About Paul Levrant

'I had hypnotherapy once; and it didn't work for me.'

As a hypnotherapist, I often hear these dreaded words. It could be from someone who had tried and failed to give up smoking, maybe another who still suffers from her fear of spiders and yet someone else whose constant anxiety remains unresolved.

So what's going on?

Even in these enlightened times of internet access, media bombardment and information overload; hypnotherapy still remains to many something deeply mysterious and frequently misunderstood. The prevailing image of the Victorian 'Mesmerist' with top-hat; goatee and swirling cloak still persists in many people's minds. Whereas others will think firstly of the antics of Paul McKenna, or perhaps a 'hypnotic' show at the local pub ending with volunteers enthusiastically clucking like chickens or divesting themselves of various pieces of clothing.

None of which is particularly helpful to a profession that has benefited countless thousands of sufferers over the last century.

Hypnotherapy finally attained its rightful place as a method of highly effective intervention only as recently as 1955 when the British Medical Society officially recognised hypnosis as a legitimate medical procedure. The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association followed suit in 1958. That this was achieved at all was primarily the result of the work of Milton Erickson who is regarded as the father of modern hypnotherapy. Of course the work by Freud and Jung cannot be underestimated either. But misinformation still abounds, so I will try to offer a little insight here into how and why it is so effective.

Hypnosis is not a strange or unnatural state. It feels very much like day-dreaming, or the state between sleeping and waking. We all experience this feeling of 'drifting off' many times throughout our day. The hypnotherapist helps you to reach this state in a relaxed and easily attainable way. While in this relaxed state, your conscious mind is still completely aware of what is going on throughout, but your subconscious is free to accept positive thoughts and ideas much more readily. This enables you to change fixed negative ideas into strong positive attitudes about yourself and your surroundings.

You cannot actually 'make' anybody do anything in hypnosis. Hypnosis will not give anybody power over the person who is hypnotised. However, control is a big issue with many people and there has been this persistent fear that people under hypnosis effectively 'give up control'. This is simply untrue and if you approach hypnosis with an open mind and a readiness to accept that it can help you, you will soon demonstrate to yourself that you are not giving anything up. On the contrary, you are gaining a great deal. So I always invite my clients to allow themselves to relax and enjoy the experience and we will evolve a close partnership between client and therapist. I do not 'do to' and they are not being 'done to'. We work together on solving the issue to hand.

It is the client who does not involve themselves in this very much two-way process who will be the one that unfortunately responds with my opening line.


Paul Levrant

My own background was in the corporate world; dealing with giant commercial organisations like Arcadia. My career meant travelling extensively and repeatedly throughout Europe and the Far East, and spending a great deal of time in China and Hong Kong.

It became clear to me a number of years ago that the people I was interacting with were becoming increasingly affected by the pressures in their daily lives (both at home and in their work). Anxiety seemed an inescapable part of every activity, and inevitably illness of some kind would be the result.

Realising how difficult it was to find simple, direct help for stress-related conditions led me to seek to learn more, and I found that Hypnotherapy was the one approach that seemed to achieve consistently remarkable results. I was intrigued enough to decide to become a Hypnotherapist myself and I enrolled in the Academy of Clinical and Medical Hypnosis - one of the UK's finest colleges - with the aim of specialising in anxiety control and stress management.

I was greatly interested in the development of an enhanced therapy that would focus entirely on the client and how best to help them. So by combining the great power of Clinical Hypnotherapy with the modern behavioural techniques of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), the Hypnowellness approach was developed which now enables me to treat many other conditions as well as stress and anxiety-related problems.

I also developed a special interest in Hypnodieting (weight loss hypnotherapy) and now train other therapists in this highly specialised and important field.

I hope that you will take the opportunity, now that you are here, to look through this website, and to make HypnoWellness your first port of call for any information you need about Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy.

You are welcome to call me to arrange a free consultation if you wish to discuss any issue that you may have. This typically might be 20 minutes or so, and can be extremely beneficial in answering those questions you might have about how Hypnotherapy can help you.

I look forward to meeting you in person at my North London, City of London or Hertfordshire practices soon.


Paul Levrant HPD DipH DipNLP CertSM GQHP MNCH(Lic).


As well as holding a Diploma in Hypnotherapy, Paul Levrant has also received extensive training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). He holds a Diploma in Neuro Linguistic Programming (Dip.NLP); and a Certificate in Stress Management (Cert.SM). He is also a Member of the NHS Directory of Complementary & Alternative Practitioners.

Paul is a Visiting Lecturer at Roehampton University.