Summit Hypnosis promotes and provides professional hypnotherapy with a commitment to be the practice most trusted by the Northwest’s medical community. Our values are based on compassionate care, creative solutions, and above all, kindness. All of our sessions are completely confidential.
Meet Our Hypnotists
Meet Deane
Deane Benninghoven, founder of Summit Hypnosis (he/him)
Certified Hypnotist
Certified Instructor (NGH)
Hypnosis changed my life. Let me show you how it can change yours.
Ever since I was a small child I wanted to be an artist. Creating things was my singular passion. I pursued this goal relentlessly as I grew into an adult, and began working as a professional artist. That was until I was involved in a serious car accident that left me with chronic debilitating neck pain.
I did everything I was told to do, and at the end of my treatments, I was still left feeling trapped by my pain, unable to work, and desperate for any solution beyond prescription opioids. It was then, quite by accident, that I stumbled on therapeutic hypnosis. For me, when everything else I had tried failed, hypnosis worked! Over a period of just a few weeks, I got my life back, and left the pills behind. It is because of this very personal experience that I have found a new passion. To help anyone who is struggling with challenges or behaviors that keep them from being the very best version of themselves, with understanding, compassion, and above all kindness.
I use hypnosis every day to control pain, create positive change in my own life, and feel more connected to the amazing world around us. Hypnosis is fascinating because it is rooted in our subconscious mind and involves all of the complexities of how we think and behave. The field of hypnosis is constantly changing, and I work daily to stay on top of the latest trends and techniques in the field.
I enjoy speaking, and teaching classes on: hypnosis, stress relief, healthy sleep, relaxation, hypnotic meditation, motivation, living with gratitude, and using hypnosis in art.
Meet Steve
Steve Bakker
Certified Professional Hypnotist
Hypnosis can help profoundly. It can ease your way forward.
I sought out hypnosis after my life became inexplicably consumed with terror, triggered by the sight–or even the thought–of commonplace textures, such as foliage in trees or surfaces pitted with holes. My first few sessions with a hypnotist taught me some unexpected skills of mind on the way to resolving my all-consuming crisis. In an early session, I was taught how to quiet the pain of my stress-related muscle tension. In another, I was guided into a more relaxed state than I had ever remembered feeling before and taught how to recall that relief throughout my daily life.
My run of hypnosis sessions ended a few weeks later when the hypnotist guided me through an exercise where I fully imagined reconciling with a part of myself responsible for my "phobia." The hypnotist suggested open-ended questions for me to ask it. The answers of the "part" came entirely from me, and in the state of hypnosis they were enough to set me free. When I stepped out of the office, the patterns on walls and textures in trees stayed harmlessly in place.
What I find so amazing about hypnosis is not only how profoundly it can work, but also how immediately it "awakens" simple skills for shifting one's mindset in other areas of life. The skills I learned took root immediately and then, like any other skill, grew stronger with use. I continue to draw on them to take creative and practical strides in life that had seemed just out of reach before, and the occasional sight of an off-putting texture has been manageable ever since.
I decided to train as a hypnotist so I could share the tools that have so improved my life with others–to summon their own state of ease, lighten their own lives, and choose their own direction more freely going forward. I am trained and certified to practice hypnosis using up-to-date, evidence-based techniques by the International Certification Board of Clinical Hypnotists.
Meet Ami
Amethysta Herrick, Ph.D.
Identity Guide & Certified Hypnotist
When we face chronic trauma, our only course of action is to reclaim our agency.
I’m Amethysta Herrick, Ph.D. - scientist, storyteller, and professional overthinker of all things identity. Also, I happen to be a transgender woman.
Throughout my life, I've been driven by an insatiable desire to understand why the universe works the way it does. My academic journey led me through molecular biology to a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry. For years, I applied this scientific mindset as a software engineer and executive, believing my analytical skills were my primary contribution to the world.
Then, in 2022, everything changed.
My sense of belonging shifted in the most profound way when I transitioned gender to align the person I always knew I was on the inside with my external presentation. This wasn't just a physical transformation—for the first time in my life, I truly felt emotions with a depth and richness I never knew was possible.
Today, I work primarily with the Queer community, because hypnosis offers particular benefit for the type of trauma we face. Instead of major incidents of trauma sprinkled through childhood, the Queer community faces trauma on a daily basis.
We know every human experiences trauma simply by growing up in the world. And whether we realize it or not, whether we believe what happened to us was traumatic or not, each of us carries around deep-seated patterns developed in childhood.
We did not choose the values represented by these patterns - they were imposed upon us as children. But more importantly, we cannot choose against these patterns easily. Once they are set in our developing consciousness, they become the bedrock of adult behavior.
With hypnosis, I can help you mitigate your behavior directly, without reliving or even remembering the trauma. As a result, you'll gain tools to take back your agency from a world that wants to strip you of it.