DREW BRACKEN • Sentinel Correspondent • December 9, 2009

Stressed? Can't sleep? Want to stop smoking?

Certified hypnotherapist Christie Casaday, now with an office at the Buxton Inn, might be able to help. She said she has had real success dealing with all three, and more.

"It's not mind control," Casaday, 49, said. "You can't control another person."

After studying under Dr. James Ward at the Ohio Academy of Hypnosis in Cincinnati, Casaday has been practicing hypnotherapy since 1993. She worked in Grandview for years, but a fire in January destroyed her office. That's when Audrey Orr, who along with husband Orville owns the Buxton Inn, called.

"We first met Christie about five years ago when they did a video on the Buxton," Audrey Orr said. "She was the producer. During the course of shooting the video, we became friends and learned about some of her techniques."

So after the fire, Casaday she moved her office to Granville. She occupies the old doctor's office (in more recent years a gift shop) off the front lobby.

"It is helping somebody to get into a wonderful, relaxed state," Casaday said, further explaining her craft. "It's just helping that person realize a sense of direction and a focus to communicate with their own mind and body."

"There's no watch or crazy flashing lights or anything like that," she added. "I think some people think you make them get up on a stage and make them do crazy things, and that's so much not what I do. And people think they're going to be out of control, and it just is not that at all. As a matter of fact, when you go into the state of relaxation, it's a focused sense of concentration, so you're relaxed, but you hear and you know everything that's going on. You're going to hear the phone ringing, you're going to hear the pencil sharpener, people talking. For some people, it's the most relaxed they've ever felt."

Audrey Orr said Casaday's patients come from far and wide.

"She has people come, and I've seen it with my own eyes, from Maine, from North Carolina, Toledo, Pennsylvania, all around," Orr said. "And the results have been unbelievable -- insomnia, anxiety, stress, smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction. She's the real deal. There's nothing phony about her. But I don't think the local people even know she's here. It's one of the best-kept secrets I guess."

For more information, call Casaday at (614) 853-1003 or log on www.christiecasaday.com.