Hypnotherapy
The name Hypnosis is derived from 'Hypnos' - the Greek god of sleep - although this is not a useful way of describing Hypnosis, as you do not go to sleep. Hypnosis is a perfectly natural state of mind that we all go into several times a day, for example when daydreaming, watching TV, meditating, playing a sport or doing something creative. It is a state that we have all experienced, there is nothing 'magical' or 'mystical' about the Hypnosis.
 

During Hypnosis your body and conscious mind are relaxed and your subconscious mind is open to suggestion. The subconscious mind is the seat of your imagination, emotions and creativity. It is the part of your mind that deals with all your automatic functions like breathing, heart beating, skills that become automatic like riding a bike, and habits - good and bad. The subconscious mind is a vast memory store, it remembers everything from when you were born to now - even if you can't consciously remember.

Hypnotherapy is when a professional trained person uses the state of Hypnosis to bring about changes that the client desires. This is done by communication with the subconscious mind. The Hypnotherapists can use several methods for this including direct or permissive suggestion, metaphors, and imagery. Sometimes the Hypnotherapist will work through past events with you to facilitate release and change.

Hypnotherapy is not a 'magic wand', it is a tool that can help you to help yourself and take control of your life. You need to be committed to change.

 NLP  (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)
Neuro refers to the mind, linguistic is about language – how we use it and how it affects us, and programming is about our sequences of repetitive behaviour.

NLP began in the early 1970s with Richard Bandler a psychology student and John Grinder an assistant professor of linguistics. They developed a process called 'modelling' which they used to identify the sequence of ideas and behaviours which enables a person to achieve a particular task. At the beginning they modelled 3 people who were seen to be excellent at what they did – Fritz Perls – the innovative psychologist who invented Gestalt therapy, Milton Erickson a psychiatrist who used a particular style of Hypnotherapy using metaphors, and Virginia Satir a very successful family therapist. From models, NLP has devised a series of strategies and techniques to help us all reach our full potential, changing thoughts, behaviours and beliefs that limit us.

For example lets take spiders – some people hate spiders and some people have spiders as a pet. Why? Well it comes down to thoughts and beliefs that create the different behaviours.

Someone who doesn’t like spiders would probably imagine them in their head as bigger than they are, and close up – even crawling over them - perhaps on their face - and imagine themselves screaming in the presence of them – they may even have had a bad experience with one in their past – maybe an annoying brother had chased them with one.

The spider lover would probably imagine them true to size and at more of a distance – seeing their hairy legs as something to admire.

So if you had a fear of spiders a NLP practitioner would use strategies and techniques to help you to view a spider in a different way based on models of people who do not have the fear.

 TFT (Thought Field Therapy)

The development of TFT started over 20 years ago by a doctor of psychology Dr Roger Callahan. Dr Callahan had been seeing a lady called Mary who had a severe water phobia – she couldn’t go out in the rain or even have a shower - it was that bad. Dr Callahan saw Mary for 18 months using all the techniques of the time, and there was little improvement. He attended a course on a therapy called kinesiology and learnt about the different meridian points in the body. Mary complained that her fear was like a terrible feeling at the pit of her stomach – so he asked Mary to tap on the stomach meridian point under her eye – as an experiment. From that moment on Mary's phobia disappeared completely and never returned. They were both astounded.

Dr Callahan then went on to develop more tapping sequences to cover a multitude of problems. Dr Callahan believes that disturbances in the body's flow of energy causes psychological problems. He calls these disturbances perturbations. For TFT to work, the person has to think about the problem – which tunes that person into the thought field. They then have to follow a specific tapping routine which depends on the problem at hand. This process help to remove the disturbance in the body's energy flow – therefore removing the problem. Dr Callahan believes that this process taps into the body's natural healing code.