About Me

Hello and welcome. I’m Shabnah. If you’ve not guessed I’m eternally curious about and fascinated by the human body. Its perfection and the incredibly simple yet complicated, far-reaching way it works and deals with the things we encounter during our lives never ceases to amaze me. And who doesn’t like to learn more about the way they work?

All those different cells and organs working in harmony. An imbalance in one area being compensated elsewhere as best as possible to maintain the glorious symphony that is a human. Every single part of us perfectly connected, with an elegant interplay between body and mind. The two are not separate – the mind is part of the body, a conductor that notices and responds to all other parts, with its effect present in all other parts.

My current day job is as an NHS specialist (gastroenterologist and hepatologist), something that I still love and depending on NHS structures intend on continuing. 

It won’t come as a big surprise that most of the things that interest me revolve around healing, particularly the body’s ability and power to heal itself. Enter hypnotherapy. I first experienced it for myself aged 27 in Sydney at a course run by the zoo for arachnophobics. Who moves to Australia when they can’t even look at pictures of spiders but will get upset if one is harmed? 

I couldn’t tell you when I first realised I was phobic about spiders. I had tried all the usual rational things to deal with it, but none of them worked as it was a true phobia (irrational fear where my brain believed I was in real danger) and not a simple fear. As an aside anyone who thinks it’s helpful to tell an arachnophobic that ‘they’re more scared of you’ deserves to be punched. 

At the end of the course I had caught a Huntsman in a container and released it, let one run over my hand and held a member of the tarantula family. I was bloody stoked. I still am if I’m honest; it’s one of things I’m proudest of. More than the pure relief that comes with not feeling like your life is in danger from something other people happily keep as pets, I had all that free headspace. No more wondering if something was a spider then feeling like an idiot when my housemate showed me it was actually a clump of my own hair. Freedom is the most important driver for me, and hypnotherapy allowed me some more of that. 

I didn’t start studying it for myself till four or five years later when an anaesthetic colleague mentioned he’d started training in it to use on patients who weren’t safe to have a general anaesthetic. We discussed other ways it could be used, including hypnotic gastric bands – all the benefits without the risks of surgery, all through the power and capabilities of your own mind. Amazing, and yet more freedom.

Since then I’ve continued to study the things that felt right to me – modalities that have the commonality of being individual and specific to the person in front of you, working with their body, having the grace and space to deal with everything that comes up (what are humans if not beautifully messy and surprising?), achieving results and having few if any side-effects. This is going to continue and in addition to a previous ICF-accredited life-coaching certification, I continue to attend teachings by those I respect. (This is a lot easier in the traditional medical world, but equally important in hypnotherapy, coaching and other modalities).

In the interests of honesty there are other things I’ve looked into and studied at times of desperation when my own life wasn’t going too well. I would never feel right offering these to other people, hence I don’t. We all have an unshakeable body wisdom (and as above, that includes the mind). That instinct and inner knowing is the most important thing. Yes, obviously I like scientific backing, but it’s not uncommon for scientific studies to prove what some have ‘known’ for generations. And most science starts with curiosity and wondering ‘what if’ about something that is yet to be proven. 

My interest in hypnotherapy was reignited in 2018 when I was unexpectedly diagnosed with some serious health issues. Late one night in amongst all the internet browsing I was doing to distract myself from the pain and the chaos in my head, I discovered Marisa Peer’s method – Rapid Transformational Therapy. I had a very short period of time before urgent surgery and with the intention of learning it only to use on myself, I enrolled. 

The teachings and results achieved by this method reminded me of my own need to bring everything together. Our bodies have an incredible ability to heal, and they have the wisdom to know what feels good to them and what they need. Traditional doctors learn about the whole body. We start off treating the whole body and understand not just the patient in front of us but how their life fits together and what matters to them. Little by little specialisation, and in the UK, the pressures and priorities of the NHS erode that. For me, the combination of fascination, understanding, curiosity, interest, knowledge, ability and intuition is increasingly compressed till sometimes only the essentials get time. Even within supposedly holistic complementary therapies things can be prescriptive. The body knows what it needs to heal, even if modern life has created a culture where we now need the space, time and permission to do so. 

And here we are back full circle to that eternal curiosity and love and respect for the body, its perfection, and its wise way of communicating with us, even as we sometimes continue to ignore that. I’ve always been keen to learn more about what we are all capable of, especially when the ‘rules’ that we’ve been taught by other humans aren’t dictating what we achieve for ourselves. I started this business to explore the whole person again, and work towards whole-person healing with my clients in a way that is specific and relevant to them, and feels good. Freedom; that’s what it’s all about for me.