What is hypnotherapy? Let me answer that by telling you first what it's not. It's not stage hypnosis and it's not mind control. You will not leave here clucking like a chicken, or forgetting how to count to 10, I will not be able to make you do anything that you do not want to do!

I originally signed up to an online course to study hypnotherapy in 2013 when I started my journey into energy therapy, but I didn't feel that the time or the course were right for me back then. I forgot all about hypnotherapy as I was asked to childmind for a friend on the school playground. Whilst I was enjoying my little beauty business, I didn't enjoy working from home when my children were getting ready for bed and wanting their mum. Childminding seemed like a great alternative, so I qualified as a childminder, was Ofsted registered, completed a level 3 qualification in working with children and young people and thought I'd finally found my role. I was already running the local village playgroup once a week and thought I'd eventually work in the local nursery or school.

Then, I found love and moved from Bristol to Cirencester in the Cotswolds.

This was a pretty big life change! Fortunately, those little coincidences that seem to point me in the right direction were at play, my ex also moved to the Cotswolds at the same time. I found myself talking to the headteacher of my children's new school and asking her for a job - 6 weeks later I started working for her at the village school as a teaching assistant. I've been there for 7 happy years now. My time at the school opened my eyes, I've learned a lot about people through the children I support and their families. I have worked as a class teaching assistant (TA), a 1-1 special educational needs TA, I'm trained to support speech, language and communication needs in the mainstream classroom through interventions and I am a qualified ELSA, no I do not wanna build a snowman, an ELSA is an Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. I have loved learning all about how the mind works, how to support the young people through speech and language needs, educationally and emotionally. Now my own children are no longer of primary school age (we're currently looking at Uni's for my eldest - eek!) it's given me opportunity to once again reflect. I decided that I wanted to look into becoming a counsellor, the inspiration came from the work I was doing in school and seemed like a logical next step that would allow me to reinvest time into my energy therapy work. I found a course that would allow me to train as a counsellor whilst working full time, the bonus was that the first year of the course was counselling skills and hypnotherapy! - Those synchronicities were no doubt pointing me to complete the course.

I loved it! I am always amazed by the power of the mind and the ability to create meaningful change in your life through something as simple as hypnotherapy. So, back to the original question. What is hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is quite simply, the therapist (me) instructing the client (you) to relax. Whilst your body is relaxed, your mind relaxes too. Whilst you are so relaxed your conscious thinking part of your brain relaxes and allows me to talk directly to the subconscious part of your brain. Here, I can make suggestions that will allow you to make the changes in your life that you wish to achieve. Those changes could be that you want to quit smoking, or lose weight. Maybe you want to stop a bad habit or feel more confident when speaking in front of people? I've even used hypnotherapy to help a client to relax for surgery and promote good healing after surgery. Hypnotherapy feels different for each client. You may hear the sound of my voice throughout and be aware of every word I say, or you may relax so deeply that you simply don't remember hearing anything. We quite often enter into hypnotic trances naturally, how many times have you been on a familiar journey and wondered how you got to your destination as you can't remember getting there, or maybe drifted away to another place in your mind whilst doing the washing up? Throughout the hypnotherapy you remain in control at all times. Hypnotherapy cannot make you do anything you don't want to do, but can help you to achieve the things you'd like to.

I'm looking forward to sharing this wonderful therapy here at Cotswold Healing Therapies, in my cosy Cotswolds cabin with you.

Until then, with warmth and light,

Jodie

Cotswold Healing Therapies

email: [email protected]