About Sander

Founder of Studio Somnus

Studio Somnus was founded as a quiet threshold where psychological insight, contemplative attention, and the symbolic power of literature converge.

Over the course of my work, I became increasingly attentive to a quieter process beneath analysis and explanation. Insight alone seldom transforms a life. Change more often appears when perception, emotion, and imagination begin to resonate with one another. The studio itself emerged from this intuition: a moment of alignment in which scholarship, contemplative practice, and future vision began to align.

Underlying hypnotherapy, lucid liminal meditation, and bibliotherapy at Studio Somnus is a simple philosophical intuition: that human experience unfolds through patterns of resonance and dissonance. Thoughts and emotions carry tonal qualities that shape how we perceive ourselves and how the world echoes those tones. When these elements harmonize, life gathers coherence; when they clash, experience falls into discord. In this sense, resonance creates alignment between the present and the possible.

The Practice of Resonance

The work at Studio Somnus is guided by a cultivated stance of attention that I describe as resonant.

Through years of contemplative practice and professional formation, I developed a mode of perception that listens not only to language but also to rhythm, imagery, and subtle emotional patterns. Within this expanded field of awareness, insight often appears symbolically—through metaphor, sensation, or moments of quiet clarity.

Academic & Professional Formation

My approach to this work developed through an unusual convergence of scholarship, teaching, contemplative practice, and therapeutic training.

I completed graduate study in psychology at Harvard University, where my research explored the therapeutic potential of narrative and symbolic experience. My work examined how literature and music can support emotional regulation and psychological integration: an inquiry that later evolved into the studio’s bibliotherapy practice.

Alongside this research, I have maintained a disciplined meditation practice for more than two decades, cultivating the attentional stability that now informs my contemplative work.

For more than a decade, I have also served as a professor at Seoul National University, where I developed courses and conducted research exploring the intersection of psychology and literature and the ways narrative can illuminate the structure of the human psyche.

My clinical training in hypnotherapy was completed through the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in Los Angeles, with additional training under Brian Weiss. This work grounded my interest in altered states of awareness within a structured therapeutic framework.

Over time, these strands (scholarship, contemplative practice, narrative inquiry, and hypnotherapy) naturally converged into the integrative approach now practiced at Studio Somnus.

To preserve the depth and attentional quality of the work, Studio Somnus operates as a deliberately limited practice.

Selected Education & Trianing

  • MA, Psychology — Harvard University

  • PhD, Education — University of Pretoria

  • MA, Literature — University of Pretoria

  • Diploma, Hypnotherapy & Trauma Recovery — Hypnosis Motivation Institute, Los Angeles

  • Regression Therapy — Brian Weiss, Omega Institute

  • Intuitive Certification — James van Praagh School of Mystical Arts