This year has been an exciting and busy year for Alison Isaacs Therapy. My business has gone from strength to strength having launched it full-time on 1st April. A sparkly new website from Blink Web Design has enabled me to reach a far wider client base and has also given colleagues from other towns the opportunity to get in touch with me.
One such person was Sophie Kirk from The Holistic Healthcare Group who got in touch to ask if I would like to be part of a school project she had coming up. This would involve myself and four other hypnotherapists leading a class of primary school children and explaining how hypnosis works and how it can help with day to day issues and problems. Of course I jumped at the chance before I had properly thought about it….who wouldn’t want to do it? With no previous experience of any children including my own, what could go wrong?
After a couple of meetings with my fellow therapists and a rough lesson plan drafted out we were allocated our classes. Mine was year 4 – a class of 30 8-9 year olds! Eeek! Where do I start? What shall I do? Do 8 year olds heckle their teachers if they’re bored? Although we were supporting each other I would be on my own in the class and as the day drew nearer and I went over my lesson plan, I was more than a little nervous.
So here it was, Monday 11th November 2019 at 8.15am I had arrived at Farnham Primary School. My colleagues had already arrived and I met the head teacher. Even that made me nervous and I felt 8 years old myself as she approached me and shook my hand. The children were in their morning assembly and we were shown to our classrooms.
I met the teaching assistant and the teacher before the children arrived, they had made the children name badges so at least I could address them by their names when they came in. I had 45 minutes to do my thing, keep them interested and educate them a little bit about the wonders of hypnotherapy, after which they would have a session of mindfulness and a yoga class in the afternoon – lucky things!
What started out as the scariest thing I had ever done turned into the most brilliant and amazing 45 minutes of my life. Boy those kids were switched on, I talked to them about happy memories, the subconscious mind and how it worked and we did some breathing exercises. Not only did they understand every word, they gave me examples of their subconscious mind in action! Before lunch time, I went back into the classroom with the mindfulness teacher to do a question and answer session with the children.
I have since received some feedback from a few of the children in my class:
“This helped me to think of the good times in my life and understand subconscious” Year 4 student
“Very good. I liked how you could relax” Year 4 student
I learnt so much that morning, not just about my abilities but about the abilities of these young people whose voices quite often go unheard because they’re “just children” I have since undertaken extra training in young people counselling and this is an area that I hope to develop in 2020.