Hypnotherapist - Relationship Coach - Life Coach - Carolyn Shaffer

Carolyn Shaffer, MA, CCHT, has been an educator and community builder for more than thirty-five years. For the past eighteen of those years, she has conducted a private practice as a clinical hypnotherapist and coach. Carolyn brings a special brand of warmth, creativity and practical application to her work with individuals, couples, groups and communities, drawing upon her background in both the disciplines of physical science and the practices and teachings of spirituality and the wisdom traditions.

Carolyn has earned two masters degrees from Stanford University, one in biology, the other in education with religious studies as a field of concentration. Throughout her adult life she has been fascinated by how science and spirituality inform one another. Her studies of the internal dynamics of cells, the functioning of nervous systems and the principles of natural ecology have contributed to her understanding, from a systems perspective, the interconnectedness of body, mind and spirit and the power of breath, meditation and imagery to transform.

Carolyn has been awarded the highest level of certification as a hypnotherapist—that of certified clinical hypnotherapist (CCHT), and she holds a California Lifetime Secondary Teaching Credential. In addition, Carolyn is a minister and transformational counselor, ordained by the Association for the Integration of the Whole Person (AIWP). The coauthor of three books, she has been a featured guest on radio and television around the country.

Carolyn's most recent book, coauthored with Kristin Anundsen, is Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World. Her current book-in-progress is a guide to making wise decisions about love and commitment.

Diverse professional paths
Not one to follow a straight career path, Carolyn has pursued a number of professional by-roads that have converged in her current work. She's been an environmental educator and a high school teacher, a journalist and a newspaper editor, a public relations professional, a community-building trainer and consultant, and co-director of a retreat and learning center. Recognizing that true change begins within, she began her training in hypnotherapy and coaching two decades ago.

Life experience
Carolyn's rich life experience is the primary key to the depth that she brings to her work. She has resided in cities and on farms; sometimes alone, at other times in intentional communities of friends or as part of a committed couple. She's lived below the poverty line and comfortably above it and had her share of successes as well as failures.

After spending much of her life single, Carolyn married for the first time at age 44. She and her husband, Sypko Andreae, have engaged in intense service and community-building projects together. They co-owned—with more than twenty others—the Shenoa Retreat and Learning Center in Northern California and helped develop and manage it for twelve years. Over the years, their concept of family has expanded to include "chosen" members. Their family is now made up of heart kin as well as blood relatives.

Since the 1970s, Carolyn has engaged in various forms of spiritual practice, including Buddhist meditation, attunement (as practiced by the Findhorn Centre in northern Scotland), dream work, yoga, and various practices of earth-centered traditions such as shamanic journeying. Educated for sixteen years in Catholic schools, Carolyn learned early on the power of prayer and contemplation. She was one of the few grade-school students who looked forward to the annual silent retreats. Carolyn is grateful to her Catholic upbringing for introducing her to the mystical tradition—the more she has dipped into this deep, unifying stream, the more she has come to honor and love the mystical heart of many wisdom traditions.

Today, in addition to meditating regularly, Carolyn practices qigong, an ancient Chinese way of promoting energy flow, healing and awareness of the oneness of body, mind, earth and spirit.

This cornucopia of life experiences has generated in Carolyn wisdom, skill, and empathy and has added power and depth to the process she has developed. Her Living Well Way combines guided imagery, self-hypnosis and coaching with what Carolyn calls the Three I's: intuition, intention and integrity.
More on The Living Well Way