I have been reading Paul McKenna’s latest book ‘The 3 things that will change your destiny’ and, although he does come in for some stick and can be a little gimmicky, I think that much of this book makes an awful lot of sense.

In my hypnotherapy practice I incorporate a lot of McKenna’s techniques as I trained with John Plester at the East Anglian Institute of Hypnosis, one of Paul McKenna’s trainers. It seems that over the years McKenna has evolved from the show hypnotist to someone who is much more in tune with the healing side of hypnosis, incorporating spiritual ideas from Buddhism and also including the latest energy healing techniques like ‘havening’. This seems to be a combination of EMDR (eye movement re-processing) and TFT (a touch-based healing technique) and was the brainchild of Dr Ronald Ruden, a conventional medical doctor who runs a practice in New York
City and has had outstanding results, particularly with patients suffering from post traumatic stress.

I am not sure about this, although I have had excellent results from another similar type of therapy called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Basically what this type of intervention does is disrupt negative thought patterns, particularly useful for significant trauma – such as an accident or terrifying event – and the result is that the person no longer has the damaging emotion from that particular memory, although they will still be aware that it happened. It just does not affect them any more.

McKenna combines different strands of therapy including the havening already mentioned as well as Neuro-linguistic programming, and good old hypnosis to come up with a very interesting book. I think that it can be condensed into just one thing, however, and it is this:

‘What you think is holding you back from your ultimate destiny is just a story you tell yourself, and you can change that story at any time’


In other words YOU create your world, no matter what has gone before, by focussing on what you really want in life, you will find that the most wonderful things start to happen.

Best wishes,
Wendy x