What is Havening?

Havening is a gentle and safe way to deal with emotional blocks and trauma, without having to endlessly ruminate on the worst time of your life. It has been given much media attention since Paul McKenna began to recommend it.

The Havening process is simple. By stroking the face, arms and hands, massive amounts of serotonin are released into the body. Using a combination of images and sound, the working memory (auditory loop & visual sketchpad) becomes disrupted. This combination actually removes the traumatic neural pathway from the brain. The memory that something bad has happened is still there, but it doesn’t resonate with you anymore. Quite literally, the road to anxiety is removed and a new emotional response is generated. This can sometimes take mere minutes.

Yes, it’s safe. When trauma is released, it rises, at times vividly, to the conscious memory, before it’s reprocessed and clears. This can sometimes (not always) be very emotional. It won’t be there for long, because Havening will clear it. That’s a good reason to find an experienced therapist to work with, who will keep you feeling safe during the process. Also, as an experienced therapist, I’ll make connections with previous events that you simply won’t see, so you’ll get a far better result.

I prefer to work in two-hour sessions; it’s not mandatory or anything, you can decide, but in a longer block we can get a lot more achieved than in two separate single hours, so this will save you money in the long run. Most of my clients have tried everything to resolve their problems and they just want to feel differently, as soon as possible. So in two-hour sessions, we get to our result in half the number of weeks. I advise that clients plan for an initial block of 3 x two-hour sessions on a weekly basis, then we can assess our progress and continue with shorter sessions, or space them further apart. Most of my clients just continue with the two-hour blocks, because they've experienced how useful that longer time is.

Nothing works for everyone, but it has an incredible success rate, that’s why I use it. I'm really interested in getting results and getting my clients out of therapy and back to running their own lives. If you email me, I’ll normally ask you to give me a call. That way I can ask you some questions, which will give me a good idea of if/how I can help you; and you will have a chance to speak with me and decide if I’m the person you want to work with, which is more important than any “technique" anyone will use with you.

I offer clients payment plans if they are struggling to afford therapy. I understand that your problems may impede your ability to earn and that can be a vicious cycle to be stuck in. I will always consider cases of real hardship, and can also put you in touch with Havening students who are looking for free case studies for their qualifications.

They’re completely different protocols and both work. Hypnotherapy has verified clinical results and is approved by the NHS. Of the two, I mostly prefer Havening, because it’s just so fast, effective and simple. I also like that by the end of our sessions, you will have a skill for life. You will know how to use it on yourself and be able to manage your own emotions far more effectively in the future.

As the first student to take the Certified Havening Neuroscience exam, I have to answer; no, not yet. They’re working on clinical trials, but these take years, and Havening is a very new form of therapy. You can find some science stuff on the Havening.org website, which I could convince you was very important if I wanted to (I don’t). The important thing is that Havening works, maybe we don’t exactly know how, but it really does.

There is no need to be touched, you can simply be guided by the actions of the therapist and do that to yourself. Self-Havening is just as effective. I have a lot of clients who self-haven when we’re working together via Skype, and they get fantastic results (This is also great for agoraphobics).

It will change the way you feel. You can’t change the past, but Havening can help you change the way you feel about what's happened. Instead of the past hurting or haunting you, with Havening the events feel less significant and you simply leave them by the wayside and move on, in a way you couldn’t before. It is also fantastic for changing behaviours and feelings.

A lot of people call me because they have a problem or emotions that they just can’t change and they feel really stuck. They will often have tried lots of ways to change, without success. Clients will often say they just want to “feel like myself again”, Havening is a fantastic way of achieving that.

If I'm working with a child, the parent will need to stay for all of the sessions. With adults, it's not uncommon for a partner or friend to spend say, the first 5 or 10 minutes of the first session with us, till the client feels comfortable to stay alone. The rest of the session is between just myself and the client, unless we're specifically working on their relationship together.