James Hazlerig

Author. Fiddler. Storyteller. Hypnotist. James Hazlerig, MA, is a native born Texan, and when other boys wanted to be firefighters and police officers, he wanted to be a comedian. The youngest of four, he often laughed long and loud, loving when his elder siblings tickled him incessantly. Yet as so often happens, he lost that child-like love of laughter as he struggled to fit in with the demands of adolescence and then adulthood; a dark shadow of depression hung over him for many years, sometimes overwhelming him to a life-threatening degree. He found eventually that he didn't have to be a victim of his circumstances or his emotions, and on that day, he began to take charge of his own identity, the story he told himself about himself. That decision led to exploration of hypnosis, imagination, trance states, and ultimately the power of laughter to alleviate stress, anxiety, and depressive thinking. It's not that the clouds don't still gather, but now he can laugh them away. Though formerly a shy child, James Hazlerig is now a force to be reckoned with: a professional musician, performer, and hypnosis instructor.