About Hypnotherapy

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The clinical hypnotherapeutic journey draws upon contemporary neuroscientific and psychotherapeutic evidence and is defined by professional ethics. It aims to help you achieve your goals and features a wide range of techniques. Controlling fiction based figures might be sensational on stage or screen, but they bear little resemblance to modern hypnotherapists. Here’s why:

Hypnosis is a natural state which often pairs relaxation with heightened awareness and a sense of ‘drifting’ contentedly. The brain’s natural cycles vary relaxation depth. Most often light or medium is very effective. At Chenara Hypnotherapy, suggestions promote finding your comfortable ‘depth’ of relaxation.

Waking is easy since hypnosis is lighter than sleep. Entertainment myths implying any risk of not waking are based in ignorance and sensationalism. In hypnosis you awaken on request, as compared to sleeping individuals who may remain oblivious.

We become a partnership, helping you towards your own solutions and goals. We engage you fully in your own journey. Control myths are outdated. Like a tour-guide, the modern hypnotherapist repeatedly focuses you upon your chosen goal and untapped inner resources. You choose which experiences and suggestions to accept and thus shape your own outcomes - especially as empowering self-hypnosis is usually taught during the first session.

Hypnosis is a skill which reveals intelligent capability to follow helpful instructions. It has nothing to do with gullibility. Brain scans reveal that activity focuses, much as a laser focuses light, so more can be achieved. Therefore, it is a desirable and useful ability which offers advantageous experiences and skills.

Your unconscious mind will continue to keep you safe and monitor the information you share. Furthermore, an amazing advantage over other therapies is that many issues can be helped without you even having to reveal specifics such as names etc. Any request for inappropriate information would either be ignored or cause you to awaken. Your unconscious is your protector.

Modern sessions aim to affirm — ours are supported by professional ethics, mutual respect, safety and choice. Gone are the days in which it was thought that hypnotists had to ‘control’. That completely denied clients the chance to engage with and take responsibility for therapy. Chenara Hypnotherapy sessions are built upon ethics defined by the highly regarded British Society of Clinical Hypnosis and certainty that superior therapy is possible when we offer a series of desirable choices and you can feel safe because you know you are respected.

As hypnosis heightens focus and direct access to unconscious resources, it often emerges as more reasonably priced than traditional talk-based therapies which take longer. Insights and changes may also go deeper than other brief therapies.

Further reading:

You may enjoy searching the following, either on a general search engine or a dedicated sholarly one:

Milton Erickson—a very inspiring hypnotherapist who made the therapy a lot more effective, with the gentlest of approaches.

Faymonville—One of several exploring the benefits hypnotherapy brings to patients during surgical recovery.

More historically, you may also enjoy reading about James Esdaile (a Scottish surgeon), Charcot, Freud, Jung and perhaps even the rather bizarre Mesmer.

About Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is a NICE* recommended rapid therapy with an ever-increasing evidence base. It can effectively shift thought, emotion and habitual patterns which perpetuate ’problems’. The same unconscious which drives illness or problems can be redirected and aligned with conscious intention, often activating heightening natural abilities to achieve desired goals of many kinds.
*NICE: National Institute of Clinical Excellence

Hypnotherapy is . . .
. . . the therapeutic use of hypnosis; a natural, relaxing and enjoyable alteration of attention. The conscious mind is calmed so the unconscious can clearly receive help designed to assist your achievement of desired goals, whether they relate to physical or mental health, confidence, performance or personal development.

Results can amaze, yet nothing is ’magical’ about it. It is about using the brain more effectively and although many people - including scientists and medics - misunderstand hypnosis, improved scanning technologies are starting to deliver very interesting findings which increasingly explain wonderful breakthroughs hypnotherapists witness every day - especially since modern clinical hypnotherapy draws upon the most effective aspects of various therapeutic approaches to deliver sessions uniquely tailored for you.

Boosting unconscious abilities
Every day, your unconscious precisely regulates your pulse, breathing and circulation. It is so effective, it keeps you alive and interacts directly with the nervous system, in ways that can help or hinder. Such powerful resources can be harnessed as you want to enhance performance and boost personal fulfilment.

Empowering rapid therapy
While your aims might be specific, every planned session aims to be rapid and empower you generally as well, promoting emotional, mental and physical balance as well as overall resilience. If upsetting emotions are addressed, it is done so with access to helpful unconscious resources and wonderful techniques designed to help.

Safety Considerations:
In appropriately trained and responsible hands, hypnotherapy is a remarkably safe therapy as it uses natural states of awareness which are already experienced on going to sleep and waking every night. Clinical hypnotherapy adheres to ethical guidelines, is not invasive, is not addictive and is not associated with chemical side-effects etc.

The following contraindications apply, however:

Psychotic Disorders:

Hypnotherapy often promotes change by creating dissociation (a sense of distance or splitting away) from the issue or a problematic part of self. As psychotic disorders already involve dissociation to a troublesome extent, they contraindicate use of hypnosis.

Epilepsy:

Hypnotherapy often triggers useful changes in brain activity. Any change may, in rare instances, trigger a seizure in a person diagnosed with epilepsy. Chenara Hypnotherapy does not treat patients with this condition, preferring to err on the side of caution.

First communications, including free introductory 30 minute sessions, are used to screen for these conditions. Please contact if you have any concerns.