Hypnotherapy, Hidden Artefacts & World Museum Day”
“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.” ― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence
🎶 Sunday morning, up with the lark… I think I’ll take a walk in the park. Except the lark was replaced by the neighbourhood koel with karaoke mic, loudspeaker, and performance anxiety.
I had just settled into my Sunday: one part filter kaapi en route to stewing into one part Prime Video, and two parts denial about laundry—when Charu pinged.
“Dr. Kapadia’s in town.”
Ah! Dr. Kapadia, the heartthrob of the batch of ’83. Now, if you’ve ever studied medicine in the last century, you know Dr. Kapadia. If you haven’t, think Morgan Freeman meets a cabinet full of formalin jars.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he would boom, standing at the lecture hall like a ringmaster of anatomical oddities, “On your right is the ‘museum,’ where I expect you to spend time. On your left, the ‘sanctuary.’”
We looked left. It was the faculty chambers. We never recovered.
But we did have this thing going for the man with deadpan delivery of dead tissues.
The brew now turned “Déjà brew,” and somewhere ‘sipnosis’ (a quick summary of life delivered with a latte) set in.
The anatomy museum, the pathology museum—getting lost there was like I did in the Calico Museum or the Salar Jung Museum… The breweka moment.
All those who wander are not lost. Neither do people who wander lose their way.
Bigger breweka: Museums are not just about the past; they’re the bridge from the past to the future. They remind us of how we came, and why it’s okay to start fresh—begin anew—with the wisdom we’ve carried forward.
Maybe we should just walk into echoing galleries and whispered pasts to look at fossils and think, “Wow, this trilobite had a better skincare routine than I do.”
They hold the artefacts of who we were—and hints of who we might become (if we ever finish all that adulting).
They are sanctuaries of stories: in brushstroke, in bone, in button. A quiet rebellion against forgetfulness.
Each label under a dusty artefact whispers, “Look, I mattered.” And somehow, we begin to believe that we matter too.
If a museum is a seat of the muse—holding the memories, a passive activator of wisdom— Our body would be one too. A living one at that.
The stretch of the spine, the flutter of breath—these are not the hardcore artefacts. Every jaw clench when your second cousin twice removed gives you life advice? Definitely an artefact.
It’s the epithet to the anger or irritation you felt. The sense of helplessness that you cannot punch the blighter on his nose.
These memories get curated. Unspoken. Unacknowledged. Undusted. Artefacts all the same.
We don’t just remember with the brain. Our gut, the skin, the shoulders that never quite drop (your own personal vigilante), The breath that never quite lands… They’re all memories.
If a smell overwhelms you, a taste comforts you, or a sound feels familiar—but you can’t name it— Welcome to the archive of somatic memory.
It’s an invisible exhibit that you just brushed.
As a hypnotherapist, I get people to visit the museum they didn’t know they owned. Let’s do a quick check:
The Trauma Wing (with a leaky roof and terrible lighting)
The Resilience Gallery (usually camouflaged behind a filing cabinet)
The Playroom (where your inner five-year-old still eats glue and sings off-key)
Somatic regression isn’t about analysing the past or staging a Salim-Javed vendetta drama. It’s to feel. To let the body show us what the mind didn’t have permission—or forgot—to log.
We find these artefacts:
A tightness that once kept us safe.
Tears our body preserved because we were too busy being “fine.”
A breath that expands only when someone finally says: “I hear you.”
Healing doesn’t always come with symphonies and violins. Of course, Chai-logues are ‘steeped’ with ‘tea-brew.’ But realistically, healing is a click in the hip or a long exhale after decades of holding it in.
On World Museum Day, let’s match the inner museum with the outer museum.
Outer Museum Type
Inner Museum Type
Art Museum
Emotions painted across your nervous system
History Museum
Generational stories held in posture and pause
Science Museum
That inner lab testing survival vs. joy
Natural History
Your animal instincts and gut responses
Ethnographic Museum
Rituals inherited—sometimes without the recipe
Speciality Museum
That recurring dream… about missing the train again
We all carry this curated collection—some hand-me-downs, some hidden gems, some mislabelled artefacts from someone else’s shelf.
A call to curate. #WorldMuseumDay Own yours.
Claim your museum in 5 easy steps:
Sit with your kaapi (or chamomile… whatever your poison—we don’t judge).
Tune in to your body. (Easy: just focus on your breath.)
What’s on display today?
What’s been locked in storage, waiting to be seen?
You, my friend, are the best curator of your archive—so sketch it, etch it, write it… or just sigh an acknowledgement.
Now Go Touristy Hit the Memorabilia store. what do want to carry forward from your collection what can be retired? people-pleasing: a retrospective.Time to eliminate it from both display and storage.
Gurupeeta Guwhati Museum.
Oh, and if you meet Dr. Kapadia, do tell him—I finally understood that The Museum isthe Sanctuary.
Oops! I never did return that femur. Maybe that, too, has a story.
I visited a museum in Mangalore in March and found a strange sense of peace and calm looking at the ‘way we were.’ I love the different perspective that you have taken on museums.
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