Ntrance Hypnotherapy Blenheim

14/02/2026

Just for a change I thought I would return to an article I found about Virtual Gastric Banding, the weight loss programme I love using, and which I continue to find so rewarding to my clients, and to be wonderfully accurate.

From fat to fitness fanatic in four weeks – lorry driver, Pete Smith describes how a short course of hypnotherapy changed his life in ‘miraculous’ ways

“One of my friends took a photo of me at 113 kg. It made me realise how terrible I looked, and I knew I had to dYes, you can shift that unwanted weight permanentlyo something. I was 42 and knew that if I didn’t tackle it, my weight was going to become a problem. I thought “If I don’t start helping myself now, why should anyone else help me?’”

Pete’s weight had crept up as a result of inactivity, irregular mealtimes, boredom eating and a little too much booze. “I’d tried various diets but none of them had worked. I’d maybe lose the odd pound but wouldn’t be able to stick with it for long. Then I would put it on again, plus more,” he said.

All of this changed six years ago, when Pete got in touch with internationally renowned clinical hypnotherapist Sheila Granger. Four weekly sessions later and the long-distance lorry driver from East Yorkshire, started to rapidly shed the pounds. He now weighs 85kgs and feels comfortable maintaining that level.

What’s more amazing, is the fact he’s become a cycling fan, who thinks nothing of notching up hundreds of miles – and whose annual highlight is a gruelling Alpine trek.

His therapy started with a discussion to pinpoint where things were going wrong for him: more often than not, over-eating is a symptom of another problem, such as low self-esteem, boredom depression or relationship difficulties.

“I believe you’ve got to want to do it in the first place, but then hypnosis does the rest,” said Pete. “To be honest, I still don’t really know how it works, but I put my faith in the process and believed I could do it, and I did.”

Pete had a total of four weekly sessions in which his attitude was effectively rebooted, each session removing the triggers that caused him to reach for too much of the wrong kinds of food.

“All of our minds are susceptible to suggestion and this is the case with negative suggestions as well as positive ones. So when we develop a bad habit like over-eating, it is almost a state of self-hypnosis where, for some reason, we’ve convinced ourselves to do this thing that is bad for us.” said Sheila.

Pete agrees. “I think what made a difference was the self-belief hypnosis gave me. Through positive mind-set Sheila also stopped me wanting to eat so much and helped me get some discipline and routine around food and exercise.”

For others in the same situation, Pete had this message: “I would tell them to ask themselves ‘do they really want to do it?’ If their answer is yes, they can, with that little extra push.”

“I’m a prime example - I’d more or less given up hope but look at me now. It’s miraculous really.”

Pete’s story is typical of one I regularly hear repeated by Ntrance clients in Blenheim . and whose journey to success is wonderfully achievable.

Why wait? Call me and we can have a quick chat, so I can answer your questions. And I promise you, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

22/01/2026

First of all, I would like to wish you all the best for 2026. If last year was good, then I hope this year will be even better. And if you are looking for a better or more successful year, then I hope that this wish comes true.


During the holiday season, I looked back over my year, and remembered some of the events and people I met. And I remembered a lady who was terrified of flying, which was a shame, as she was unable to rejoin her families for the festive season. After a couple of sessions with me, she found that her fears just melted away, and I received a lovely letter from her thanking me after her visit. I have seen many clients with fears, be they fear of spiders, fear of failure, fear of heights, and of course, fear of flying, even of insects. All these clients tried to analyse their fears, realising they were illogical. But here is the interesting thing. These fears and phobias have nothing to do with logic. They can tell themselves a million times not to be so silly, nothing will happen. But still they are fearful.


So what is going on here? Well, the simplest explanation is that this fear has been learnt, somewhere along the line. We don’t need to know the cause, because that is the past, but we would benefit from controlling the future.


And this is where hypnotherapy comes in. What happens typically during a hypnotherapy session? Relaxation is the answer. While my clients are totally relaxed, we can access their imagination, that part of the mind which is running this fear, and we can ask this part to change its behaviour, knowing that the fear is actually useless. This is surprisingly easy. Fears are learnt for whatever reason, they then turn into habitual, automatic behaviour whenever they are triggered - the good news is that that automatic behaviour can be changed.


Fears, bad habits like smoking, drinking, eating the wrong foods, relationship problems…Yes. these can be changed for the better. Hypnotherapy can help you to make the change from where you are now to where you want to be, surprisingly easily.


So don’t hold back. There is always light at the end of the tunnel!

10/12/2025

Seasons greetings

Like myself, many of you are wrapping up your year and preparing to spend some time with your families.

Christmas is a time of joy and wonder, a time to be thankful for the people you share your life with and maybe a time to reflect on how the year has gone.

It also tends to be a time where we spend far too much money, blow our annual leave (if we still work), worry about shopping and cooking, gaining weight and maybe thinking uncharitable thoughts about family that we'd prefer to spend a little less quality time with.

In short, despite the plentiful rewards that Christmas brings, it's also a time of upheaval, changed routines, and stress.

Please be mindful of that over the next few weeks. Many people find this whole period utterly exhausting and difficult and that's both okay and normal.

I'll be back on early January if you want my help but even if you don't I hope you have an excellent holiday, one that recharges your batteries instead of draining them.

24/10/2025

I write every month about one of my many encounters with remarkable people who are seeking help, whether for weight control, or smoking, anxiety, stress, phobias, depression and fears to name just a few.
This month I’m going to write a little about myself, and how I came to be a hypnotherapist. I was born and brought up in Berlin, by my father, a British diplomat and my mother, a beautiful and lively French woman. I met my husband, who was in the British army, in Berlin and moved to the UK when I was 20.
We went to university, but what to do after? I had been an English language teacher in Berlin, so we decided, without having a clue, to start an English language school in York, first taking a postgrad degree at London University.
It was in York that I gave up smoking. I was a heavy smoker and I saw an ad which persuaded me that I could indeed quit. So I went to see a hypnotherapist. I had no idea what she was doing - suffice to say I have never wanted a cigarette since that day.
After ten years, enough was enough. York was becoming too crowded for us, so we came to Blenheim with our three young children. We immediately loved it. Again, without a clue, I started a riding-stables, just brilliant for the kids, It was a wonderful way to integrate into the community.
Hugh, my husband, partnered with a French company to start a company making essential oils and then fruit brandy and liqueurs. Our French partner almost immediately went into receivership leaving us with huge financial problems. I joined Hugh three years later in the business. It was not an easy ride. Yet again, we had to call on our mental reserves as we lurched from crisis to crisis.
Eventually, Hugh became very ill, and we sold the company to our partner. But now what?
I had always had in the back of my mind the idea of hypnotherapy. I put in months of research, became qualified as an advanced clinical hypnotherapist, and set up my clinic.
The point of this article is to illustrate that, despite awful financial and emotional set-backs, we somehow managed to find a second… then a third.. then a tenth new wind, and, changing direction, started again. There are times when I reached the depths of darkness, but somehow found the strength to pull myself up. I have felt at first hand that horrible sinking feeling of anxiety, the misery of failure and inadequacy, and the fear of losing everything we had ever worked for.
But I am lucky. Things have turned out well in the end. And that is how I seek to help my clients – by instilling in their sub-conscious mind the realisation that there really is light at the end of every tunnel.

I write every month about one of my many encounters with remarkable people who are seeking help, whether for weight control, or smoking, anxiety, stress, phobias, depression and fears to name just a few. This month I’m going to write a little about myself, and how I came to be a hypnotherapist. I ...

20/09/2025

Who knows? You might win lotto….

Being half French, I often heard the story of Jeanne Calment, the world’s oldest person.

She died aged 122 in France, having been a smoker for most of her life. When she was 70 years old, she ‘sold’ her house to a solicitor, the understanding being that she could live in there until she died, free of charge, but that the solicitor would take over the house upon her death. It was a gamble both ways.

The solicitor, pretty sure that Madame Calment would die fairly shortly, particularly as she was a smoker, felt he was in for a bargain. But Madame Calment had no intention of passing on. In fact, she lived for a further 52 years, well outliving the solicitor and his successors.

So yes, she won lotto!. However, if you are a smoker, or you know of a smoker, here are some facts. With every cigarette smoked, approximately three thousand different chemicals are inhaled. Nine hundred of those are toxic. Some will stain teeth and fingers, some will give the smoker a whole variety of cancers.

I don’t need to go on any further, the graphic illustrations on a packet of ci******es do this. But, why does this demonstrable fear of death, disease and progressive ill health not dissuade people? Smokers fear that they are so addicted to ni****ne that if they give up, they will become grumpy, put on weight and find it excruciatingly difficult. This is true whether they smoke five, or sixty a day.

So ni****ne replacements have now been available for nearly thirty years. And long term, study after study shows they are effective for less than 5% who try it. Not great, especially when the science suggests 6% of people quit smoking without any intervention!

Why is this? Sticking a plaster on your arm does not deal with the reason why you smoked, and it doesn’t deal with the thought either.

But it is possible to give up painlessly without withdrawal symptoms, without putting on weight. According to the University of Washington School of Medicine in 2001 (amongst many other scientific articles), they found a 90.6% long term success rate for quitting smoking using hypnosis.

Using willpower, or ni****ne replacement, does not address the core issue. When trying to quit, smokers normally suffer and find it difficult. However, through hypnotherapy, you will walk out the door as a non-smoker and do it easily and effortlessly: smoking is just a question of habit, not of addiction and habits can be broken. But of course, the smoker must really want to give up. Hypnotherapy is not a magic wand. The hypnotherapist is not a magician, but a facilitator, whose job it is to make the use of your own will-power that much easier.

So when you next sit out on your deck enjoying a lovely glass of your favourite tipple with friends and family, and someone offers you a cigarette, imagine your pride and sense of achievement when you say with a smile “No thanks, I am a non-smoker”!

16/08/2025

Have you ever been in a situation where you were paralysed with fear? Maybe you heard unusual noises in the house late at night, or you saw a mouse or a spider. What about finding yourself at the top of a very high building or approached by a dog who didn’t even show any signs of aggression? Or a fear of needles, chickens, clowns, wasps: the list of these fears is endless. And if you weren’t actually paralysed with fear, maybe you were just very frightened. I even have a friend who won’t enter a swimming pool as she is terrified of sharks.

So I was not at all surprised when a few months ago a lovely lady, Janice, walked into my hypno room, having called me to see whether I could help her with anxiety. She was suffering acute fear of enclosed spaces which spread into every aspect of her life. A high flying professional, she was unable to attend board meetings, as she felt hemmed in by all the colleagues around the table. Flying was a nightmare. She could no longer go the cinema or theatre, activities she used to love. Even playing netball held terrors for her. And now she had been asked to give a presentation on a subject very dear to her, but it involved a flight to the North Island. She thought of taking the ferry, but the very idea of walking up the ramp with hundreds of others made her terrified.

The first thing I asked her was “What is your goal by coming to see me?” Of course, it was obvious. She wanted to feel ‘normal’, to be able to work in a small space, to be able to fly without taking so much medication that she felt like a zombie for 2 or 3 days after.

And the funny thing is, she knew that logically her fear and anxiety were utterly irrational and unnecessary. But however many times she told herself this, and spoke firmly to herself, the fear never went away. In fact, as the years went on, she became worse and worse. She knew she had to do something, it had gone too far. She had recently even had to ask a Sounds Air plane to stop at the end of the runway; she was in such a state of panic and fear. This incident involved a large fine.

So why was this happening to her? She had no idea, she only knew that unless she got to grips with this fear, it would carry on growing, and where would it stop? Irrational fears tend to snowball until they take over completely.

When people come to me with these fears, often the origin of the irrational fear is a belief that doesn’t even stem from them. They might be a parent’s belief, or a teacher’s or a partner’s. The chances are that unless it is something obvious, like having been attacked by a dog, the person has no idea. But irrational and unnecessary beliefs and fears are just like soap bubbles, they can be popped.

So by taking Janice into a deeply relaxed state, she discovered in herself a strength she never knew she had. Like the vast majority of people, Janice had within herself all the resources and understanding to solve her problems; all I had to do was point her in the right direction.

As she left my room, she said she felt as though she was floating, and felt more relaxed than she had for many years. Never again will Janice suffer from fear of enclosed spaces and flying. And in fact, I recently spoke to her and, in her words: Conquering fear ”Thank you, Chris, you have changed my life”.

24/06/2025

Hypnotherapy and a Family Get-together.
This is the uplifting story of one Blenheim family’s journey thanks to a mother’s virtual gastric banding, weight-loss programme.
Sally, a very attractive mother of two teenage boys, was worried about her appearance, feeling (probably wrongly) that her boys were ashamed of her weight. The family were about to go on holiday, where walking on the beach and swimming were the main attraction. And that meant, wearing togs.
As always, during the first session of four, I spend some time finding out more about Sally, and her goals, what she wanted to achieve (not only weight-wise, but how she really wanted to feel.)
Clearly concerned about body image, she admitted that she often felt tired, frumpy, didn’t sleep well, and often felt ‘down’. When we talked about her eating habits, and I asked her where she normally ate, in common with, astoundingly, 98% of my clients, she said the whole family sat in arm chairs, watching TV, or playing with electronic gadgets while they ate.
So picture the scene: everyone mindlessly shovelling food into their mouth, quite literally hypnotised by the telly. So, do you talk about your day with your family? No. Do you find out what’s going on at school, or with friends? No. Do you notice what you’re eating? (be honest here!) No. Do you know when you’ve had enough to eat? No. I could go on in this vein, but I’m sure you get the idea. Sally certainly did. I asked her to start eating at table, with no electronic distractions.
By the fourth hypnotherapy session, Sally greeted me with a large and beautiful bunch of flowers. “Chris,” she beamed, “You have changed our family life. Though very reluctant at first, my husband and boys joined me at table. No telly, no phone, just us. But a strange thing happened. After four days, the boys were setting the table without even being asked. The next day, a friend of theirs was invited and, surprised, was shown his seat at table. Mindlessly, he took out his phone, upon which the boys gently frowned at him, and asked him to put it away.”
Sally continued “We now TALK as a family. We’re finding out so much more about each other, and what goes on in our lives. We eat slowly, we savour our food and I’m now aware of how much I eat and when I feel satisfied. The family now even join me on my evening walks. I have lost four kilos, but, more important, I feel so much better. I have more energy, no more indigestion, and I can’t wait to stroll down that beach in togs, feeling incredible!

https://ntrance.co.nz/hypnotherapy-and…ily-get-together/

10/05/2025

https://ntrance.co.nz/hypnotherapy-not-entertainment/

Hypnotherapy not entertainment! Last week, a client came to see me. She was so nervous, it was painful to see – admittedly, she had come for anxiety. She had a great fear that I was ‘going to take control’ of her mind, and make her pretend she was a chicken or some such foolishness. Nothing…

12/04/2025

https://ntrance.co.nz/fred-has-a-fear-of-spiders/

[caption id="attachment_2518" align="alignleft" width="300"] One sight of the eight legged creatures and Fred is out the door - fast.[/caption] But Fred - a 24 year old landscape gardener - didn't want his fear of spiders to hold him back in life. So he confronted his fear face-on by... er... ...hav...

16/03/2025

Can Hypnosis Help With Anxiety?
I get this question asked on a regular basis but more often recently as things like job security, price inflation and geopolitics seem to be getting more and more real. They are intruding into our comfort zones and exposing us to levels of stress that we are perhaps not used to or that we haven't got all the tools needed to cope with.

My answer though is "Yes, hypnosis can help with anxiety." I want to stress here that hypnosis is not a magical cure-all for what ails you. There are times when I flat out tell potential clients that they are not going to get the results that they are looking for with me and that I'm not willing to take their money.

So "can hypnosis help me with my situation?" is perhaps a better question. When I get asked that question I usually respond with "Are you willing to change?" Let me explain. At it's heart, hypnotherapy is about accepting and adopting change, it’s not about moving mountains; it's about climbing them for the view. It's not about changing the course of rivers but instead finding a place to settle beside them. It’s about finding a path forward and sometimes, that path is surprising.

Hypnosis will not solve your problems, but it will often allow you to find a way to solve them for yourself. It doesn't 'manifest' solutions or give you the answers. So "are you willing to change?" is the real question that matters.

As an example, I had a lady come to me because her in-laws had lost their business and had to move in with her. This was extremely stressful for her because she felt the house wasn't really big enough for everyone and because she felt that her partner always took his mother’s side.

Now obviously, because I'm not a magician I couldn't make her in-laws move on. I couldn't make her house bigger either. The only thing I could offer was to help her to change for herself and luckily, she was willing to do so. There were some barriers in front of her. She had held a grudge ever since her wedding when she felt that they disapproved of her. She had been upset that they had to put remodeling plans for the house on hold. She resented her mother-in-law always trying to 'help ‘ in the kitchen.

She was willing to change, though and that was what she needed. Under hypnosis, she had a long hard look at herself and decided that something had to be done. There were a number of different options in front of her that she hadn't been willing to see. They ranged from leaving her partner to finding a new house and more.

I didn't tell her what to do, I just gave her the distance to reflect on her situation and find her own path. She surprised me with the solution that she found.

She discovered empathy for her in-laws when she realised how scared they were with their own uncertain situation. She realised what a bind her partner was in, feeling trapped between the two most important women in his life. She discovered that she actually quite liked her father-in-law. Most importantly for her, she came to realize just how much power she had over the situation.

She decided that she could set aside her grievances, she felt that they were petty for someone who held all the cards and she didn't want to be that person. She left that first session with a newfound sense of purpose and focus.

When I saw her again a few weeks later, she was like a new person. She told me that she had called a family meeting and held fast when the conversation threatened to derail a few times. She laid out her concerns without getting angry or upset. She came to accept that here and her mother-in-law were never going to be best friends but they had a shared love of her partner. She found out that their clashes in the kitchen were just an attempt to be useful, created by a fear of being kicked out. Apparently a lot of bad feelings were aired and resolved.

Anyway, two weeks later her father-in-law was fixing their bathroom, apparently, he was a bit of a handyman..Her mother-in-law and she had a roster for cooking which meant that she had started date nights with her partner again while they looked after their youngest child. Their house had never looked cleaner and they were finally in a place where they could look to move forward again.

Hypnosis isn't magic and a solution was always there, right in front of her. She couldn't see it but she was willing to change and, in the end, that was what was needed.