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Change Camp is a Newcastle conference for hypnotists and newcastle hypnotherapists and anyone involved or wanting to know more about personal development and change.

One full day of varying presenters and topics from Hypnosis and NLP to brief therapy methods. Incredible value at £10 and bringing together a community of like minded individuals.

Saturday 20th May – All Day

The themes for ChangeCamp are:

1. Changing yourself: Using psychological techniques to change our own experience of the world.

2. Changing others: Using psychological techniques in therapeutic or educational contexts.

3. Changing groups: Making groups and organisations more effective through psychological means.

In an un-conference that is put to one side, people who are interested in a subject and want to present about it make presentations to other people who are interested. The presentations may be talks, workshops, exercises, question and answer sessions, brainstorming sessions – what ever format best suits the issue in question. Audience participation is strongly encouraged. The event is organised to encourage an informality and cross fertilisation of ideas.

ChangeCamp is arranged to bring together a large number of participants from a variety of fields so they can be exposed to other ways of working and thinking. It’s set up to stimulate discussion.

To encourage high attendance the entry fee is set at £10 which is just enough to cover costs.

If you would like to attend just go to www.changecamp.co.uk and sign on to the website.

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Life Club was a big hit at ChangeCamp Autumn 2009, with more than 20 participants! Now I’m delighted to tell you that Life Club Newcastle is ready to go – we will meet every Monday night from January 18 onwards.

Life Clubs are 90 minute workshops where you get a clearer way of thinking about yourself and your life. We want you to live more, laugh more, earn more and play more. It’s a fun environment where you meet like-minded people all wanting to learn more about their life and how to manage it.

Doors open at 6.15pm, and we kick off at 6.30pm prompt, finishing at 8pm.

Workshops are £15 each (concessions available), with free membership (value £10) for ChangeCampers – just say the word! I look forward to seeing you there.

Facilitator Abigail Smith

Life Club

Unitarian Church, Ellison Place, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8XG

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Image by GregTheBusker via Flickr

Here is a hillarious article from the Sun, thanks to my good friend Steve Austin for this one!

“A SWORD swallowing hypnotist put himself in a trance for FIVE hours after practising in front of a mirror.

Helmut Kirchmeier was found in the hypnotised state by his shocked wife Joanna at their home in London.

She had to call a mentor of her husband’s to talk him round over the phone.

Joanna said: “I was really shocked when I found him, he was just like a zombie staring at himself in the mirror. His pupils had gone really small, which is a sign of someone under hypnosis.”

The hypnotist also known as Hannibal Helmurto became transfixed after looking into the mirror.“

Read the whole article here.

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Apologies if you have emailed me in the last two three four EIGHT days.

The service provider I use UK2 has been experiencing severe technical difficulties for the last week, very poor access to email, which seems to have culminated in the total break down of the servers and service I use to receive email.

Once again, apologies if I haven’t answered your emails from the last two three four EIGHT days it is because I have not received them in my POP account.

The UK2 technical support department, despite numerous emails from me, are not responding to emails. Sadly a not unusual response from UK2 technical support.

I have had two problems with UK2 following on from their disastrous email migration. I have resolved them after FIFTEEN days.

POP access. A simple fix ( for me )
My web mail works fine, yet the POP was logging in fine though reporting no new emails.
I had the incoming server set as pop.uk2.net
change pop.uk2.net to mail.uk2.net

Sub-Websites not working … well uk2 managed to re-write all my index.html files. Use you back up to re-upload your index.html

By the way, it seems that the replies from UK2 technical support ( when they actually reply ) are not going ( at least to my ) to your selected ’support’ email address, they are only available on their web site.

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The Good Feeling of Practice Well Done

There’s an old joke.

A man in Time Square in New York wants to get to the concert and sees a man carrying a violin case.

He asks: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”.

“Practice, practice, practice” is the reply.

Like many good jokes it makes a serious point. Some skills need practice. One form of practice is mental rehearsal, which has been used by sports people in particular to improve their performance by playing out a game or a race in advance to prepare themselves for event when it actually happens.

NLP has an optimised strategy for mental rehearsal for developing and practising new skills; called ‘The New Behaviour Generator’.

In it’s original form it can be a little dry and mechanistic. What if we could juice it up with some of the feelings that would make it more likely that we would get the result we want with style and resourcefulness?

The Good Feeling of Practice Well Done is a process developed by Andy Hunt based on the New Behaviour Generator and incorporating states and values into the process to give it that extra juice.

NLP Practice Group with Nigel Hetherington and Andy Hunt

NLP Cafe on Wednesday 21st October

St Oswald’s Hospice Teaching Centre at 7-9 pm
Just £9.00 booking in advance online or £10 on the night.

Some experience of NLP is not essential but would be very helpful.

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This is an extract from an article on the BBC’s Inside Out blog : An interesting article

Next week’s new BBC series of Inside Out lifts the lid on the world of hypnotherapy in the North East of England and shows how easy it is to set yourself up as an “accredited” hypnotherapist with absolutely no qualifications.

In fact, it’s so easy that presenter Chris Jackson is able to register his cat George with several seemingly professional industry organisations. All his cat needed was a fake diploma and the ability to stump up the registration fee.

Inside Out then meets a hypnotist who claims to be able to help people stop smoking.

George McNaney from East Rainton, near Sunderland, is a self-proclaimed “hypnotist to the stars”. George claims an “up to 90 per cent” success rate for treating smokers using hypnotherapy techniques for a one-off payment of £129 – though the most detailed clinical studies report that hypnosis can help only around 20-35 per cent of smokers.

Mr McNaney responds by saying that he’s less interested in clinical tests than what works for his clients.

After a bit more digging, Inside Out finds that although Mr McNaney has a website offering hypnotherapy services, he isn’t the director of any registered hypnotherapy company.

He is, however, the director of an outfit that predicts who’s going to win at the horse racing. All you had to do was send nearly £5,300 to a South Shields PO Box for the privilege of finding out.

He says that this scheme is no longer in operation and was stopped before he became a hypnotherapist.

— clipped —
The show’s investigation shows that while there are several hypnotherapy organisations none of them is regulated by law and there are no standard qualifications.

This worries hypnotherapist Andy Austin who blows the whistle on his own industry.

Read the rest of the article here.

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Are you a worrier?

2009, It’s not quite the happiest of years. Financial difficulties. Looming recession. The flu bug that’s going around. Wars and disasters on the TV and you know worrying makes it worse.

Lots of challenging situations for all of us, but if you are a worrier it’s just so much worse. As if the reality of the situation wasn’t bad enough you can’t stop worrying about it.

“Completely new strategies for dealing with worry and difficult situations. I came with an open mind and have realised the benefits of the techniques”

Karen Morris

Do these statements apply to you?

• You’re not able to calm down
• You imagine the worse
• You feel anxious far more than you should
• You just can’t stop worrying
• You feel out of control

If they do then we have a short course in picturesque Hexham that will help you:

• Feel calm
• Stop worry in it’s tracks
• Get back control of your mind.
• Gain greater peace of mind.

The course will be held at The Bodywork Centre in picturesque Hexham on Friday 29th May from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.

“Very helpful with lots of great hands on activities. Great take home resources and plenty of time to practice”

Azza El-Dahshan

The cost for this complete one day workshop is just £69.00. A small price to pay for a great deal of benefits. Facilitated by Nigel Hetherington and Andy Hunt.

For more details or to book your place click on

Coping With Worry – A Short Course in Hexham.

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