OUR LINEAGE
A Lineage in Motion
Where This Work Comes From
Ultra Depth™ did not emerge from theory. What began with Walter Sichort's discovery in the 1960s has been refined across more than half a century of clinical practice: first by Sichort, then systematized by James R. Ramey, and now continued within ICS International. This page traces that lineage.
A LINEAGE IN MOTION
Walter Sichort
Discovery (1918–2000)
Walter Andrew Sichort, Sr. (March 13, 1918 – August 12, 2000) stands at the origin of this work. He did not invent a new technique. What he discovered was a layer of the inner life that most hypnosis practitioners of his time, focused on programming the unconscious and delivering suggestions, had not seen.
Sichort began teaching hypnosis in the early 1950s. In 1962, he established the Institute of Relaxation in Blackwood, New Jersey, where he would work for nearly four decades. With his colleague and assistant Sara Zane and the instructor Al Rothchild, he built a practice that drew wide attention in the field.
A respected hypnotist, Sichort was also a working professional magician, though never for the stage. His performances were charity shows for terminally ill children and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In these demonstrations he would bring his assistant Mary Borgessi into the Esdaile State, and into its deepest part, the Catatonic State. Dressed as an angel in a long white gown, she would be held steady and turned in a slow circle so that she appeared to be flying, her arms outstretched and her body perfectly still. Through performances like these, he gave hospitalized children moments of laughter.
Walter A. Sichort, Sr.
(Illustration based on original photograph)
The Institute of Relaxation.
From left: Sara Zane, Walter Sichort, James R. Ramey, and Joseph Hafer.
(Illustration based on original photograph)
It was in the course of this work, in the mid-1960s, that the discovery came. One day, while Mary was in state, Sichort told her, "Go deeper than you have ever gone before." She went completely limp and began producing rapid eye movement. He had not seen this before. A short count would not bring her back; only after about twenty minutes, with a longer count, did she emerge, with no recall of what had happened. Sichort set out to reproduce the state, and in time he learned which words would take her there and how to anchor it to a single word for instant reentry.
Before long, Mary moved to Florida to marry, and Sichort was left without a partner to continue the work. He turned to his colleague Sara Zane, who was already conditioned for somnambulism and the Esdaile State. Because she was, he was able to bring her into this more profound depth, and there he anchored it with a single keyword, "Elephant," for instant, spontaneous reentry - complete muscle flaccidity and rapid eye movement. Sichort named what he had found Ultra Depth™.
With Sara Zane, Sichort studied what this depth could offer. He found that physical healing accelerated within it, reportedly at six to ten times the ordinary rate, a finding documented by two Philadelphia physicians, Dolman and Marko, through systemic enzyme measurements.
He also identified another phenomenon, which he called Mind-To-Mind Healing, in which work with the subconscious could affect physical conditions in ways that classical suggestion alone could not explain. In one case, he worked with a young girl who had been born with polio, who wore braces and walked with crutches. Over time, her leg muscles developed and strengthened, until she was able to walk unassisted.
Sichort's professional standing was formally recognized. In 1978, he served as president of The Hypnotists Union, Local 477, OPEIU of the AFL-CIO. He was a member of the Board of Advisors for the American Association of Professional Hypnologists and a Trustee of the Hypnosis Society of America. In 1993 he was inducted into the International Hypnosis Hall of Fame and received the SEALAH Lifetime Achievement Award.
Sichort spent more than half a century as a master in his field. On August 12, 2000, at 4:39 a.m., he passed away. The work of systematizing and transmitting what he had discovered was left to his student, James R. Ramey.
The Authorization, 1997
Walter Sichort signing his endorsement of the Ultra Depth™ Process, ca. 1997.
(restored from original photograph)
The signed and notarized authorization, preserved as the opening page of James R. Ramey's training manual.
On August 30, 1997, Walter Sichort granted James R. Ramey the sole Seal of authorization to use and teach Ultra Depth™. The document was notarized and has remained preserved as the opening page of Ramey's training manual ever since.
James R. Ramey
Process Formation (1947–2016)
James R. Ramey
(Illustration based on original photograph)
James R. Ramey (December 22, 1947 – June 1, 2016) carried forward what Walter Sichort had discovered. The distinction matters. Sichort was the discoverer of the Ultra Depth™ state. Ramey, his student and the inheritor of the work, was its formalizer, the one who shaped what Sichort had encountered into a transmissible process.
Ramey's path to Sichort was not accidental. A psychology professor named Cohen wrote Sichort's name and address on a piece of paper and told Ramey to seek him out. Not long after, Ramey heard a hypnotist on a Philadelphia radio program discussing telepathic hypnosis; it was the same name. He went to Sichort's Institute of Relaxation. The first session overwhelmed him: an hour passed that felt like minutes, and what Sichort demonstrated struck him as close to both miracle and magic. Afterward, Sichort offered him the use of the facility for the classes Ramey was running. That was the beginning.
Ramey began his training with Sichort in 1974, continuing through 1982. He went on to dedicate the next four decades to deepening his understanding of what Sichort had opened up, working directly with the subconscious of countless people. This included extended observation of what came to be called the Zed State, a layer of phenomena requiring further study and not always desirable as a destination.
What Sichort and Sara Zane had developed as observed phenomena, Ramey shaped into a teachable process. He established the structured process called staging, leading from Profound Somnambulism through the Esdaile to what would be named the Sichort State. Around this process he developed and refined a body of techniques: the Computer Console Technique, used as a therapeutic intervention applied in Profound Somnambulism; Mind-To-Mind Healing; Visity; the Communication Technique (TCT); Reverse Staging; Step Regression; and Advanced Hypno-Regression.
On August 30, 1997, Sichort granted Ramey the sole Seal of authorization to use and teach Ultra Depth™. In 1999, Ramey founded Ultra Depth™ International. After Sichort's passing, at the request of Sichort's family, who asked Ramey to protect his name and his work, Ramey renamed the state Sichort had named Ultra Depth™ as the Sichort State, after its discoverer, and carried the name Ultra Depth™ forward as the name of the process itself.
The center of his work was never technical refinement alone. Over these decades, Ramey helped a person with severely damaged auditory nerves recover near-normal hearing. He trained someone who had lived with grand mal seizures for twenty years to reach a place free of both seizures and medication. He worked to clear viruses linked to shingles and cervical cancer. He helped clients undergo major dental surgery safely and without pain, with bleeding controlled, and he sat with a patient through an organ transplant performed without chemical anesthesia: no pain during the procedure, and no rejection afterward. None of these outcomes were produced by technique. They were made possible by a structural understanding of the subconscious, and by the subconscious itself.
Ramey taught and demonstrated this work widely, in the United States and abroad. Among the engagements over the years were the IACT annual conventions in Florida (1996, 1997), the Institute of Clinical Hypnosis in London (1998, 1999), the World Bank in Washington, D.C. (1998, 1999), the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, D.C. (1999), the International Hypnosis Convention in Zurich (2013, 2014), engagements in Aschaffenburg, Germany (2014, 2015), and in Dubai and Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates (2015).
In May 2012, the Ultra Depth™ Process received the Innovative Hypnotherapeutic Technique of the Year Award from the International Association of Counselors and Therapists (IACT). Ramey held the title of Hypno-Anesthesiologist. Under his guidance, the work was translated into multiple languages, including Korean and German.
Four qualities ran through everything Ramey did: love, honesty, trust, and purity of intention. These were not declared principles but the working ground beneath all that he taught.
On June 1, 2016, James R. Ramey completed this life's journey. He had been actively mentoring until just days before the end.
ICS - Carrying Forward
Following Ramey's passing in 2016, Dong-gyu Moon and Dong-hyun Kwon accepted the title of Head Educators of UDI for East Asia. The two had been operating Ultra Depth™ Korea as the official Korean branch of Ultra Depth™ International since 2012, having been directly certified by Ramey as educators. This appointment was formally approved by the organization and publicly announced on its official website at the time.
As UDI's active operation came to an end, the central axis through which this work could be officially verified and transmitted ceased to function. At that point, Ultra Depth™ Korea was the only branch in the world conducting the complete official Ultra Depth™ Process training in the form Ramey had established. The lineage faced the risk of surviving in name only.
Moon and Kwon, together with their colleagues, established ICS International, an organization advancing a third-generation hypnosis paradigm. Within this broader framework, the Ultra Depth™ Process serves as the structural foundation, with additional programs developed and integrated around it. This ensured that what Walter Sichort had discovered and James R. Ramey had systematized would continue to be transmitted and developed in a more contemporary form.
ICS does not negate or replace what came before. The essential discovery remains the foundation: that the subconscious operates as a distinct domain of awareness with its own integrity. What ICS has contributed is structural. It draws clear distinctions among the conscious mind, the unconscious, and the subconscious, refines the terminology so that what already existed can be transmitted without distortion, and establishes a practical framework that offers learners a path of gradual expansion.
ICS has renamed what Ramey called the Zed State the Ramey State, in honor of its discoverer. This is the same lineage-keeping gesture as Ramey's renaming of Ultra Depth™ as the Sichort State after Sichort's passing.
Today, ICS International is headquartered in Seoul, with regional operations in Busan, and is governed by a five-member Board of Directors, all co-founders of the organization. The international dissemination of this work, which Ramey had begun, continues to be carried forward by ICS. Since Walter Sichort's discovery and through the dedicated decades of James R. Ramey, the work goes on, taught, practiced, and developed.
The lineage is in motion.