Hello and welcome to my Blog.
The purpose of the Blog is to share insights, exercises, activities and techniques to help people, like you, make positive changes in their lives.
If you find something useful for you in this Blog I’d love to hear about it.
I am very passionate about helping people make positive changes in their lives. Whether that’s helping them change unwanted habits into positive ones or striving towards exciting and rewarding goals.
I currently have consulting rooms in Ewloe, Chester and Wrexham. My Ruthin practice opens in June 2008.
My Background.
I’ve always been interested in people, how they work and what makes them perform better. For the past 20 years I’ve been studying people and it seemed a natural progression into a “helping” profession.
I was first introduced to more formal study in 1999. A friend of mine told me about the concept of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). He was extremely enthusiastic. “NLP is a bit like an ‘owner’s manual’ for your brain!” he told me. “It’s all about understanding how people organise their thinking, feeling, language and behaviour to produce the results they do”
I liked the sound of that and asked him how I could find out more. He said that I could borrow one of his books, have a read, and if I liked it he had plenty more I could use. I forget the name of the book; however I took it away to read.
I hadn’t picked up a book since leaving High School and if I’m honest, I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic to read them as him.
I took the book away however and had a flick through, dipping in and out here and there. The language used in the books was completely beyond me and looked far too complicated. I handed the books back a couple of weeks later with the tactful comment that I had found them “interesting”.
Over the years I watched his life change. He seemed far more contented in his life and success seemed to follow him around. He became a multi award winning broadcaster, signed his first million pound contract and bought a five bedroom house with a swimming pool just outside London. Maybe there was something in this after all.
Over the years I became more and more curious about what was happening to him and wondered how I could start to understand. I decided to have another delve into this world of NLP. I bought two books on the subject and took them on holiday. One an NLP textbook, the other Paul McKenna’s Change Your Life in Seven Days. I read the textbook first, a gruelling 10 days cover to cover. I was still struggling with the language and concepts.
I then read Paul’s book cover to cover in 2 days and used the enclosed “mind programming” CD on my personal CD player. Wow! The experience of the CD was mind blowing rather than mind programming. I felt such a great feeling of relaxation whilst listening and then amazing energy levels afterwards. Relaxation was not something that I was used to in my life, I had recently collapsed in front of 300 work colleagues due to exhaustion in work – I didn’t believe in stress and was a seemingly incurable workaholic (I’m pleased to report that I am now aware just how real stress is and am cured of my workaholicism). However, the best bit of all was that I realised he had told me everything in the NLP textbook but in plain English. Now I understood why my friend was so enthusiastic.
That ignited a love affair with books for me and I read more over the next 2 years than I had during the rest of my life. I also started on a journey of study.
I found out that Paul McKenna was doing an evening seminar in Wrexham, sponsored by a local bank. I couldn’t miss that and persuaded a dozen of my work colleagues to come along too. We learned some basics of NLP that evening. I started to put those basics into practice in my own life and achieved amazing results. I gained two promotions in rapid succession and almost doubled my salary.
The most amazing thing, however, was being able to visit the dentist without a complete feeling of dread. I had a traumatic experience at the dentist when I was 6 that had left me borderline phobic. Not only that I managed to amaze the dentist by having 2 root canal fillings without any pain relief other than the powerful mind techniques that I had learned.
Within a few months I was booked onto his NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner programmes. I trained daily with Paul and I had my first real exposure to “live” hypnosis, both being in trance and inducing others. We did lots of practice changework and seemed to cure everyone on “phobia day”. They brought snakes and Tarantulas into the room in the afternoon so we could test our results. This felt fantastic making such positive changes to ourselves and others.
These trainings also enabled me to make a realisation. During my school days I seemed to be the one everyone came to with their emotional problems, I had no idea why they chose me or indeed why they seemed to find my “advice” of any use at all. As far as I was concerned I knew exactly the same as them. During my life since school I seemed to have a great affinity with people and managed to get on with a wide variety of people from all walks of life. The NLP training explained this to me. The techniques were not that new to me, they just had names and had been brought to my conscious attention. I realised that I had been building deep rapport, listening to people intently and utilising what they talked to me about naturally and unconsciously.
I continued my training with courses in Transactional Analysis, Certificate in Training Practice and a Diploma in Smoking Cessation. My library also grew over the years. However, the thing that had really grabbed my attention was hypnosis.
In June 2006 my Father was diagnosed with cancer. This was a huge shock and helped me to re-evaluate my own mortality as well as my core values and purpose in life. I wanted to find a way to make sure that I left a legacy behind that I had touched and made a positive impact in as many peoples’ lives as possible. When he passed away in the November it confirmed to me that I had made the correct decision to continue my study to become a Clinical Hypnotherapist.
Hypnotherapy fit in with my values and beliefs perfectly and gave me an opportunity to make a difference.
I continued my studies and gained my Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma and Diploma in Clinical and Advanced Hypnotherapy. These are two of the most sought after qualifications and mean that the techniques I use are fully up to date and cutting edge.
I use my Hypnotherapy expertise alongside NLP techniques and aspects of other therapeutic approaches such as CBT and Transactional Analysis to make rapid, long lasting changes.
