Barry Cooper (Magic of the Mind)

Barry D Cooper BSc DipCH.P(MT) HPD MNCH(Acc.) MPNLP C.AP.AMT M.AMT ETP

Clinical Hypnotherapist

Stress Management Practitioner

NLP Master Practitioner

Advanced Practitioner of Meridian Energy Therapies

EmoTrance Practitioner

Accredited Member of the National Council for Hypnotherapy

CNHC Registered No. 000714-L10 (Hypnotherapy)

I help individuals to help themselves with a very wide variety of issues, some common, some very obscure. My focus is on teaching self-help techniques, such as relaxation and EFT, to minimise the number of sessions needed.

As potential clients, I'm looking for anyone who wants to improve his or her life in some way. But networking is also about making useful contacts for services that I may need. In both cases, I'm primarily looking in my local area, because almost everything I do is one-to-one. Having said this, some of my techniques that can effectively be used over the phone or on Skype.

The National Council for Hypnotherapy website includes a list of nearly 50 issues that hypnotherapy can help, including:

• Smoking
• Weight control
• Habits
• Stress
• Exam nerves
• Confidence
• Sleep problems
• Phobias
• Pain
• Concentration
• Memory
• Work performance
• Interviews
• Past Life Regression

If you'd like to know more about what hypnotherapy is - and what it isn't ("mind control"!) - please take a look at the FAQs and articles on my website.

For many years I considered myself a "lapsed psychologist".

In my mid-teens I regularly read articles on popular psychology - what would now be called "self-improvement" - and also developed an interest in psychical research. The common factor was the potential of the human mind - what "makes us tick".

I decided to become a psychologist, and enrolled for a psychology degree at Reading University in 1970. The course had a strong experimental bias, and was far from the practical subject that I had had in mind. In fact, the course succeeded in putting me off psychology as a career, and I was talked into becoming an accountant! I discovered within a few weeks that I hated auditing, and as soon as I qualified I specialised in taxation.

With the increasing complexity of the UK tax system, due to messing about by successive governments, I eventually began to loathe my work as a tax adviser. In 2001 I was able to consider a change of profession and a return to applied psychology.

I started with an NLP Practitioner course, followed by a full practitioner's diploma course in clinical hypnosis. More recently, I became interested in meridian energy therapies (MET), particularly Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a versatile tool now used by many hypnotherapists, and qualified as an MET Practitioner. I am now an Advanced MET Practitioner and a Practitioner in another MET, EmoTrance. I also have diplomas in stress management training and organisational stress management, and I'm an NLP Master Practitioner and a certified past life regression specialist.

I now consider myself to be a "lapsed accountant"!

I'm also a keen amateur magician, and an Associate of The Inner Magic Circle, though I spend far more time reading and writing about magic than performing it! I have written for magic magazines and contributed to a few books on magic. I am also a proof-reader for The Magic Circle's monthly magazine. Although I have a weakness for close-up magic, my main interest is in psychic and mental effects.