explain what you are experiencing for hypnotherapy to be successful. I think this is liberating - it is about you, your psyche, your perception, your feelings and your reality. For this reason each appointment is a unique experience in and of itself.

I pay attention to language - be it verbal, physical or symbolic - and induce hypnosis to create an opening to achieve the outcome my client desires. This outcome is defined in the context of the issue from the outset in order to contain the work and tangibly track progress - the rest is responsive and revelatory.

Hypnotherapy offers a way to induce change without defining that change . Where there is unprocessed memory or emotion I facilitate integration. Where there are chaotic thought patterns, beliefs or behaviours I enable my client to organise and restructure their experience so the conscious and unconscious mind can attune and harmonise. One can intellectually define the dynamics of pain such as trauma, fear, sadness, depression, anger, shame, anxiety, worthlessness – but the experience of these catchalls are distinct in their genesis and expression for each of us.

By working directly inward, by going to the root, clearance can be given to swift and epiphanous change that is often quite as unexpected for me as it is for my client. This is the uniqueness of the work.

“It is the patient who does the therapy. The therapist only furnishes the climate, the weather. That's all.”

Dr. Milton Erickson

Whose mind would you most like to explore?

This is a tricky question! No one has a ‘perfect’ mind or life. We are at once simple and complex, wonderous and flawed. Capable of brilliance and fatuity. We change again and again, so we can never know what we may find in the mind of another.

This aside, I am fascinated by the psyche and stories of others. I devour biographies and ‘in-conversation’ with podcasts and there are various minds I would enjoy being privy to for different reasons.

I would especially like to know how Brancusi and Rodin could sculpt animate beauty from material; the brush and pencil stroke of Degas, Matisse, Picasso. The eye of Henri- Cartier Bresson and the ear of Debussy. I would like to swim around in the consciousness of Carl Jung, Freud, Milton Erickson, Susan Sontag, and David Attenborough; to experience the knowledge and insight of Gabor Mate, Oliver Sacks, Resma Menakem, Virginia Satir…

I wonder what would it be to have the perspective of Carlo Rovelli and Plato. To feel the command of the written word through Primo Levi, Kathleen Raine and Emerson. The voice of Nina Simone. The brilliance of Maria Popova, Elizabeth Day, Jess Mills, and Jessica Chastain - I love these women. For me they strong, articulate and courageous change-makers living purposeful lives with honesty and joy - without denying its inevitable complexities.

Do you think Hypnotherapy is a Science or an Art?

It is both. I think this is why it resonates with me as a therapeutic practice. The Oxford English Dictionary defines science as “knowledge about the structure and behaviour of the natural and physical world, based on facts that you can prove”. And in this sense hypnotherapy is a science – the hypnotherapist is informed by principles and process to achieve a desired outcome. But there is also an art involved in engaging with, and responding to, the innermost being of another.

The irony is that we create and confine ourselves from the very same mind.

Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 1 (1915) by Hilma af Klint

“To think that what we have at our disposal, the biggest thing in the universe, and that is language, What we can do with language…is infinite . Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person's soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of words that she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said”

Helen Ciroux

We live in such disorientating times from social media scrolling, bombardment of news, a lack of trust in political systems and practices. How are we supposed to navigate this strange new world?

There is a tension between the progression of technology and the impact it is having on the human psyche – and society. On the one hand it can offer power through knowledge connection, and the opportunity to emancipate ourselves from dogma and outdated systems. But on the other side is very real loneliness, detachment, comparison, overwhelm, despondency. Things are moving so rapidly that we are struggling to keep apace which puts tremendous strain on our already overloaded psyche and nervous system.

The constant bombardment through screen connection, keeps our brain and nervous system in a beta state of ‘fight or flight,’ which thwarts our ability to self-regulate and move into the alpha- theta state of ‘rest and digest,’ which is vital for our emotional and physical health. Furthermore, our brain will respond to actual or imagined threats in a similar way – so if we are continually exposed to adverse news and behaviour, it can feel as though we are embodying it. The hyper-stimulation can be confusing and suffocating but also addictive. It is not surprising that we are starting to witness the complexities of the medium reflected in the complexities of its outcome.

I have noted an upsurge in clients presenting with stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and feelings of inferiority or ‘not good enough-ness’. It is not to say that technology or social media alone is responsible for this but it can compound and amplify existing vulnerabilities an increasingly frenzied society. During the process of hypnotherapy the client moves from a ‘Beta brainwave frequency’ into ‘Alpha- Theta’ the optimal conditions for nervous system regulation- and the conditions for creating deep, automatic change. From this liminal space the release and processing of sensations and feelings can be facilitated and new patterns and pathways created. During times of chaos, tumult, and over stimulation anything we can do to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and rejoin with who we are is essential.

“Work pressures, multitasking, social media, news updates, multiplicities of entertainment sources—these all induce us to become lost in thoughts, frantic activities, gadgets, meaningless conversations. We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present.”

Gabor Mate, The Myth Of Normal

Trying to Find You 1, 2007 Tracey Emin RA (b. 1963)

“An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer”

D.H. Lawrence

How do you incorporate joy and peace into your daily life?

‘Joy’ and ‘peace’ are often approached as nouns, as entities to be aquired. If we can approach such words as verbs, as an unfolding or an invitation to animacy they take on a dynamism and a flexibility that can feel more attainable. Not as something ‘out there in the future’ be ‘worked for’ or ‘acquired’ but something that can unfold and we can live into. For me experiencing ‘peace’ and ‘joy’ intersects action and non-action, of having goals and desires and working towards them, but also being receptive and flexible to ‘the way life is’ . As soon as I am fixated on an outcome, on the way something ‘should’ be, I am inevitably disappointed … though it is a constant practice!

In a practical terms I endeavour to set the conditions for these states to occur – learning, eating well, being close to nature - water, travel, walking yoga, pilates, art

s i l e n c e

d a n c e

I find joy in countless small things, I am awed by most . The discovery of a new word or concept, a bowl of tea, a forgotten book, a wrinkle, the gait of another walking, sky, soil, breath, the heart of another …

“When we lose sight of beauty our struggle becomes tired and functional. When we expect and endure the beautiful, a new fullness is set free within us, between us, the heart ceomes re-kindled and our lives brighten with unexpected courage”

John O Donohue

What would your younger self think of the person you have become and the road it took to get here?

She would be proud of the person I have become - a word that unexpectedly lands here. There have been hopeless moments and times where it could have been easier to give up. But for me, in the final analysis, the measure of a life lived fully is how comfortably I can sit with myself, how available I am to experience this world in all its wonder and all its terror , how much I can love and contribute to the lives of others.

The path of knowing oneself, of healing oneself, is not linear. It can be fraught with self-doubt, fear, pain, difficulty and chaos, but these are also our openings into self-understanding, growth and consciousness. It takes tremendous courage to know these depths, which I recognise in each of my clients. Astonishing bravery, resilience and humility often exists beneath the facade of a seemingly ordinary life.

I’m sure you have clients from all walks of life who have experienced all manner of trauma. Some may be trying to survive a present crisis or simply navigate their general day to day existence. What are the biggest areas of connection?

I feel very lucky to work with a spectrum of clients from around the world across diverse issues. Trauma is a common theme in my Practice - be it a singular ‘big T’ traumatic incident or complex trauma rooted prolonged or repetitive adverse experience or trans-generational legacy. But hypnotherapy can also be utilised to enhance or elevate aspects of one’s life.

The language of ‘trauma’ is part of mainstream conversation thanks to the prolific work of individuals such as Bessel Van Der Kolk, Peter Levine, Dan Siegel, Resmaa Menakem and Gabor Mate who posit that trauma doesn’t have to be an abject event such as sexual exploitation, violence or war but it can be the seemingly small, insidious events or circumstances that begin in childhood and compound over time.

Clients have issues such as anxiety, overwhelm, depression, burn out, anger, abuse, addiction, fear, feeling helpless, not good enough, worthless, useless, ashamed…. feelings may be described as being stuck, frozen, blocked, trapped or lost. In discussing the logical cause they may cite an event such as parental divorce, being shouted at by a teacher, being afraid or bullied as a child, moving a lot, being the last to be picked up from school and they dismiss these things as being silly, insignificant, common. But these are the traumas that lodge within us– at the time they threaten our sense of safety and belonging and unaddressed, they impact our mental health and sense of self.

Poetry seems to be a great passion of yours, can you guide us to some of your favourite poets and poems and talk a little bit about your relationship with poetry.

The poet W.H Auden says “Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings” . Mary Oliver once said that poetry is a “ a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” .

Meaning can be found through the words or in the space around the words, between what is said and unsaid, written and withheld. It is participatory and spacious – it enlarges our language , it helps us to bring awareness and new expression to that which lives within us and around us.

For me poetry is a bridge between the conscious and unconscious - the place where words give way to metaphor, symbolism and intuition. Master hypnotist and psychiatrist Dr. Milton Erickson was known for his application of teaching tales and metaphor to create therapeutic change by utilising a story that enabled clients to translate meaning into their own life and consciously generate new outcomes and possibilities. This art is also inherent in indigenous culture where storytelling is used to open up inner pathways for regeneration and renewal.

“Words create worlds” Wittgenstein

I couldn’t possibly narrow my favourite poets to a few as I wouldn’t want to exclude those that I cannot recall or have not yet encountered, but around me now I have words of John O’ Donohue, Mary Oliver, Louise Gluck, David Whyte, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Sappho, Kathleen Raine, Neruda, Keats and E.E.Cummings.

When was the last time you cried?

In answering these questions tears have surfaced for the first time in a long time. I suppose there is a sense of remembrance - perhaps relief - in arriving at a place where I feel stable and so fortunate to be doing this work. There is something in narrating our lives that brings it into presence, imbuing us with significance and existence. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to the stories of others - those of my clients, written autobiographies, interviews, intimate conversation. I prefer to listen and observe, so to overhear my own story for the first time has been edifying.

It has helped me recognise that I have crossed a threshold. I was once gifted a native American ‘Talking Stick’ by a shaman to facilitate gatherings and storytelling circles. When you have the stick, you are given the floor, and no one is allowed to say anything until the speaker has passed the stick – not to interject, to contest or even to comfort. It allows the person to share their opinion or tell their story uninterrupted. It is an act of generous listening, it is an offering of presence and empowerment. Thank you for passing me the stick Clemmie.

“Every moment of our existence is linked by a peculiar triple thread to our past—the most recent and the most distant—by memory. Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives”

Carlo Rovelli

I have heard you say that no one is broken, why is it so easy to feel that we are?

There is some nuance here. I believe I have said that ‘we remain whole and complete even when we feel lost and fragmented’. The distinction is important, words can be slippery.

In my experience both personal and professional, I have observed that when one feels lost, uncertain, confused, in chaos, in pain there can be a tendency towards feeling inadequate, bad, less than, lacking, incomplete.

Destructive or unresourceful emotions and behaviours can emerge to escape, control or override the pain, such as shut-down, addiction, depression, obsessiveness, anxiety, anger. We can find ourselves stuck in destructive patterns and looping thoughts that disorient and block us. And here – I have arrived at a direct response to your question - we can feel defeated, defective...broken. We un-inhabit ourselves.

And why? Often because of a painful event or experience in the past, or an inaccurate interpretation we made about ‘who we are’ or ‘how life is’ when we were much younger with limited awareness and perspective. Unless such things are consciously processed or corrected we unconsciously live our life from that place of pain or view it through distorted, broken lens. And this can be the undoing of us. Taking us to dangerous places that rob us of our spontaneity, our hope, our resilience, our powers our creativity. But we aren’t the things that happen to us, we aren’t the meaning we make of things, we aren’t the beliefs that we have collected, inherited, or generated. We were something before all of these things and nothing can deprive us of our innate value and wholeness. Not sickness, not injury, not pain, not suffering, not misjustice, not misrepresentation, not unkindness, not violence, not loss.

And it is the fragmentation, the brokenness that can haul us into new conscious awareness and possibility, so that we may integrate and evolve and begin again and, in doing so move closer to the truth of who we are and what we want to experience in our life.

“Breakage, whatever its cause, is the dark complement to the act of making; the one implies the other. The thing that is broken has particular authority over the act of change”

Louise Gluck

What is the unconscious and what happens in Hypnotherapy ?

Hypnosis is an inner state of focused absorption whereby the conscious mind is bypassed allowing the unconscious to come to the fore so that selective thinking, suggestion and change can take place. It is a safe and natural process in which the client retains control. Contrary to popular myth, hypnosis does not require deep-trance or in-person contact to be effective, it can be induced through conversation alone.

The conscious mind is only our current awareness, that which we witness and have direct control over. Logical, analytical, rational and deliberate, it expresses itself verbally through the language of words. This mind enables us to interpret and navigate our external world by constructing internal schema or ‘maps’ that inform our perception of ‘how things are’ or ‘the way things should be’. However, Sometimes these maps can send us off course. They can simply be inaccurate or distorted as the consequence of inherited or acquired patterns and programming.

Our unconscious mind is unbridled and holds everything the conscious mind can’t. This inner world encompasses all that has been witnessed, imprinted, and exiled. All parts of us. It harbours our creativity, spontaneity, memories and dreams. It is the origin of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, behaviours and communicates through the language of metaphor, archetypes, symbolism, imagination, intuition and feeling.

Suffering arises when there is disharmony between the conscious and unconscious mind. Once connected to the unconscious through hypnosis we can excavate, discover, integrate and renew from a place of stillness and surrender. We can identify and diffuse the root of our pain and create new, conscious ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

My approach, in all cases, is guided by my client and how they are experiencing their issue. I then employ processes and techniques to enable them to perceive, process, and move through their issue at the unconscious level and integrate this consciously.

These processes and techniques may involve my regression and release, we may engage with different parts and voices that are being suppressed or restricted. We might work directly with symbolism or metaphor. We traverse time – the configuration of how that person experiences memory - to access awareness and create opening into new possibility.

One of my clients described the connection and progress she made in our sessions - “it’s allowing oneself to hold the hand of the person who suffered whilst being able to be the person who no longer suffers.”

Another described it as “Therapy on speed - there is a difference between a cognitive understanding of something and a visceral feeling...it has changed the way I see everything.” And another was able to access realsiation that had blocked her entire existence with origins in mimicking behaviour she observed when she was young – it didn’t belong to her - and she was finally released in her fifties. I often hear that clients feel like a ‘whole new person’.

La Perspective Amoureuse (1936) by René Magritte

What was the last artwork you connected with and why?

I was in Paris at the end of last year and I visited L’ Atelier Brancusi and Musee De Rodin, the works of both transport me. There was an Edvard Munch retrospective at Musee D’Orsay ‘A Poem Of Life, Love and Death’, which was pure emotion, at once confronting and fascinating. His iconic symbol ‘The Scream’ once emerged during a personal hypnotherapy session whilst I was training as a practitioner, and marked the beginning of a significant transformation for me.

I am also constantly moved by the creative work of artists and friends on this island Anna Alexandra, Louise Despont, Louka Leppard , Stefania Borras, Zoe L.V.H and her partner Tom for the alchemy of their plant-based regenerative products.

What does the year ahead look like for Lucy Russell Practice?

2023 has been a grounding and significant year for me. Primarily, I hope to see my Practice grow to be able to support more people. I will continue working one- on -one with my clients in the physical and online space and will move the Practice from Mallorca to London in the summer months.

I am developing an offering to take into businesses, leveraging my experience and understanding of the marketing world to support the wellbeing and creativity of those in leadership positions. Whilst also wanting to find a way to give my time to those that do not have means from different cultures and sectors of society.

In terms of my continued learning and application, I am fascinated by the power and therapeutic potential of symbolism and metaphor, which I will continue to explore. I am also particularly interested in the field of trauma and will continue to focus my professional development in this area.

Some words to send us on our way……

“Think….of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.”

Rilke