Havening Techniques® is a psycho-sensory technique using touch (and can be self touch so you can have a session with me wherever you live) to change the way a painful and traumatic memory is stored.

 

It works by using touch, distraction and eye movements. You recall an event, memory or limiting belief that you would like to work on. The touch produces delta waves in the brain, relaxes you and makes you feel safe (supported also by my trauma informed training)

 

The touch stimulates the skin’s receptors and increases neurochemicals in the brain. During this process the memory is delinked from the fight-flight-freeze response meaning you can look back on the memory and it doesn’t have the same emotional charge to it.

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The practice focuses heavily on self-compassion, kindness, and self-care.

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Practitioners of the Havening Technique believe that painful emotions and harmful behaviors occur because of the way the brain encodes memories. Havening attempts to change this encoding. Its developers say that the practice views behavior as a consequence of encoding and that it seeks to uncover the event that led to the symptoms.

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The theory is that this combination of touch, sound and mental distancing, ‘trains’ your amygdala to break its connection to a negative reaction. Instead, you will always be automatically and instantly rerouted to a positive association.

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The process of Havening is simple. By stroking the face, arms and hands, massive amounts of serotonin (naturally produced) are released into the body. By using a combination of images and sound, the working memory (auditory loop & visual sketchpad) become disrupted. This combination actually removes the traumatic neural pathway from the brain. The memory that something bad has happened is still there, but it doesn’t emote within you anymore. Quite literally, the road to anxiety is removed and a new emotional response is generated. For problems such as simple phobias, Havening achieves results that are rapid, gentle and permanent, sometimes in just minutes. It is a gentle and safe way to deal with emotional blocks and trauma, without having to endlessly ruminate on the worst time of your life.