16 years ago, pregnant with her second child, Sonia Raymond learned that she had to stop working after the third month of pregnancy, for health reasons. At the time, she was responsible for setting up quality in a company.
“I worked non-stop, but I hadn’t understood the essentials that were going to guide me. Because during this pregnancy, I had a midwife at home every day who came to listen to the little heart of this baby I was carrying, to see if it was still beating. So there, I had a little electroshock. This is where I reviewed my priorities. I already had a 4-year-old boy at the time, and I realized that I had somewhat set aside the essentials,” says Sonia Raymond, who thanks life for having opened her eyes. She stops everything, never sets foot in the office again, refuses a position as commercial director and then turns to the professions of childhood.
She passes diplomas, trainings, exercises various trades. A discovery that she considers extraordinary. “With the children, I discovered the purity of these beings. There is no frills, no fakes.” She accompanies children, parents, families, sees mothers in despair at not meeting society’s expectations, hypersensitive children struggling to find their place. “I endeavored every day to help them discover simple things, life through nature, through the senses, and precisely to find their own essence. My goal was that, in one day, they found one more treasure at home, to see in their eyes a joy, a fulfillment of doing what they do and being who they are. It carried me all the time.”
A mother who initiates perception
She worked in this way for 10 years, in places of reception or in the hospital, since she then passed a diploma to work in paediatrics, to support caregivers with children in oncology. And there, naturally, without knowing it, she uses hypnotic techniques with the children to reassure them during the treatments, to take them somewhere else in their minds. “Over time, I told myself that I could do even more.” Hypnosis happens a bit by chance, through social networks. She attends conferences, learns from professionals and understands that this is what she wants to do.
Hypnosis, then NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming), successively. Very quickly, she added systemic therapy, needing to work on these links in the family, to help its members find each other, to find meaning in their links, as she had done during support in her previous jobs.
A listening technique worked on in training, of course, but which comes from afar. “I grew up with a mother who was attached to the perception of things. For example, when we were children and teenagers, we always had these moments with her. We lived in the countryside and, on summer evenings, she would tell us “come, we are going to observe the Moon” and there, we would lie down on the hot tar, and she would tell us “touch the tar, it is hot, it’s nice on the back”. These are already hypnotic techniques and she let us observe this Moon, in which she described the drawing of a gypsy who carried a bundle of wood. It took us a while to see her. And under the pretext of observing this image, it was the time she gave us to talk about ourselves and we talked about our worries as children. It’s an ability that you develop afterwards, to listen to the other, to allow him to have time for himself.
Find your inner treasure
A return to those suspended moments, a return to the essential that Sonia Raymond cherishes every day. “When I see a person arrive with their shoulders a little tucked in, with a gray complexion, their eyes lowered, and leave so luminous, it’s dazzling. It’s a rebirth every time. That’s why I wanted to do this, to go even further, that we definitely know ourselves better and therefore be better with others. I am very attached to this during the sessions, it is my priority. I often say “what is your treasure that shines within?” We’re going to delicately open this chest and discover this shining diamond. And once you’ve discovered your treasure, it’s very easy in everyday life to say to yourself “ok, I know who I am, I can’t do it all the time, but it’s not serious and I continue with joy, with optimism”. Because there is a lot of joy, a lot of laughter too in Sonia Raymond’s sessions. We find ourselves, we know who we are and we can move forward.
Sonia Raymond consults in Villenave-d’Ornon, near Bordeaux. To contact her, go here.