Helen France Hypnotherapy Tenterden, Kent and Sussex

WHAT IS HYPNOTHERAPY?

Hypnosis is like a halfway house between being fully wide awake and fast asleep. Most people experience it as a slightly altered state of consciousness. The body becomes relaxed and the mind both relaxed and focused at the same time. During this state the person is much more receptive to positive and constructive information for change.

Hypnotherapy is a therapy that uses hypnosis. You are in a trance like state where your body is deeply relaxed but your mind is active. We all go into such states of mind naturally in daily life, for example, when daydreaming or concentrating deeply on something.



You stay in control at all times. You may feel heavy or light but remain relaxed. When you are in this relaxed state your hypnotherapist suggests things that might help you to change your behaviour or relieve symptoms. No one is exactly sure how hypnotherapy works. One theory is that your conscious mind switches off while you are relaxed. Your unconscious mind is then open to the helpful suggestions of the therapist.

The therapist works with you to change your behaviour in a positive way or to reduce physical symptoms. But even if you are hypnotized, you don’t have to take on the therapist’s suggestions. No one can be hypnotized if they don’t want to be. You cannot get stuck in hypnosis; since starting out as a hypnotherapist in 2000 I have never had any patients that have got stuck in hypnosis - this is an urban myth.

Many contented patients have found that hypnotherapy has helped them bypass their problems, often with remarkably little effort on their part. Often people spend years battling with troublesome habits, distressing emotional states and unhelpful thought patterns and are delighted to get such quick and lasting change.

Hypnosis can produces very rapid changes, sometimes in as little as two sessions.

I have been in practice since 2000 now and there are people who came to see me for hypnotherapy to stop smoking back in 2000 who are still non-smokers. Becoming a non-smoker will be good for your health and your wallet, but most of all it will give you back your self respect.

Hypnosis is both very gentle and very powerful. It harnesses the power of the unconscious mind and patients find positive changes happening without quite knowing how this has happened. For example, under hypnosis some IBS patients can reduce the contractions of their bowel, something not normally under conscious control (Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol 64, p 621). Their bowel lining also becomes less sensitive to pain.

These are some of the things people mainly come to see me for: hypnotherapy to stop smoking, weight loss hypnosis, anxiety, fears, phobias, panic attacks, hypnosis for depression, hypnotherapy for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), help reducing alcohol consumption, hypnotherapy for insomnia, fear of flying.

My practice attracts clients from the following areas: Ashford, Maidstone, Medway, Canterbury, Tenterden, Rye, Battle, Hastings, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Gillingham, Rainsham, Sheppey, Tonbridge, Dover, the Kent coast and even from as far afield as Windsor and Norfolk.





Often people come to me after other therapies such as counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have not succeeded in resolving their difficulties. These therapies are excellent forms of treatment in themselves, but often patients find that hypnotherapy sorts out problems far more quickly and effectively. What might require twelve to twenty sessions with other therapies can often be achieved in four to six hypnotherapy sessions, saving the patient a great deal of time and money.

Counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy may also require the patient to spend long hours talking about painful episodes in the past. Dwelling too much on the past risks etching painful episodes more deeply into a person’s mind; by contrast hypnotherapy gently lays old ghosts to rest, puts the past into the past where it belongs, and frees the patient to thoroughly enjoy the present and look forward to the future with pleasure, confidence and excitement.



People from the Medway towns come for hypnotherapy in Maidstone. Those looking for hypnosis or a hypnotherapist in Ashford come to Maidstone or Tenterden.

Home visits may be possible for those who are housebound.

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