I’m Angie Towse, founder of States of Mind, a new Clinical Hypnotherapy, NLP & Coaching Practice.
I found Hypnotherapy & NLP through necessity. In fact, it’s really what saved me after what had been a debilitating 6-month slog of Long Covid. With there being no cure as such, the doctors were at a loss of what to offer me. I’d tried everything else I could find out there, then a friend recommended something called the Lightning Process. I had nothing to lose at this point, so went into the three day programme open to what it had to offer, but unsure of what or how it would work.
In just three days I had miraculous results. I was totally better. And not just from long covid, but better than I’d felt in years.
The fundamental building blocks of the Lightning Process are Hypnotherapy and NLP, and having experienced such an incredible transformation firsthand, I was both mind blown and fascinated from that point on. I soon signed up to study to become a Clinical Practitioner and qualified earlier this year as well as embarking on Advanced and Masters training.
Hypnotherapy & NLP work beautifully together. NLP - Neurological Linguistic Programming, is essentially how the brain and body communicate and the part that language plays in it. Our brains use neural pathways, basically quick access channels for passing along messages to the rest of the body. On the whole this is a very efficient system that allows patterns to form that create the appropriate automatic behaviour to a thought or situation. This is what helps us flow through everyday life - just think when was the last time you had to remind yourself exactly how to brush your teeth or tie your shoelaces? This is a good neural pathway in action, when we’re doing these kind of things automatically without having to think.
Sometimes though it can work the other way and we find ourselves stuck in bad habits, using behaviour we don’t like or doesn’t even feel like us. Maybe we’re responding to situations in a way that we don’t want to, but feel almost powerless to stop it. We might think that’s just the ‘way we are’. It could be we’ve just not been feeling ourselves for a long time, whether that’s physically or emotionally and nothing we do seems to be able to shift it.
This is where our brains have made a simple mistake and gone a bit off course, thinking it’s doing the right thing, but actually creating a pattern that’s not relevant and not useful. This might show up by finding you’re responding to something someone says or does that actually, isn’t really how we wanted to react at all. Or perhaps we find ourselves eating when we’re not hungry, not putting ourselves forward at work even though we really want that promotion. It’s like we’re acting out of line with what we really want. However, the brain is actually pretty malleable and has the capacity to change. This is what we refer to as neuroplasticity. And this, amazingly, can be pretty quick and easy to do. We just re-train it. And this is where therapeutic hypnosis comes into it.
Whilst NLP is concerned with how the issue is actually constructed, hypnotherapy deals with the unconscious mind.
We can think of our brain as two systems, the conscious mind and the unconscious. The conscious mind is like our front-facing part. It can be quite sceptical, asking lots of questions, a bit cautious. Whereas the unconscious is much more open, more curious, up for seeing what things feel like. The conscious mind can often be obstructive to change, so what we do in a hypnotherapy session, is to get the client incredibly, deeply relaxed. This essentially quiets down the conscious mind so we can bypass it, in order to speak directly to the unconscious mind to deliver some new statements and instructions.
So let’s take an example: if someone is wanting to lead a more healthy lifestyle, say they want to eat in a better way and increase their exercise, just having that thought alone, the conscious mind might come back with lots of reasons why this might be difficult. It might point out how they like certain foods too much or have never been very good with this before, why should it work now? But by quieting that voice, we can work in some messages to the unconscious mind letting it know that actually making healthy choices is easy and exercise can be enjoyable. This then allows a new, much more useful and effective behaviour to be formed.
What to expect in a session.
For most people the session is incredibly relaxing and intriguing - you nearly always learn something new about yourself. And for the most part, it will likely feel like an incredibly powerful conversation.
At the start, we’ll have a chat about what it is you’re wanting to change. I’m very keen to hear about the structure of the issue, yes a bit about how it all started, but mostly about how, where and when it shows up for you. From then we’ll move onto the work itself. Most of the time it will involve just sitting in a really comfy chair, closing your eyes and following the sound of my voice. We carry on talking together but in a much more calm, relaxed way. Sometimes there’s a bit of movement, which accesses different parts of neurology.
After the session, the changes will show up differently for everyone. Sometimes clients open their eyes and say straight away the room already feels slightly different, lighter, more colours. For other people it’s later that day or throughout the week. When the change comes, it’s more of an old familiarity rather than something completely new and different. This work is about realigning ourselves back to a part of us that might have got disconnected somewhere in our past.
And really that’s it. Some issues can be resolved in just one session, even if it’s an issue that’s been around for years. Sometimes it might take a few and if it’s quite a significant change i.e we’ve resolved some deep anxiety that's been holding someone back in their life, then we might look to do some coaching alongside this. This will help the client get a new perspective of what life can really be like for them now, then help them truly discover what they actually want and then get them focused on achieving it. For more information, please visit site here.
All sessions are zoom, so it can all take place in the comfort of your own home.
Once a month I also run a low income clinic for those either in the lower wage bracket or who have been signed off sick for a long time.
States of Mind Hypnotherapy is also opening up a second home down on the Kent coast in Margate this summer ‘24. This is shaping up to be a beautiful space where clients can come in person for 1:1 hourly sessions. It will also mean more in-depth transformational programmes can now take place over the course of a morning or afternoon. Facing directly onto Hawley Square, the studio gets all the incredible light from the magical Margate skies and looks out onto magnificent ancient oaks.
As well as opening up in-person Hypnotherapy for those in the Kent area, States Of Mind Margate is only a 15 minutes walk from the station (and 5 minutes from the sea). So for those in London that want to combine their transformational work with some seaside healing, it’s all on the doorstep. Literally.
For more information, please visit the site, follow the instagram or just get in touch as I’m always happy to chat on this topic, especially knowing how powerful a conversation can be. I never thought I’d be a Hypnotherapist but I absolutely love it and it has allowed me to step into the true part of myself.
To book a session check out the website here and for further updates follow @statesofmindhypnotherapy
