Daily Inspiration: Meet Arno Ma

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arno Ma.

Hi Arno, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Anytime I tell people that I’m a hypnotherapist, the response I always get is “Does it actually work?”

It’s funny, because the first time I heard about hypnosis, I was skeptical as well.

Growing up, I associated hypnosis with magic; I thought it was just something used on stage as a form of entertainment… that it wasn’t real.

Fast forward to my late twenties, and I’m reading a book about meditation- there’s a chapter about the subconscious mind and a story about how hypnosis was used to get someone to shoot Stephen Fry. Everyone was in on it except for the guy being hypnotized. They used a fake gun and fake blood, but the person who got hypnotized to do it, actually did it, and couldn’t remember doing it. Part of me thinks it was all an act, and another part of me thinks maybe, just maybe, it was real.

To be fair, I’m still quite skeptical about this story. Since then, however, I’ve seen and learned a lot about hypnosis… and I’m A LOT LESS skeptical now. For any of you who are curious, it was Derren Brown who pulled this off. You can find the video on YouTube. You can decide for yourself what to believe.

Then, a little while later, I was on a set as a background actor, and I met a girl who started telling me about hypnosis and the subconscious mind. She mentioned Anthony Galie, and the next thing I know, I’m watching him perform stage hypnosis on a YouTube video.

Later that year, I’m visiting family in New York… and I decide to see if hypnosis is actually real. I hire a professional hypnotherapist, and she hypnotizes me in her office. At this point, I’m still very skeptical. I actually don’t think it’ll work, but I have to try just to be sure. She’s walking me through a visualization of being on the beach… and the next thing I know, I hear her counting up to five and she tells me to wake up. I look at the clock, and it’s been 45 minutes since I closed my eyes. It felt like it had only been five minutes. I thought that was bizarre.

Shortly after, I went back to school and finished my degree (I had dropped out before because of severe ADHD). I ended up with a 4.0 GPA, which was very surprising- I had been hypnotized for success in New York, but I hadn’t really thought much of it since I had left her office. I just thought it was interesting that I had blacked out during the experience.

During the COVID pandemic, like many others, depression and anxiety resurfaced in my life. I figured giving hypnosis a shot couldn’t hurt. Although I didn’t go unconscious like I did in New York (I heard every word that was said), I still started to notice a difference after the first session. That hypnotherapist (Sean Wheeler) later became my mentor, and I still work closely with him to this day. When I think back to the way I used to be, it’s like night and day. I’m a completely different person than I used to be. I don’t worry about things all the time like I used to. I don’t have depression or anxiety anymore. I’m also not a pothead anymore. After learning about hypnosis and training to be a hypnotherapist, for the first time in my life, I was happy. Contrary to what I used to believe, I didn’t need to have a lot of money in my bank account. In fact, I was in debt from all the training… but I found peace. I was making progress. For the first time, I found myself moving in the direction I wanted to go.

Since then, I’ve been able to help people with depression, anxiety, quit smoking, PTSD, weight loss, imposter syndrome, confidence issues, insomnia, get over phobias, and the list goes on. I’ve been able to work with the world’s greatest hypnotist (Dr. Richard Bandler), and along the way, I’ve met some amazing people. Discovering hypnosis completely turned my life around. Now, I’d be lying if I told you that hypnosis works for all my clients. No therapist has a 100% success rate. However, a large majority of my clients are happy with the results from my practice.

If you’re reading this and you’ve never been hypnotized, then maybe it can help you with whatever you might be struggling with. But if you’re not struggling with anything, it can also help with enhancement- helping you do whatever it is that you’re already doing well, even better.

My advice is: find a good hypnotist. Make sure they have good reviews. This industry is mostly unregulated, and there are diploma mills that just shell out certifications. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on many different trainings, read all the books I could find, spent thousands of hours learning and practicing this stuff to get to where I am today. In fact, earlier this year, I had a returning client- a doctor who said her psychiatrist just wasn’t as good of a hypnotist as I am! Be ready to invest in yourself. The value you get out of it will be tenfold. The last thing you want to do is find a cheap hypnotist, not get results, and form a belief that it doesn’t work.

If you’re interested in working with me, I currently work at Pure Hypnosis with the top hypnotists in Atlanta, and my own practice is called Eudaimonia Hypnosis. Our office is located in Buckhead.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t always been smooth along the way. I’ve had my ups and downs. In fact, when I first started, I had a lot of trouble helping smokers. Stanford says only 6% of people who say they are going to quit smoking actually do it on their own. That number goes up to 23% after one session of hypnotherapy. I was definitely seeing something along the lines of a 20-30% success rate with smokers when I first started. I desperately wanted to see more success with that. I studied all the best methods, the best hypnotherapists, read the top-selling books… and today I’m seeing a 90% success rate. Every year, we do a training at Pure Hypnosis, and that’s definitely one of the things that people learning hypnosis struggle with.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I got into this work mainly to help people with depression and anxiety. It’s something I struggled with growing up. So I can definitely relate. In high school, I was diagnosed with moderate clinical depression and severe anxiety. I was prescribed benzodiazepines (clonazepam), and for those who don’t know, it’s highly addictive.

I was able to get off my medication and get better on my own with a lot of meditation, but it wasn’t until I started doing hypnosis that I was able to completely get rid of both. In fact, I feel the way I did on clonazepam now (anxiety free) as a result of all the hypnosis I’ve done, but without any of the side effects. By the way, I’m not a medical professional, and I would advise against coming off your medication without first consulting your doctor.

I have had a lot of success with helping clients who struggle with depression and anxiety. While I suggest to my clients to practice Therapeutic Lifestyle Change (developed by Dr. Stephen Ilardi) on their own… in my practice, I focus on helping them stop the rumination that people with depression often do. Hypnosis seems to be really good at stopping negative automatic thought patterns. I’m also a Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistic Programming and Specialist in Neuro-Hypnotic Repatterning… so I bring a little more to the table than your average hypnotist.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
I’m a firm believer in challenging beliefs- especially my own! If I had never been skeptical of my own skepticism, I wouldn’t have discovered hypnosis.

“You don’t see the world as it is, you see the world as you are.”
-Anaïs Nin

“We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves.”
-Derren Brown

Your beliefs shape your personal reality. See to it that you have good beliefs.

“All of man’s problems stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
-Blaise Pascal

When you learn to control your thoughts, you can find peace.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eudaimoniahypnosis.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eudaimoniahypnosis/?notif_id=1760000296126612&notif_t=page_user_activity&ref=notif
• Other: https://www.purehypnosis.com