Clinical hypnotherapist Terrence the Teacher is the go-to problem fixer for the fashion, arts and interior design world. Susannah Taylor meets him and takes a journey with his new app.
When three people tell you that an expert they have found has changed their life, you sit up and listen. Enter a hypnotherapist intriguingly known as Terrence the Teacher - various people have told me that this man has literally turned their life around recently, and so I thought it was high time I went to meet him.
Maybe because he has a reputation for working his magic, maybe because I know he works with the mind, I expected Terrence to look like some sort of wizard with a long beard, spectacles on the end of his nose and a dusty pile of books. Instead Terrence looks like an Australian lifeguard – manly, good looking, with blonde hair and a little Tin-Tin-like quiff.
Whilst Terrence looks very normal, it turns out he has a very special calling in life. A former fitness and Pilates trainer from South Africa, Terrence moved to the UK with a huge hunch that there is a bigger connection between the mind and body than we realise. He decided to train to be a hypnotherapist and in Neurolinguistics which, it turns out, he is exceedingly good at.
He has clearly been shaped by a very difficult past. Do you think you have a special gift? I ask him. “I feel my purpose in life is to help people, I am not here for myself,” he says. “If I told you my life story,” he says, “You would cry and not want to have a weekend. But I survived and my family did not. I feel I was meant to give something back – my gift is to help people.”
And help people he clearly does. Well-known actors with stage fright can speak confidently again because of him, the interiors world adore him, and Christian Louboutin has apparently even named his first trainer design after him. Obviously he doesn’t just treat the elite; “I help students with a fear of exams, people desperate to give up smoking, people with phobias, those trying to lose weight (that’s the biggest one), people with flying fears, or those crippled by anxiety disorders.” Whoever he treats they all have one conclusion: what he does has changed their lives. He tells me: “One client told me recently that I’d saved his life.
So how do his hypnotherapy sessions work? Terrence will at first assess what is troubling you before working with you to come up with your goals and personal affirmations (he doesn’t do negatives, only positives). “We then create a script for you,” he says, “And whilst putting you into a state of deep relaxation I will share the script with your subconscious mind over and over again to compound the decisions. Eventually the subconscious decides this is right for you and topples over your old thought process.”
The only negative that’s true of Terrence is that unfortunately he won’t see everyone face to face - unfortunately some people, he says, are not willing or not ready for change (he asks his clients not to give out his number until the third time they ask for it – this he says indicates they are really ready for it.) Also, unsurprisingly, Terrence’s diary is becoming increasingly chockablock.
All is not lost however; thankfully Terrence has created an app for weight management that replicates his hypnotherapy process, a process he describes as ‘taking you on a journey’. The first of many, ‘The Train Trip – Taking the Weight Off Your Mind’ is a beautifully illustrated 14 day journey (just 10-15 minutes a day), that helps you change your thought process towards weight loss. Every day you take another step of the train journey, and there are also daily ‘Toots’ that are short and sharp positive reminders about the Train Trip you are on.
Believing that it’s the mind that shapes the body, this is a new and exciting approach to weight management that if Terrence’s testimonials are anything to go by is sure to make a difference, especially where other methods may have failed in the past. And Terrence won’t stop there - other topics for apps he has up his sleeve are for giving up smoking, relaxation, insomnia, ego-strengthening and sports enhancement. “I believe in life,” says Terrence. “There is always hope.”
Get on board.
The Train Trip – Taking the Weight Off Your Mind is available now on the iTunes app store, £8.99