Dr. Steven Swerdfeger

Get Help From Our Scottsdale Integrative Medical Center

Steven Swerdfeger, PhD, CH serves as the consulting hypnotist at the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine. He also facilitates a support group for patients at our Scottsdale integrative medical center suffering with any chronic illness, exploring the hidden causes of chronic illness. He also serves as a patient liaison, welcoming new patients, talking with them in the IV room as they undergo their treatments, and helping them to deal with their illness and recovery.

Education & Training

Dr. Swerdfeger received his training in Hypnosis and Guided Imagery at the Edgar Cayce Association of Research & Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, where he studied with Dr. Allen S. Chips. Advanced training was also received from Dr. David Mullen of Bradenton, Florida, a clinical psychologist specializing in hypnosis; Dr. Robert Moore of Phoenix, Arizona; and Gerald F. Kein of the Omni Hypnosis Center in Deland, Florida.

Schedule a Session Today!

Sessions are by appointment, with a telephone interview preceding the initial hypnosis session. Clients are frequently able to achieve their specific goals in one or two sessions. Work in the area of regression may occasionally require an extended number of sessions.

How Hypnosis Can Help

Hypnosis and guided imagery can be very healing in ways no other method can be. Sometimes we have unconscious mental blocks which either produce noticeable symptoms or act as unseen impediments to healing. They are at the level of the amygdala, which is the level below consciousness, and we are not aware of them until these things are brought up at least to the level of the hippocampus where sensory input from the body is related to the cortex in the forms of thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

When something occurs which is so traumatic the conscious mind cannot deal with it, the information that comes into the amygdala, stays there and never comes up to consciousness. This is why people have buried symptoms.

The body's innate wisdom knows it needs to deal with these memories because they make the body sick. If it is an issue of powerlessness, for example, the symptoms may manifest in the abdomen. If a person was beaten as a child, the physical memory and resulting illness may be stored where the body was beaten.

Dr. Swerdfeger's Approach

Hypnosis and guided imagery can help us to access consciously these things that have been inaccessible. The body's innate wisdom also has a safety mechanism because it will not access anything which the conscious mind feels it cannot deal with.

Steven Swerdfeger has used hypnosis and guided imagery to help people with phantom limb pain, anxiety and depression, phobias, and chronic pain. All of the preceding must be by medical referral. Hypnosis is also helpful in the elimination of recurrent and/or unwanted patterns, the enhancement of abilities, the management and reduction of stress, and it can be an important aid in the recovery from cancer.