Who is Sunny Massad?

Sunny Massad, Ph.D.

Sunny Massad has always been an unconventional thinker, so creating a self-improvement therapy called UnTherapy, the conscious alternative for healthy individuals who aspire toward self-fulfillment, was just the sum of many unconventional life experiences for this 2000 Saybrook Psychology Ph.D. graduate.

Beginning in her early twenties as one of twenty founders of a successful alternative community in the San Juan Islands and later traveling to India to study meditation with Rajneesh, Sunny quickly became attracted to alternative modalities of thinking and being. Sunny eventually worked closely with Rajneesh, becoming one of his community spokespersons for the experimental city of Rajineeshpuram in the 1980's.

Sunny's background includes studying hypnotherapy at the Institute for the Re-Education of the Unconscious Mind in Seattle . After moving to the island of Oahu in 1989, she established a successful hypnotherapy practice and created several courses and workshops introducing both hypnotherapy and meditation to professionals. Her workshops entitled, "Being Your Best without the Stress" and "How to Stop Sabotaging Yourself," which taught people how to use the unconscious to be in service of a higher vision, became extremely popular. Her work in this area led to a best-selling audiocassette and CD entitled, Hypnosis & Meditation: the Ultimate Form of Relaxation, which is available at Borders. She has recently released a second CD entitled Clarity: A Self Hypnosis Experience.

Sunny promotes the use of hypnosis and meditation or "hypno-meditation" because she believes it to be a powerful tool that works to assist a person to rejuvenate their mind/body from the overload of "noise" that the mind is subjected to. She has adopted the term "techno-stress" to describe the psychological impact that technology places on the psyche. Sunny explains that "hypno-meditation works with the unconscious mind to access calmness and to bring peace of mind which is the epitome of psychological wellness."

The concept for UnTherapy and Wellness Counseling originated while Sunny was working on her Master's thesis called, "The Psychology of the Buddhas" and her Ph.D. dissertation on the subject of enlightenment. Sunny realized that self improvement is often the result of self judgment and therefore promotes self-care and self compassion as the core of her counseling and teaching.

Sunny states that "UnTherapy and Wellness Counseling differ from traditional therapy because they are designed for individuals who do not require treatment for diagnosable conditions but who still need a boost forward to move beyond old patterns that are holding them back from their personal potential." The theory of William Glasser's Reality Therapy which advocates personal responsibility for one's own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors is central to Sunny's work.

Sunny has taught 14 outreach courses at Kapiolani College in Honolulu, was senior educator of Openings Seminars and Consultation, and the motivational speaker for Satori Hawaii Fitness Corporation before becoming the President of the Hawaii Wellness Institute. She is an adjunct faculty member of Westbrook University , on the board of Noumenon journal, and teaches a 64 hour wellness counselor certification course. She has just finished writing UnTherapy: A Positive Psychology for Enlightened Living and frequently speaks to groups and media in addition to running a successful private practice at the Hawaii Wellness Retreat House.