Whole Body Living

Eli’s training spans a broad range of therapeutic modalities, allowing her to draw on the approach that best fits each individual client:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) — identifying and shifting unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — building psychological flexibility and values-based living
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) — exploring the different “parts” of ourselves with curiosity and compassion
• Somatic approaches — working with the body’s own wisdom and stored experience
• Polyvagal Theory — understanding the nervous system’s role in safety, connection, and healing
• Embodiment practices — reconnecting with and trusting the body
• Intuitive eating — rebuilding a natural, peaceful relationship with food and hunger cues
• Mindful eating — cultivating presence and awareness around food experiences
• Mindfulness and self-compassion — developing a kinder, steadier relationship with yourself
• Body image work — gently challenging internalised beliefs and building body respect

Credentials & Training:

• BSc, MS
• Hypnotherapist
• Certified Havening Practitioner — Havening Techniques® [havening.org]
• Trauma-informed practitioner
• Health at Every Size® informed
• Additional training: CBT, ACT, IFS, Somatic Approaches, Polyvagal Theory, Embodiment, Body Image, Intuitive Eating, Mindful Eating, Mindfulness & Self-Compassion

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A note on integrated care: Elie works collaboratively with GPs, psychologists, and other healthcare providers where appropriate, and is committed to transparent, ethical, and trauma-informed practice. She will always encourage you to continue working with your wider care team alongside any complementary support.

What hypnotherapy actually is

Let me clear something up first — because the word “hypnotherapy” carries a lot of baggage from stage shows and Hollywood.

Hypnotherapy is not about losing control. You will not cluck like a chicken. You will not be “under” anything. You cannot be made to do something against your will, and you will not say things you do not want to say.

What hypnotherapy actually is, is this: a naturally occurring state of focused, relaxed attention — one that most of us drift into several times a day without realising it. That absorbed quality you feel when you are completely lost in a book. The automatic way you drive a familiar route without consciously thinking. That half-asleep, half-awake state just before you drop off at night.

Hypnotherapy intentionally creates and uses that state for therapeutic purposes.

In that state of focused inward attention, the brain shifts. Research from Stanford University found that specific areas of the brain show measurable changes during hypnosis — including reduced activity in the area associated with self-monitoring and worry, and increased connectivity between the brain regions responsible for attention and body awareness. The critical, analytical part of the mind quiets. The deeper layers — where habits, emotional patterns, and automatic responses live — become accessible in a way they simply are not during ordinary waking conversation.

This is not magic. It is neuroscience, applied with care and intention.

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Why you might want to see a hypnotherapist

Most people arrive at hypnotherapy after trying other things. They have done the talking, the journalling, the reading, the willpower. And something has shifted — but not enough, or not in the way that sticks.

Hypnotherapy tends to be particularly valuable when:

• You understand why a pattern exists — but understanding it hasn’t changed it. Talk-based approaches work beautifully with the conscious mind. But many of our most entrenched patterns live deeper than conscious thought. Hypnotherapy reaches those layers directly.
• Your response to something feels automatic and out of proportion. Anxiety that arrives before you have had a chance to think. An emotional eating pattern that kicks in before you even register a feeling. A physical tension that is there when you wake up. These are nervous system responses — and hypnotherapy works with the nervous system.
• You feel stuck in a loop. You keep returning to the same place despite genuine effort. That stuckness is often a sign that the underlying driver has not been addressed — and that is exactly where hypnotherapy is most useful.
• You want to work with your inner experience, not just your behaviour. Hypnotherapy is not about white-knuckling through change. It is about creating a genuine shift from the inside — so the new way of being feels natural, not forced.

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What I can work with

Hypnotherapy is a versatile approach. The research supports its use across a wide range of presentations, and a comprehensive review of 49 meta-analyses found that the vast majority of outcomes — 99.2% — showed positive effects, with over half demonstrating at least a medium effect size.

In my practice, I work with:

Anxiety and stress

Hypnotherapy has a well-established evidence base for anxiety. A meta-analysis across 17 clinical trials found that hypnosis reduced anxiety more than approximately 79% of control participants — with effect sizes increasing further at longer follow-up, suggesting that the benefits are lasting, not just temporary relief. It works particularly well for anxiety that feels automatic — where the nervous system has learned to respond to certain triggers with alarm, regardless of what the thinking mind knows.

Gut health

Gut-directed hypnotherapy is one of the most evidence-supported applications of clinical hypnosis, with over four decades of research behind it. I offer a dedicated gut-directed hypnotherapy service for people experiencing IBS and other functional gut conditions.

Food, eating, and your relationship with your body

This is close to the heart of my work. Many eating patterns — emotional eating, restriction and binge cycles, eating past fullness, not being able to hear hunger cues — are not food problems. They are nervous system responses, often with deep roots. Hypnotherapy allows us to work with those roots directly, in a way that dietary information alone simply cannot reach.

Habits and behaviour change

Many of the habits we most want to change are not conscious decisions — they are deeply conditioned automatic responses, running below the level of awareness. Hypnotherapy creates the conditions for those patterns to be gently loosened and replaced with something new. Research from the APA describes hypnosis as reducing the sense of effort involved in change — making new responses feel more natural and less like a constant battle.

Sleep

Hypnotherapy may support people who struggle to wind down, switch off a racing mind, or return to sleep after waking. Research suggests hypnotherapy can be a helpful adjunct for sleep difficulties related to stress, anxiety, and hyperarousal. I want to be honest that for clinical insomnia, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) remains the first-line recommended treatment — hypnotherapy works best as a complementary support alongside this, not a replacement for it.

Confidence and self-worth

Deeply held beliefs about ourselves — that we are not enough, that we do not deserve good things, that we need to earn rest or care — often formed long before we had any say in the matter. They sit below the level of conscious reasoning, which is why repeating affirmations or “challenging the thought” does not always shift them. Hypnotherapy can work with the layer where those beliefs live.

Chronic pain and physical symptoms

Research consistently shows hypnosis as one of the more effective non-pharmacological approaches to chronic pain management, with evidence from clinical trials and meta-analyses spanning decades. It is also used to support anxiety and distress around medical procedures, menopausal symptoms including hot flushes, cancer-related pain and fatigue, and stress-related physical symptoms more broadly.

Grief, loss, and emotional processing

Sometimes what we carry does not have a neat category. Grief, loss, the aftermath of difficult experiences — these can sit in the body and the nervous system in ways that resist ordinary processing. Hypnotherapy provides a gentle space to work with those experiences at a pace that feels safe.

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What a session with me looks like

Every session begins with a conversation. I want to understand what brings you in, what you have already tried, what matters most to you, and how things show up in your everyday life. This is not a box-ticking intake — it shapes everything that follows.

Once we are ready to begin, I will guide you gently into a state of relaxed, focused attention. This typically involves slow, deepening breath, progressive relaxation, and imagery. Most people find it deeply comfortable — many describe it as the most relaxed they have felt in a long time. You remain fully aware throughout. You can speak, move, and open your eyes at any point. You are always in control.

From there, I use carefully tailored suggestions, imagery, and therapeutic language designed specifically around your goals. There is no generic script. What we do inside the hypnotic state is built around you — your patterns, your language, your life.

At the end of the session, I will bring you back gently and we will take a moment to debrief — noticing what shifted, what felt significant, what came up. Many people find this part of the session valuable in itself.

I will also give you a self-hypnosis practice to use between sessions. Research consistently shows that home practice between sessions significantly improves outcomes — and it means you are building a skill, not just receiving a treatment.

Sessions run 50 to 90 minutes. Most people notice meaningful change within the first few sessions. A typical course is 4–8 sessions, though this varies depending on what we are working on together.

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A note on how I work

I bring a trauma-informed, HAES®-informed lens to everything I do — including hypnotherapy. That means I will never push you faster than feels safe. I will never make assumptions about what you need or what your body should look like. And I will always meet you where you are, rather than where I think you should be.

Hypnotherapy is a collaborative process. I provide the guidance and the structure. You do the work — and you hold all the agency. My job is simply to create the conditions for change that you already have the capacity for.