Hypnotherapy Articles,
News and Stories

Starting a hypnotherapy practice can feel like a challenging concept, especially when you’re new to the industry. If you haven’t started your training yet and are looking at the commercial viability of hypnotherapy, then the idea of starting out alone may feel like an impossible hurdle. But we’re here to show you it’s not. At ... Read more

The world of hypnotherapy is always changing, as modern living and events give rise to new challenges that people need supporting through. As such, maintaining up-to-date information on the latest hypnotherapy methods is vital to ensure you can continue delivering reliable support to your clients. At CPHT, we help hypnotherapists at all levels of education ... Read more

Solution Focused hypnotherapy is a guided method for helping people overcome their problems, and as such comes with a number of benefits for both patients and practitioners. At CPHT, we provide quality hypnotherapy training for budding and established hypnotherapists, giving you all the skills you need to succeed in this impactful industry. In this article, ... Read more

Getting started as a hypnotherapist can be challenging. While no qualifications are legally required, you will find it tough to acquire customers – or know how to handle them – without at least some level of training. Some people try to avoid the upfront cost of hypnotherapy training, turning instead to free courses. At CPHT, ... Read more

Hypnotherapy is a versatile treatment that can be used to help people deal with a variety of issues. From mental health to physical wellbeing, the right hypnotherapy can support people through their personal challenges and help them achieve their goals. At CPHT, we provide aspiring hypnotherapists across the UK with expert advice and quality training, ... Read more

When you wish to embark on the journey towards becoming a qualified hypnotherapist, the first challenge you’ll face is knowing where to start. While a certification isn’t required to become a hypnotherapist, undergoing training will drastically improve your skills, experience, and legitimacy in the eyes of prospective clients, so it is highly recommended if you ... Read more

Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy: What’s the Difference? The brain is incredibly complex and can be affected by wide variety of medical disorders and mental health concerns. To get the help they need, people have different options for treatment, including talking therapies like hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. While these practices have similarities and can be used together, they ... Read more

Are you interested in a career in hypnotherapy, but don’t know where to start? Hypnotherapy training is your answer. At CPHT, we run hypnotherapy training schools up and down the country, helping people become trained and fully qualified hypnotherapists. In this article we’ll explain what hypnotherapy training is, how it works, who it’s for, and ... Read more

Hypnotherapy Support & Supervision, During the Course & Beyond Our hypnotherapy training students come from many different walks of life. Some people start with no experience of the therapy world at all, while others come from a different type of hypnotherapy. We recognise that every student benefits from the right support throughout our hypnotherapy course – and ... Read more

How Long Does It Take To Become A Hypnotherapist? One question often asked by people interested in training to become a hypnotherapist is: how long will it be until I can start practising? The answer is – fairly quickly! Our guide helps you to understand how much time you need to commit to train to ... Read more

A Beginner’s Guide to Embarking on a Hypnotherapy Career Whether you’re thinking of training as a hypnotherapist or are ready to take your hypnotherapy career to the next stage, our guide covers everything you need to make the best choices. Salary & Hours Full time: £69,000 (32 hours) Part time: £30,000 (16 hours) Often requires ... Read more

What is a Hypnotherapist’s Salary in 2024? Hypnotherapy is an enjoyable, challenging and rewarding occupation, but can you earn enough to support you, those important to you and your lifestyle? It’s an important question, because unless you can make a good living as a hypnotherapist, you won’t be able to replace your current income or ... Read more

We interview all of our applicants for two reasons: Firstly we want to make sure that the applicant is right for the course, and secondly to make sure they know what the course entails. CPHT has a reputation for producing Hypnotherapists who are good at what they do. That takes a bit of hard work. ... Read more

Solution-focused hypnotherapist and guest lecturer Kim Clayden has been running her popular 1-day post-graduate CPD (continued professional development) course for over a year now. We caught up with her to find out why, as hypnotherapists, we should really be looking into gaining skills and insight to work with this ever-growing sector of the population as ... Read more

As full-time hypnotherapists (as well as lecturers), we’re coming across clients needing help with Long Covid. Sadly, we can’t get rid of Covid with the swish of a magic wand, but we can help to reduce symptoms in some cases. This is because one of our primary jobs as hypnotherapists is to reduce stress and ... Read more

The word ‘but’ is an interesting one. It’s quite incredible how it can change the course of a life if you apply the word ‘but’. For instance, if we start a sentence with “I’m thinking of doing something different…” then the brain kicks in with the word ‘but’, and we end up not doing something ... Read more

Whilst filming the video, we were able to capture the students on their first weekend taking part in a trance exercise. For some this would have been their first opportunity to experience trance. Others will have had hypnosis before they joined the course. Just Getting on With It We don’t hang around in getting hands-on ... Read more

One of the questions we often get asked from potential students who are interested in our hypnotherapy training course is ‘How long will it be until I can start practising as a hypnotherapist’. The answer is – fairly quickly!  Firstly, you can relax, you are in good hands here. Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training (CPHT) has ... Read more

I trained as a hypnotherapist because I felt it was time for a career change. I was interested in people and psychology, so hypnotherapy training seemed a natural choice, and now at the time of writing, 7 years down the line – I absolutely love my job. From my point of view, here are the ... Read more

Do you ever get a tug of war in your brain? Maybe one part of your brain jumps at the thought of doing something different, but then the other part leaps in and talks you out of it? As lecturers, we do smile at how our brains can stop us from doing something we want ... Read more

For every dark cloud, there is a silver lining. We suspect you’ve heard that saying before? It can indeed be the case though, even with a global pandemic. Our students have been training during a period of great change in the therapeutic world. A change that most therapists wouldn’t have thought possible. As we come ... Read more

Solution-Focused Hypnotherapists can help people improve their sports performance, from beginners to professional athletes. As Covid restrictions are lifted, we are already seeing outdoor sports facilities reopening. These include golf courses, tennis, basketball courts and outdoor swimming. Physical practice is essential, I think this goes without saying. But it will never allow the athlete to ... Read more

We suspect the majority of us have unfulfilled goals?  Whether that’s simply getting around to clearing out the spare room, sorting out our paperwork or taking the plunge to change careers to something more fulfilling! Most of us have things that we will “do one day”. Did you know that research has shown that unfulfilled ... Read more

So, you are thinking of re-training to become a hypnotherapist. You are looking for something that would fit around work whilst you train, and you like the idea of helping people and doing something you enjoy. Maybe you went to see a hypnotherapist and you thought you would like to help others in the same ... Read more

We all have different reasons to enrol on a hypnotherapy training course. When we are interviewing prospective candidates, we are keen to hear their reason for applying for the course. Invariably the primary factor is to help people. The applicant may have experienced hypnotherapy in the past and found it extremely beneficial. It may be that ... Read more

What’s interesting is the number of Hypnotherapy training applicants who say they come through to us because our course is very practical. So, how practical is it? During the first-course weekend, we have the students working with each other in the classroom practising trance. Then, we send them home to ask volunteers (family and friends) ... Read more

We often get asked by students and clients alike, why we repeat the language patterns that we relay to clients in a hypnotic trance? Well, there are a few reasons why repetition is so important for the brain. Firstly, people learn through repetition. Repetition builds pathways in our brain. If we repeat a positive story ... Read more

Since March (The COVID-19 Lockdown), like many training courses, we found ourselves delivering teaching using video conferencing online (Zoom). We needed to deliver the sessions professionally with equal spirit and energy. We also wanted to pass our knowledge on to the students so they could confidently use Zoom to deliver their practice sessions. So, would ... Read more

Well, given all that’s been going on in the world, who can blame you? If you are feeling a bit low, or worse, it’s worth noting that you’re certainly not alone.  Prescriptions for antidepressants in the UK rose by 173% (and the cost rose by 700%) between 1991 and 2001. That’s one heck of a ... Read more

When you set out on a journey, you never quite know where it might lead! David Newton, the founder of Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training (CPHT) launched his first training school back in 2002. He had become a very successful hypnotherapist and, back in the late 90s, had become aware of the ‘scientific revolution’ and in ... Read more

How hypnotherapy training can change your life too.. One of our Senior Lecturers, only realised he’d like to train as a clinical hypnotherapist three days before starting his course with David Newton in Bristol. He ended up having his interview the day before the course started.  Now that’s what we call last minute!  Who’d have ... Read more

Would you like to train in hypnotherapy to help clients to break bad habits? Many of our clients will visit a Solution-Focused Hypnotherapist to help them with this. How do we define a habit? A habit is some repetitive behaviour that may not be helpful to us. Examples include; nail biting, eating unhealthy food, not ... Read more

Take a moment to think about a pile of words. Imagine a pile of words on the floor to your left. Then consider those words being as follows: winter, miserable, cold, sleet, hail, shivering, damp. Okay? Done it? Now if those words were to be a colour, what colour would they be do you imagine? ... Read more

In our Hypnotherapy Training, the  Initial Consultation involves about 10 minutes of information gathering. We ask our clients a few pertinent questions that rather quickly gives us a picture of the client’s stress levels. We go onto discuss these later in the first meeting. Probably the most telling questions we ask revolve around sleep. The ... Read more

It used to be thought that, once we got to be adult, the brain lost it’s ability to change – but thanks to neuroscience, we now know that many of the aspects of the brain can be altered through adulthood.  This ability of the brain to change is termed ‘neuroplasticity’.  Neuroplasticity is often described as: ... Read more

The epidemic of modern life is stress We came across an article by Deepak Chopra recently that made a lot of sense. It’s almost identical to what we’ve been saying for years: “If an epidemic is defined as a disease that affects whole populations, without having a medical cure, then the epidemic of modern life ... Read more

A great advantage we have in Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy is that we explain to a client, how the brain works, and how this is reflected in the symptoms or difficulties they are experiencing. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ but for the purposed of our explanation, it can be considered as two parts: There is ... Read more

Yesterday, our latest class graduated. They had been a superb class and had moved from face-to-face classes one a weekend month to Zooming in online due to the COVID crisis. They took it in their stride and we were all pretty amazed at how well the final three course weekends went. It was rather emotional ... Read more

It is easy to look at the price of any training course and compare it against the cost of other courses. However, if you are trying to decide whether hypnotherapy training is expensive, there are several things to consider. If you are looking to start a new career as a self-employed hypnotherapist, the most important ... Read more

This is an amazing story from Joe, a successful and lovely CPHT graduate. It’s a personal account of how hypnotherapy helped him overcome a significant and overwhelming phobia of hospitals. It’s a great ending and at last Joe can live without that nuisance fear that has plagued him throughout his life. Hi, My name is ... Read more

We have more than one option for ongoing study after the primary Hypnotherapy in Practice Diploma (HPD) course, and this is why many of our students choose our course. The ten-month HPD course equips our students to work with a very broad range of people with a wide variety of symptoms. In fact, upon completion ... Read more

How do I know that Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy taught by CPHT works? How can I demonstrate to future clients that it works? How can I measure outcomes? The answers to these questions are important to consider before you invest financially and dedicate your time to any hypnotherapy course, particularly as the drive to measure outcomes gathers ... Read more

We do things a bit differently at Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training (CPHT)… Actually sometimes we do things a lot differently! Playfulness We have fun. Not only in the classroom but also in our clinics. Playfulness is an important part of what we do. And getting good at that takes practice. No wonder there is so ... Read more

The Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy in Practice Diploma course (HPD) is tailored to each individual student’s needs so is suitable for those with no prior experience as a therapist as well as those who have. Anne Wyatt, Senior Lecturer at CPHT Scotland explains more.

A Practical Hypnotherapy Training Course The great thing about CPHT, is that it is such a practical course. We combine theory and practical together, so by the end of the course, you are a confident Solution-Focused Hypnotherapist. Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy combines elements of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), NLP, and neuroscience, with hypnosis. Students practice with family ... Read more

A Hypnotherapist has a very varied life! Snakes, spiders, heights, flying… these are common phobias clients arrive at our therapy door with.  There are also some more unusual ones, such as a fear of the colour yellow, a fear of trees and a fear of cheese, yes cheese! A career, sometimes even a day as ... Read more

There’s a range of different therapies out there. The therapy we teach on the CPHT course, and use in our own practices is called solution-focused (SF) Hypnotherapy. The reason I prefer this approach is that, as the name suggests, it has a positive focus on the future, and gives clients real strategies to make lasting ... Read more

There’s a lot of things you need to keep in mind to make sure that your marketing plan is a success. At CPHT, we aim to help our students get the most out of their social media marketing. When you are creating a tweet, writing a blog or making a post on Facebook, make sure ... Read more

I know it’s a bit of a career cliché, but every day is different for the hypnotherapy practitioner. To give you an idea of the kind of issues you’ll encounter during training, and when you qualify, here are some of the main reasons people seek out hypnotherapists. “I feel stressed a lot of the time” ... Read more

Hypnotherapy is a highly diverse profession, with many different models of therapy and approaches. If you want to work in the field of clinical hypnotherapy, potentially working alongside mainstream health professionals, such as the NHS, you need to be sure your training will set you up for that.  The trouble is, you almost need to ... Read more

By helping others, we help ourselves. We’ve all heard that said; however, is this old truism actually correct? From my experience of working as a hypnotherapist, it most certainly is. Here’s how we meet our own emotional needs by being pro-social. What does it mean to be pro-social? As the term suggests, a pro-social behaviour ... Read more

At the CPHT, we pride ourselves on keeping up to date with the latest research from neuroscience and believe that we lead the way in this regard. Two of the fastest-growing areas in psychotherapy and medicine are SF work and Brain-Based Therapy. Research now provides more and more evidence to support the theory that our subconscious ... Read more

The network of Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training Schools prides themselves on providing a ‘complete’ training package, with teaching continually in line with the latest research from neuropsychology and neuroscience. All well and good but what does this actually mean? Well, we mean that everything that you need to move from someone who has either no ... Read more

The UK and internationally based Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training schools pride themselves on providing what is one of, if not the most practical courses available. So many formal courses, regardless of topic, place the main emphasis on theory, leaving students to gain live experience at the very end of the course at best, or at worst, ... Read more

Let me tell you my story. Way back in 2012 I qualified with a diploma in hypnotherapy and counselling skills, from an unregulated school of hypnotherapy, run by someone who claimed to have had a successful hypnotherapy practice. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t loved the course, it was fascinating and I ... Read more

How do you know when you’ve just met a solution-focused (SF) hypnotherapist? The smile, the confidence and they way they can’t wait to tell you what they do. They will try and tell you how amazing the brain is…they may draw you pictures.  Don’t worry though, they aren’t mad, they are just loving life because ... Read more

CPHT strive to be at the cutting edge of available research and technology, looking for innovative ways to give the most clinical evidence to students about why solution-focused hypnotherapy has such a significant and lasting effect on clients.  It’s that ‘backed up by the latest research and findings in science’ that attracts so many students ... Read more

When you first go looking for a hypnotherapy training course you’ll notice there is a dizzying choice of courses, delivery styles, course lengths, qualification levels and more, so how do you pick your hypnotherapy training school? In order to narrow down your choices, first decide what it is you want to achieve – what’s your ... Read more

You’d not believe that this is even a topic of conversation; whether a chair or a couch is better for your hypnotherapy room, but it is! It’s almost laughable but, as well as “when to start charging?”, “how much you are going to charge?”, whether to have your photo on your business cards, how often ... Read more

Students and clients ask – Does Hypnotherapy Work? As a hypnotherapist you’ll be asked many times whilst you’re in training and throughout your career, ‘Does Hypnotherapy Work?’ and you must find a way to answer it positively. At first you too might even be a little sceptical; you’ll not be the first student to sign ... Read more

Many people suffer with PTSD, but we normally think of those things as something that happens to members of the armed forces, or people who have suffered violence towards them. Keira Knightley, the award winning, globally recognised actress of stage and screen isn’t an obvious sufferer, but in an interview for the ‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast, ... Read more

Recognising that something needs to change! We are always interested to hear what has prompted clients to seek help in the first place. Sometimes a client will book an appointment to help them overcome a recent event, maybe a relationship break-up, a redundancy, or an accident of some sort. More often than not, clients tell ... Read more

Currently, I am a Chiropractor training in solution-focused Hypnotherapy (SFH). Seems odd to you? Well there are actually a lot of overlaps. Many of my Chiropractic patients re-present with aches and pains caused by posture, injury and more than often driven by an element of stress and tension. SFH helps people to relax and unwind, ... Read more

Actually, I don’t like being a Clinical Hypnotherapist, I love it! Yet when someone suggested I might be good in this area back in 2006, I laughed out loud. At that point I was a Marketing Manager within the financial services sector and had no inclination to become a therapist. Ten years later and I ... Read more

Marketing your hypnotherapy practice We train our students to become very good clinical hypnotherapists, but we don’t stop there, we also include a marketing module within the course. As Nicola, one of our senior lecturers says, “It’s all very well being good at what you do, but unless people know what you can do, then ... Read more

I could hardly believe what I was hearing – this flying phobia had cost my client thousands in lost flights, missed trips and they had stopped planes on the runway to get off, more than once! The holiday of a lifetime with the person you love should be something to look forward to right? The ... Read more

As Solution-Focused Hypnotherapists, research is very important to us. We want to know that what we are doing with our clients really does work. So, if new evidence becomes available that suggests we need to change the way we work, then we will. Equally, there is an increasing amount of good quality evidence now that ... Read more

There still remains a lot of mystery and myth around Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. The fact remains that good quality scientific evidence is building and continuing to support this talking therapy. This research is showing that it is an effective way to help people cope with a wide range of symptoms and conditions. Fortunately, many people ... Read more

Even I was intimidated by this phobia; I’d never seen one so severe and only the fact that I have really good training, allowed me to stay confident for my client. What’s it like to work as a solution-focused hypnotherapist? You might already starting to think about what life after qualification might be like, after ... Read more

We just love Stanford University!  They do a lot of research on what happens with hypnosis. In fact there’s buckets full of research going on about hypnotherapy as scientists glimpse how it affects the brain.  And it’s all good stuff. A group of researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine just used brain imaging to ... Read more

Sara, a student at the time of writing, was on a flight back from Birmingham to Belfast when she noticed a chap sat by himself looking worried. Sara went and sat beside him and asked if she could tell him a story and that it was a good story. She then went on to talk ... Read more

The opportunity for all Solution-Focused Hypnotherapists in working with sports people is tremendous. Glenn Catley explains how hypnotherapy helped him to perform at his very best on the night, taking the title of World Champion Boxer in the Super Middleweight division. Perhaps the greatest help we can give sports people in improving their performance, like ... Read more

Studies show that just 20% of UK workers are happy at work and that almost half would like to change career, with 21% hoping to make that change in the next 12 months. For many, the motivation to change career is that what they do in their day job makes no meaningful contribution to the world.  ... Read more

I’d say the majority of clients I work with come to see me because of anxiety in some form or another. Anxiety can manifest itself in many ways: nervousness; panic attacks; insomnia, overly worrying about something that may never happen, etc. It can have a crippling effect by bringing on range of symptoms such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome ... Read more

I’m Gary Johannes and I’m a senior lecturer for numerous CPHT schools in the UK . I never expected to become a hypnotherapist, let alone a lecturer with the school that trained me, so you might not be surprised to know that I think hypnotherapy training might be for you too! I’ve not always been ... Read more

This is a lovely story from a CPHT Graduate, Michèle Lazarus: Having had hypnotherapy for insomnia, I decided to train at the Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training school (CPHT) as a hypnotherapist myself. That was three years ago and now I’m working pretty much full time in three different locations and loving it. I chose CPHT because of its solution ... Read more

Over the years I’ve worked with a large number of hypnotherapy clients who come into my clinic with all sorts of presenting problems.  The majority bring in the usual issues such as anxiety, depression or allied symptoms such as insomnia, panic attacks or not being able to keep control of alcohol or food intake. Sometimes ... Read more

Many people seem to think that it is only possible to make a part time living out of being a Hypnotherapist. The main argument for this seems to be that it is too difficult to find enough clients to sustain a full time practice. This has not been my experience and I know many colleagues ... Read more

I became a hypnotherapist back in 2011 at the age of 35. I can safely say it has been the best job I have ever had.  I have had some jobs that paid me more money, but none have been as rewarding and enjoyable and here’s why: Job Satisfaction Nothing can beat it. There is no ... Read more

Good marketing is one area of a new business that can be completely underestimated. You may have just qualified as a hypnotherapist, but how do you let people know how good you are? Word of mouth is still the best and cheapest form of advertising your business but this can take time to build. Graduates ... Read more

As a Clinical Hypnotherapist we often meet clients who are suffering from anxiety. A natural response that everyone will feel from time to time, after all no one can avoid routine life situations. We may feel anxious when we need to attend a job interview or swerve for a car that is heading in our ... Read more

Alex, a senior lecturer at CPHT, explains a little bit about Hypnosis in this short video. Hypnosis is not weird or magical, but it is powerful. It is just simply the contrivance of the trance state, and when used effectively, hypnosis can help people change their mindset far quicker than they might without the use ... Read more

A starting place from attempting to solve any problem is having an understanding of why it happens. There is plenty of researched evidence to show that informed clients improve more quickly than those less informed. During the initial consultation, we as Solution-Focused Hypnotherapists, explain how the brain works. This simple and accurate description of how ... Read more

I’m no longer ‘Just Mum’ I have been fortunate enough to be a stay at home Mum for the last 20 years. With my youngest son off to university I knew it was time to get back out in the world.  Being at home during my children’s formative years was an amazing privilege however it’s ... Read more

Looking for a new career? Have you considered hypnotherapy? It is one of the fastest growing careers in the UK and here is why. 1 in 4 of us will suffer from some form of mental health issue in 2016. The pressures of our moderns lives means stress, anxiety and depression are on the rise ... Read more

When I started looking for a hypnotherapy training school, I didn’t know what to look for. There seemed to be as many different approaches as training schools. They also all seemed to offer different qualifications. Some were accredited with this body and some with that and I became quite confused. Some offered very short courses ... Read more

I was lucky enough to be working with a group of qualified hypnotherapists over the weekend, helping them to better use one of the major tools of Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy: The Miracle Question. It can be asked in many different ways, but it does take practice and experience on the part of the therapist to be ... Read more

I am often asked the question ‘What is Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy?’ Well, Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy (SFH) is a model of excellence that uses interventions that are effective. It will use the very best procedures that science and research prescribe. In reality though its core philosophy is very much based on the work of Steve de Shazer and ... Read more

We are often asked to help clients with chronic (persistent) pain. Using Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy clients can learn techniques to lessen the impact of the pain. We also help to lower any associated anxiety, which again impacts on the intensity of the pain. This article presents ‘a possible way around one of the most frustrating limitations ... Read more

Several years ago Hypnotherapy/ists failed in their attempts to bring about Voluntary Self Regulation (VSR). At the time it was broadly agreed that if we managed VSR, that the gateway entry to hypnotherapy, for those who wished to practice under the regulated ‘umbrella’, would be the Hypnotherapy Practitioners Diploma, or HPD. The quality mark of ... Read more

Many people suffer from physical, mental, and emotional problems, and they spend years looking for solutions. They may try all kinds of different approaches, but are often unable to find true relief. The quest for a solution to their problems can occupy a great deal of their time, preventing them from achieving their goals in ... Read more