My Story

I was one of those kids who was born contemplating the nature of the universe. I loved to spend hours lying on the ground, looking up at the sky or into the branches of trees. (Actually, I still do.) I realized early on that, although my parents hadn't known it, the letters of my first name, "Ruth," could be rearranged to spell "hurt," and the letters of my middle name, "Leah," could spell "heal" — and I took this very seriously. I was intensely aware of the pain in my family, as well as in the world around me, and I wanted more than anything to understand what created it, and how it could be healed — but no one around me seemed to know. I was always what people called "a good listener," and I was often told I should become a therapist — but the idea held no appeal for me, since I hadn't encountered any therapy which really helped. It seemed to me that being a therapist would just mean taking on everyone else's pain — and I had more than enough of that to deal with already.

I also had what Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. calls an "anomalous experience" at the age of four. I was lying on my cot in nursery school, and three spirits visited me and told or showed me something about what I was meant to do with my life. Although it sounds like a magical experience, at the time it actually filled me with dread. I never afterward remembered exactly what they had told or shown me, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it. It was strange, compelling, frightening and burdensome all at once to think that I had a purpose in life — that my existence wasn't random or accidental. I told no one about this experience for more than 20 years.

As a kid I read a great deal, and at around 15, I discovered poetry. A poem called "Fly," by W.S. Merwin, spoke to me about love and betrayal in a way nothing else ever had. For the next 25 years, poetry was my greatest teacher. I went to college, got a graduate degree in creative writing, worked in AIDS and then cancer education, fell in love with someone with multiple chronic illnesses, and eventually donated a kidney to her. Meanwhile, I wrote and published three award-winning books of poems, and, eventually, a memoir as well. (For more information about my writing life, please see my author website, www.ruthschwartz.com.) After 10 years as a health educator, I changed careers and became a university professor. I had loved working with people around health and sexuality issues, helping empower them to take control of their own choices — but the deep engagement I found in poetry was often missing in that world. And I loved many aspects of teaching poetry, especially introducing others to the works which seemed to me to best hold what Jon Kabat-Zinn has called "the full catastrophe," the complex beauty and tragedy of human life — but I missed impacting peoples' lives on a more core level. After five years of teaching, I contemplated going back to school to become a social worker or, yes, even a therapist — but that idea felt no more right than it ever had. I'd made something of a name for myself as a writer, but the juice was gone; my new poems were starting to repeat my old ones. I went to a new therapist; I went to a new psychic; I sat restlessly in English Department meetings and made lists of other potential careers. Meanwhile, I was also aware that despite many years of self-exploration, reading, and various forms of therapy, the old wounds I carried still made my relationships difficult.

Then I saw an email announcement for a Depth Hypnosis Certification Program, and for no reason I could have explained, I went to the website (now www.anamcarafoundation.org) to check it out. I had never had any interest in hypnotherapy, since I thought it meant pasting positive suggestions like Band-Aids on top of the muck in peoples' psyches. Yet when I read Isa Gucciardi's writings on the methodology she had developed, I got excited. Acting purely on intuition, I wrote a big check and signed on.

Over the next five months, I got far more than my money's worth of upheaval and transformation. The classes, the reading, the homework (much of which involved shamanic journeying) and my one-on-one work with Isa combined to create a cauldron the likes of which I had never experienced. I steamed; I bubbled; I frothed. And old stuck places in my being got churned up — and then dissolved, burned off or reformulated. Folk singer Lui Collins sings, "There's a hole in the middle of the prettiest life," and I had always experienced that hole inside myself — and believed I always would. Suddenly, it was gone. I found myself experiencing new levels of joy, gratitude and possibility — first intermittently, then more and more consistently. I had grasped a level of wholeness I could never before have imagined. And when I began working with clients, I soon saw similar changes occurring for many of them. It was tremendously exciting to realize I had found my deepest life's work.

I continue to honor poetry as one of my principle teachers, but I no longer write poems. Poem-making seems to me now to have been a sacred boat which carried me to the other side of a vast river — where I am now engaged in the exciting new art of Depth Hypnosis and related healing work. I am a Board-certified hypnotherapist, and am certified by the Anam.Cara Foundation as a master practitioner of Depth Hypnosis™. I have also completed the Anam.Cara Foundation's programs in Applied Shamanism and Integrated Energy Medicine programs. I currently direct The Anam.Cara House, a center for healing arts in Oakland, and do Depth Hypnosis with individuals and couples, as well as serve on the Board of Directors of the Anam.Cara Foundation. I am an ordained non-denominational minister through the Association for the Integration of the Whole Person; the Anam.Cara House and my Depth Hypnosis practice are my ministry. In addition, I am working toward a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology through the University of Integrative Learning.


Additional training and influences:

My work with clients is also grounded in my practice of Focusing, a mind-body self-inquiry method originally developed by Eugene Gendlin, and taught locally by Ann Weiser Cornell. I have completed Levels I - IV in the Focusing Certification Program, and have exchanged regular Focusing sessions for years. For more information about Focusing, please visit www.focusingresources.com. I also draw from Somatic Experiencing (www.traumahealing.com), the Focusing-based trauma work of Peter Levine. His discussion of the trauma vortex and the healing vortex gave me new insight into how and why Depth Hypnosis works.

Other teachers and sources have also profoundly impacted me. Chief among them are the spiritual teachings and self-exploration exercises of Leslie Temple-Thurston (www.corelight.org) and the Pathwork (www.pathwork.org). I have also received training from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, and I am fluent in Spanish.

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