Couples whose love lives have been more fizzle than sizzle lately may want to consider an unusual way to rev up their relationships as Valentine's Day approaches: hypnosis therapy.

Local practitioners say just a few sessions of "hypnotherapy" can revive the fervor partners experienced when they first succumbed to Cupid's arrow.

Hypnotherapy also can help people let go of unhealthy past relationships and overcome negative feelings about their partners and other emotional barriers to intimacy, they say.

"The mind is the greatest aphrodisiac, and when you maximize its potential, you can once again have the relationship you had when you first fell in love," Roger Willard, of Willard Hypnosis Center in Conestoga, said.

"Most of the time, it's just a matter of bringing back that original awareness of that courting state."

Willard is one of half a dozen hypnotherapists in Lancaster County who use hypnosis to help improve love lives.

While proponents say hypnosis can produce results more quickly than traditional emotional counseling, they caution that it doesn't work for everyone. And some say hypnosis must be coupled with traditional counseling to provide lasting effects.

Hypnotherapy involves inducing a person into a deep state of relaxation and mental focus in which the conscious mind becomes open to suggestion.

A hypnotherapist then encourages the person to explore his or her deep-seated, and often subconscious, feelings or restore positive memories that have long been buried.

"Sometimes you get them just to close their eyes and … recall some of their previous moments of pleasure and love and bring them forward," said Dr. David A. Frederick of Mind/Body Health Consultants, 719 Olde Hickory Road.

"Do you remember a specific time when you just wanted to crawl inside each other? That re-triggers and reunites them."

Willard said he has helped about a dozen clients — they're not "patients" because he is not a medical doctor — improve their love lives. He promotes his services with the tag line "Go to sleep and spice up your love life."

Clients whose main obstacle to intimacy is shyness can get results quickly, Willard said.

"It is simple and done mostly with direct suggestions while the subject is in hypnosis," he said. "No deep, probing questions. No great emotional release. Just quick and simple."

But hypnotherapists warn that hypnosis is not an instant "cure" — and people have to want to make a change.

"We must always deal with where they are right now and where they want to go," Lee Mengle of Change by Choice hypnotherapy, 820 Rohrerstown Road, said.

Mengle begins her sessions with intensive counseling to try to determine what is preventing an individual or couple from becoming intimate.

Sometimes it's a previous relationship a spouse has never gotten over.

Mengle recently worked with a married woman who had never resolved her strong feelings for her ex-boyfriend. When he moved into her neighborhood, she had an affair with him.

Although she knew, on a conscious level, that her spouse was a much better match and that she should break away from her ex, the woman couldn't do it. Lodged in her subconscious were those powerful — but flawed — feelings toward her former mate.

Mengle used hypnosis "to free her from the inappropriate emotions for her ex-boyfriend," she said. She often uses hypnotherapy to help people "disassociate from an inappropriate love object," Mengle said.

Sometimes couples are unable to become intimate because one or both of them have locked on to negative images of their partners.

Hypnotherapist Joan Shertzer recalls a client who was resentful of her father, who always expected her mother to pick up after him. Without consciously thinking about it, she had made the same association with her husband, who wasn't perfect, but was hardly a slob.

"Maybe you never forgave your father because he left everything lying around and made your mother so harried," she said.

"Once the subconscious disconnects (with that memory), the emotional content isn't as highly charged so you can feel the love and not the irritation."

Through hypnosis, Shertzer said, couples can learn to be more tolerant, patient and forgiving.

"It's just so much easier to resolve issues, to become aware of the source of irritation through hypnosis than through just counseling."

Couples with more serious intimacy issues — such as previous sexual abuse — warrant a different approach, hypnotherapists say.

Frederick first counsels abuse victims to try to help them feel better about themselves and let go of their residual anger or fear from the sexual assault.

He then induces them into a relaxed state and helps reinforce "that they have a wonderful, new body" and can let go of the past, Frederick said. Often, he'll have the person imagine going back in time to confront his or her abuser.

"The scenario is for her to go back and rescue her younger self," Frederick said. The exercise is not designed to help victims get revenge but to give them a sense of control over their lives.

Clients then perform a "cleansing ritual" at home to symbolically rid themselves of their painful memories.

"That gives them back their dignity," Frederick said.

Psychologist Dr. Philip L. Taylor, of Comprehensive Psychological Services, 28 N. Lime St., advocates using hypnosis along with counseling on communication and problem-solving skills.

One partner may be reluctant to try hypnosis or may feel intimidated by the process, he said. But the feedback from those who have used hypnotherapy has generally been good, he said.

And even if it helps only one partner, Taylor said, both of them will benefit.

"When sexuality is good, it works for both people, not just one person," he said.

E-mail: bwallace@lnpnews.com