How I got into hypnotherapy

When I announce myself as a hypnotherapist, often, the first thing people then ask is: ‘How did you get into that?’ So I tell them my ‘becoming a hypnotherapist’ story and this is it.

I used to be a nurse; I worked as Intensive Care Sister at a large London teaching hospital. At that time I suffered from chronic neck and back problems. One day, I was describing the attendant tingling in my hands to the physiotherapist; she said, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ She had a point, I took her seriously and decided to take time off so that my back could heal – it wasn’t going to get any better otherwise.

Using my time off work wisely I went to Alexander Technique classes; a system of relaxing and aligning all the muscles of the body. As I did this I had something of an epiphany. I realised that I was meditating doing my Alexander Technique exercises. I had done yoga but hadn’t been able to understand what was meant by meditation – I had decided that meditation was something I couldn’t do.

So then, I embarked on a journey of learning different meditation techniques; eventually alighting on transcendental meditation which I do to this day. In tie my back improved and I returned to Intensive Care. I found though, that despite the fact that my colleagues being vigilant about not letting me lift my back pain returned. I noticed that simply being at work made my back hurt; I realised that something else was going on. This is how I got interested in psycho-somatic disease and the mind-body link. And somehow in my travels I got chatting to a hypnotherapist who explained hypnotherapy to me, I enrolled on the course and now am a fully-fledged hypnotherapist with my own practice and patients.