I’m Gary Oke, a full time hypnotherapist with diplomas in Hypnotherapy and Stress Management, Advanced Hypnotherapy, Complete Mind Therapies and Master Practitioner in Applied Clinical Hypnotherapy. Most of my training was at British Ethical School of Therapies where I now teach. I am a member of the British Institute of Hypnotherapy and the General Hypnotherapy Register. I am also currently training in Life Coaching as I already use some life coaching techniques in my work and feel it’s time to “officially” add them with the relevant qualification.
I started out as a hypnotherapist in Manchester after growing tired of the stress of my successful career in sales and marketing. A friend of mine then asked me to work one day per week from her complementary therapy centre in Sheffield. I live in Glossop, which is about half way between Manchester and Sheffield so I decided this would be a good opportunity to treat more people as well as to work at a multi-practice centre and be able to interact with therapsts from other disciplines. Sheffield took off almost immediately for me, I quickly had to add a second day there and often worked well into the night.
In December 2007, Greenways Natural Health Centre closed down, I did have another location in Sheffield lined up but decided at the last minute that it wasn’t the right kind of premises for me. I like my clients to feel comfortable and at ease not just with me but also with their surroundings and I felt this new location wouldn’t achieve that. I then decided to work one day per week in Glossop instead. I stopped advertising my services in Sheffield completely and as Glossop isn’t a million miles away, existing clients were happy to travel over.
To cut a long story short, the phone kept ringing with people in Sheffield who had heard of my extremely high success rates and a few who had somehow found old free adverts floating around the internet. It reached the point where on one occasion I actually turned away five clients in one day. It was time to return to Sheffield. A few of the therapists I worked with previously at Greenways had gone to Wainwright Therapy Centre in Sheffield. I knew Wainwrights already had two reputable hypnotherapists based there, so I hadn’t felt it worthwhile talking to them previously but one of my former colleagues had a word with them and they felt it was fine, after all, I was bringing in all my own clients anyway. So, this is the story as to how I’ve ended up with practices in three different locations which can all be found here.
In the little spare time that I have, I teach marketing courses to other complementary therapists, most don’t have the blessing of business experience when they first start out and this area is often missed out in therapist training. I feel that the more successful complementary therapists there are out there, the more seriously the therapies will be taken and the sooner we can reach the point of compulsory regulation.
In the remaining spare time, I play golf, table-tennis and badminton. Golf is my latest passion, the others I have played competitively since childhood. My interest in golf actually came from my work as a hypnotherapist, seeing how passionate my clients are about the game, particularly those who I have worked with to improve their performance, had me wondering what the big deal was. I started playing in December 2007, had some lessons, learned the different shots and then played as much as possible for experience at the same time as using hypnotherapy techniques to improve my game. Nine months later, my handicap is already down to twelve.
For further information on hypnotherapy and my practices, please visit my website http://www.okehypnotherapy.co.uk
