Clinical hypnosis has undergone quiet a revolution from seemingly being little more than a party gimmick to an established and vital component of behavioural medicine programs in the finest academic and clinical institutions you can name, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

There are sophisticated scientific journals dedicated solely to advancing clinical practice on the basis of research into hypnotic phenomena. There are national and international meetings devoted entirely to the subject of how hypnosis informs clinical practice and illuminates complex mind-body relationships.

Hypnosis isn’t the therapy, and hypnosis itself cures nothing. Rather, hypnosis is the vehicle for empowering people with the abilities and realizations that ultimately can help them. It isn’t the experience of hypnosis itself that’s therapeutic, it’s what happens during hypnosis in terms of developing new and helpful associations. It truly is a positive psychology in practice.

Hypnotherapy is a treatment style involving a therapist helping to intensify a client’s focus and concentration to induce a trance-like state.

A client can never be hypnotised against their will, the treatment requires the client’s cooperation. During a period of hypnosis, the client will experience a powerful sense of calm and relaxation.

The trance-like state is important to attain, because in this state a person is more open and receptive to suggestion, which helps create the desired change.

Imagine the case of a person with Chronic Pain, the pain is unknown, or is known but considered untreatable by medical professionals. Each day this person suffers terribly, a life marred by an inability to do much of anything positive because of the consequences of the debilitating pain.

Now imagine that he or she has a clinical hypnosis session with a knowledgeable clinician, someone well trained in the dynamics and methods of clinical hypnosis. And imagine that he or she is invited to close his or her eyes and induced into a trance, he or she then focus on the ideas, images, and suggestions of the clinician. He or she get so absorbed in the suggested experiences and discovers an ability to detach from his or her body for a while- and thus the pain as well.

The clinician records the session, he or she goes home with instructions for how to re-create the experience either autonomously or with the recording, and for the first time this person feels relief and not like a helpless victim anymore.

Clinical Hypnotherapy, and the methods in the example above can be used to treat an array of issues. Helping empower people to take charge and manage their fears sensibly and directly moving them out of the victim mentality that is the foundation of their problem space.

The range of ways to absorb people in new frames of mind for living well is what any mental health therapist attempts to do. Clinical hypnosis just “speeds-up” the process, accelerating therapeutic messages and integrating them more naturally and more easily.

As a mental health professional my service promise to you is to provide a results-oriented and effective therapeutic service which is problem focused and practical, delivered with genuine care, respect and professionalism. I am committed to being an integral part of your support and recovery team, helping with a collaborative approach that works for you.

Can you imagine what Clinical Hypnotherapy can do for your self-esteem when you discover it is possible to skill-fully manage something so distressing that used to seem entirely overwhelming and uncontrollable?

The techniques used in hypnotherapy are not so unique from relaxation techniques and cognitive reframing used in psychotherapy styles like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The primary point of distinction is the trance-like state used in hypnotherapy.

While the techniques used in hypnotherapy may seem difficult to identify, they are well-considered interventions like:

• Influencing changes in patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.
• Suggesting shifts in sensory experiences and using carefully worded suggestions to transform experiences in therapeutic ways.
• Presenting valuable ideas and experiences in such a manner that you can relate to them more meaningfully and use them to improve yourself and well-being.

Depending on your objectives the following therapeutic techniques will be used;

• Age regression (allowing for reframing of memories, valuable in the treatment of PTSD and Trauma)
• Age progression (a vehicle for establishing positive self-fulfilling foresights, valuable in treatment of depression and anxiety)
• Analgesia and Anaesthesia (the ability to reduce or even eliminate sensation, valuable in the treatment of all kinds of pain)
• Dissociation (the ability to traumatic or emotional experiences into smaller parts and selectively amplify or de-amplify the experience depending on therapeutic objectives, valuable in the treatment of depression, overwhelming emotions, anxieties, OCD, insomnia, addictions and dependencies)