Royal Leo
Executive Coaching 
NLP Specialist The LYONS Method

 

 

The Lyons Method | Begin a session

HERO

Some change doesn't happen gradually. It happens at a threshold.

The Lyons Method is a hypnotherapy protocol I built out of necessity, in the middle of my own recovery from a violent attack — refined over years into something I now teach to others who need a way back to steady ground.

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WHERE THIS BEGAN

I built this to survive, not to teach

In 2017, during the solar eclipse, I was attacked and strangled, and came very close to not surviving it. What followed wasn't a clean recovery. Within a short time I was back at work, and before long I found myself in a caregiving role that left almost no room to rest — while my own body, mind, and sense of safety were still very much in the middle of being put back together.

There wasn't room for a slow healing process. I needed something I could return to constantly, in the middle of an ordinary day that wasn't going to pause for me. So I started with what was already in front of me: doorways. We pass through hundreds of them every day without noticing — bedroom to bathroom, kitchen to outside, car door in, car door out. I began treating every single one as a real threshold: consciously noticing it, dropping my shoulders, breathing deep into my belly, breathing out, making eye contact, staying aware of the room I was stepping into — and crossing through as the person I needed to be on the other side.

I practiced this constantly, for years, alongside guided meditation and hypnotherapy. What started as just barely getting to "okay" slowly became something much sturdier — a center of gravity I can drop into under real pressure. That's what I'm sharing here: not a theory I read about, but a system I built out of necessity and have used every day since.

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WHAT IT IS

A sequence, not a single technique

Most hypnotherapy inductions ask you to simply relax and let go. That works well for people who arrive already suggestible. It works less well for people whose minds keep auditing the process — checking whether it's "working," staying one step ahead of the suggestion.

The Lyons Method was built for that second group. It doesn't fight the analytical mind; it gives it something concrete to verify along the way, before asking it to step aside.

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Across a session, you move through four distinct movements: a physical anchor at a literal doorway, a hand-pressure exercise that gives your body something tangible to track, a piece of writing in your own hand, and a rhythm of tension and release that deepens as it repeats.

Each movement draws on a documented tradition in hypnotherapy and behavioral psychology. The sequence itself — how they're combined and ordered, is my own synthesis, refined through practice rather than pulled from a textbook.

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THE FOUR MOVEMENTS

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What actually happens in a session? 

These happen in order, each one setting up the next.

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01 — The threshold anchor

This is the part you'll carry with you long after the session ends. Every doorway becomes a checkpoint: notice it consciously, drop your shoulders, breathe deep into your belly and let it expand, breathe out, make eye contact, get situationally aware of the space you're stepping into, then cross through as the person you want to be on the other side. In session, we build one specific version of this at a doorway in your own space, anchoring the exact state you're working toward, so the doorway itself becomes a way back to it.

Anchoring a felt state to a specific stimulus is a core technique in clinical hypnosis and NLP; using a doorway specifically draws on a much older idea, that thresholds mark the passage from one state to another, documented across cultures in the anthropology of ritual.

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02 — Doorframe hand-and-foot pressure

Standing in the doorway, you press the outer edges of your palms evenly against both sides of the frame, and the outer edges of your feet evenly against its base. Just the slightest pressure is enough to feel it, real weight in your hands and feet, nothing you have to imagine. From there, you draw two lines of energy, one from your hands and one from your feet, moving them slowly toward the center of your body until they meet. Then you exhale, let your arms drop, bring your feet to shoulder width, and take a seat.

For clients who find it hard to switch off analytical thinking, a sensation this real and physically verifiable does an enormous amount of work as a deepener — most inductions ask you to imagine feeling energy in your hands; this one lets you actually feel it.

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03 — Writing your own affirmation

Rather than working from a script I write for you, you write the core statement yourself, in your own hand. Your own words, in your own handwriting, tend to land differently than language handed to you, there's less for the analytical mind to argue with.

Using a client's self-authored language as induction material has precedent in clinical hypnotherapy training, and reflects a broader principle: people resist suggestions less when the words are already theirs.

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04 — Fractionation

We cycle a few times between writing and quiet, eyes-closed breathing. Each pass tends to go a little deeper than the last. This back-and-forth rhythm is where the earlier movements compound.

Fractionation, moving repeatedly between light alertness and deeper relaxation, is one of the most widely taught deepening techniques in modern hypnotherapy. Cycling it with writing rather than simple eye-opening is my own adaptation of that principle.

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WHERE IT COMES FROM

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Built from survival, grounded in established technique
I didn't design this from a textbook, I built it out of necessity, and only later found the research that overlaps with what I was already doing. Here's what's well-established, and what's mine, so you can decide whether this is a good fit with clear eyes.

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Anchoring and state change — A foundational technique in neuro-linguistic programming, developed from observations of Milton Erickson's hypnotic work — binding an internal state to a sensory cue so it can be recalled later.

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Threshold and liminality — Anthropological research on ritual — most notably Arnold van Gennep's and Victor Turner's work on rites of passage — documents doorways and thresholds as a recurring, cross-cultural site for marking transformation.

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Analytical-subject induction — Drawn from hypnotherapy training that treats highly analytical clients as a distinct type, better served by physically verifiable techniques than by purely verbal suggestion.

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Fractionation — A deepening technique originated by hypnotherapist Dave Elman in the 1960s and still widely taught today as one of the field's most reliable tools.

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Repetition and behavior change — Repeated practice has a well-documented cellular basis: long-term potentiation, where repeatedly activated synapses become measurably more efficient at transmitting signals, and slower structural changes — new dendritic branching, thicker myelin on frequently used pathways — that reinforce a pattern over weeks and months of practice. I frame it that way deliberately: these are established mechanisms behind how repetition changes the brain in general, not a claim that this specific protocol has been studied or measured.

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TWO WAYS IN

One-on-one sessions
We work through the full sequence together, in person or by video, at a doorway in your own space. Best if you want the induction guided live and adjusted to what's actually happening for you in the room.

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Self-guided course
A recorded, step-by-step walkthrough of all four movements, with instructions for setting up your own threshold anchor and pacing the fractionation cycles on your own. Best if you'd rather work at your own pace, on your own schedule.
 

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FAQ

Is this the same as stage hypnosis?
No. You stay aware and in control throughout. Hypnotherapy uses focused attention and relaxation to work with suggestion — it isn't sleep, and it isn't something done to you against your will.

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Will I lose control or "black out"?
No. Most clients describe it as similar to the focused, absorbed state you get right before falling asleep, or deep in a good book — aware, but less distracted by everyday chatter. You can stop at any point.

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Is this a substitute for therapy or medical treatment?
No. Hypnotherapy can be a valuable complement to other care, but it isn't a replacement for medical or mental health treatment. If you're currently working with a therapist or physician, I'm happy to coordinate with them.

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Who tends to do well with this method?
In my experience, people who describe themselves as "hard to hypnotize," overthinkers, or skeptical of anything that feels too passive. If you've tried hypnotherapy before and felt like your analytical mind wouldn't let go, this method was built with you in mind.

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What should I expect physically?
Some genuine muscle fatigue from the doorframe pressure exercise, a few minutes of handwriting, and several rounds of eyes-closed breathing. Nothing painful or strenuous — just enough physical sensation to give your body something real to track.

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ABOUT THE METHOD'S NAMESAKE

I'm a certified hypnotherapist. This method wasn't built at a desk or drawn from client sessions first — I lived it before I ever taught it, using myself as the proof of concept for years before I brought it into my practice with others. Certification gave me the training to guide someone else through it safely; the method itself came from what actually worked, for me, when I needed it most.

Every technique in the sequence is one I still use myself, in this order, before I ever asked a client to try it. If you have questions about my training or certification before booking, I'm glad to answer them directly.

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Ready to see if this fits?
Start with a single session, or the first module of the self-guided course. Neither commits you to anything beyond it.
[Book a session] [Start the course]

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