We catch up with Mark Ward of New Beginnings Hypnotherapy & Training Academy on Lombard Street, Newak to learn more about hypnotherapy

While most people would associate hypnosis with making people do weird things for stage shows, for one Newark business it has a much more serious and beneficial use.

Mark Ward owns New Beginnings Hypnotherapy & Training Academy, on Lombard Street, Newark, which offers to help with issues such as smoking, weight loss, anxiety and trauma.

“We think of hypnosis as stage hypnosis - that you are going to cluck like a chicken and things like that - but I realised there was so much more to this,” he said.

“The unconscious mind is about 85-90% of the power of the mind. If people come in and say what they want to achieve, we can bypass the part of the brain that says ‘no, you can't’ and we can put suggestions in there that people want to have happen.

“It just goes in very, very deep.”

Mark’s interest in hypnotherapy started in 1999 when, while living in the south of France and working as an English teacher, he had a panic attack as he swam in the sea.

That triggered a series of panic attacks, which was only helped when he went to see a man known as the ‘weird guy in Nice who did hypnotherapy’.

“Something just changed. It got me back on my feet, the panic was less, and something flipped. I thought — I have got to look at my life here.”

As a result, Mark left everything behind, including his job and relationship, and returned to England, where he saw another hypnotherapist to help complete his recovery.

In 2005 Mark - who was born and raised in Blidworth completed a hypnotherapy course at Turning Stones in Nottingham, which changed the course of his life.

A year later, he set up his business in Newark.

At that time, hypnosis was mainly known for stopping smoking and weight loss and that was what he initially focused on - but over time has evolved his practice.

Mark admits that what fascinates him the most about his job is firstly how it impacted his own life, and secondly, how it helps people live normally, without fear, trauma, and addictions.

One of his most interesting cases was one of a man who he had previously helped quit smoking and came back to him after suffering from depression that three years of psychotherapy had failed to help.

Using hypnotherapy, Mark helped his client access a past life where he described being stuck in a hole, surrounded by Roman soldiers, that he could not get out of.

“I almost just said to his mind — just take, take us back to where this all started,” Mark said.

“You could argue that's symbolic of his life. He's stuck in a hole and he can't get out, but in his mind, it was very, very real.

“You go into his world, into his story to get out of there and eventually, I think he killed a few of the soldiers, got out of the hole and then came back around quite suddenly and because he was now out of that hole, his whole, his whole life just transformed.

The man went back for one more session and was able to return to work for the first time in years.

When Mark first started, he was sceptical about past lives, but with experience and new learning, he became more spiritual.

In another case, a lady came to him suffering a pain in the middle of her back, but nothing showed the origin of the pain. With hypnosis, a past life revealed someone had shot her right in the back in exactly the same spot.

Mark has recently helped a woman in her 60s who had had a bird phobia since the age of 14, was not able to go in the garden, never travelled, and her life was very limited.

For Mark, PTSD is often an accumulation of things in the mind, where there is no time to process traumatic events. Talking is good, but can lead to cementing problems so there is a need to connect with the unconscious to release it.

“This often sounds bonkers when we're talking consciously, but through hypnotherapy, we connect with that part of them that is almost like a bouncer that protects.

“It has gone into overprotective mode and sees everything as danger so we have to almost bring it up to date and say look, this is 2025, they're no longer in danger, are you willing to kind of back off a little bit? Still protect them, but do it in a way that helps them live their life.”

For the last 10 years, Mark has also started using a lot of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which also works with the unconscious mind and is about how people view the world, how two people view the same situation and how people respond to it depending on their values and experiences.

After nearly 20 years and 14,500 customers, Mark has noticed a change in people’s attitudes when it comes to hypnotherapy, with more much more willing to embrace it.

Most people are said to only need about five to six sessions; however, that is not a rule, as each case is judged and treated independently.

Five years ago, Mark decided that he wanted to teach people about hypnotherapy and share his knowledge and so launched his Hypnotherapy Training Academy in 2020.

The nine-month course, which leads to a hypnotherapy diploma, involves meeting one weekend a month to complete 450 hours, with 120 of those being face-to-face.