A positive state of mind

With busy lifestyles leading to tiredness and exhaustion, and mental illness affecting around one million Australians each year; more than ever, people are turning to natural medicine and healing.

You may have seen an impressive video circulating Facebook, about a 77 year old woman named Marg, who suffered from insomnia for sixteen years, until a man named Nev Bentley treated her with hypnotherapy.

Marg was unable to sleep for more than one hour at a time, when the CEO from The Barossa Village first contacted Nev.

The night after Marg’s first session she slept for eight hours.

Now, two months later, having received weekly sessions from Nev, Marg sleeps a full nine hours every night.

“The carers and staff at Barossa Village say she’s like a completely different person now,” says Nev.

“With all this wonderful sleep her body is having a chance to heal. Sleep deprivation is actually a form of torture; causing mania and depression. It can even lead to serious physical ailments.”

At Bentley Wellness, not only is Nev able to use hypnotherapy to help people sleep, but also for relaxation, weight loss, addictions, phobias, cravings, even anxiety and depression.

Born and raised in the Barossa Valley, Nev attended Tanunda Lutheran School and Faith Lutheran College.

Having wanted to become a pilot most of his younger life, he went onto study aviation at the Parafield airport, where he succeeded in becoming a commercial pilot.

During his eleven years as a pilot, Nev lived in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Malaysia, and all over Australia, including remote aboriginal communities, such as Kooljaman and Fitzroy Crossing.

Although his ambition had been to become a pilot, Nev found the profession far less interesting than he had imagined and a rather lonely career, and with a son back home, who he was only able to see once a month, Nev yearned to be settled in the community back home.

The turning point for Nev came during the middle of the night in the Solomon Islands, when he woke, not knowing where he was.

Only after making his way to the window and saying aloud to himself, “Oh! I’m in Honiara!” did he realise where he was.

“Within a week I had been in four different countries and multiple hotel rooms and compounds, it was horrible,” says Nev.

Nev had developed an interest in acupuncture, having used it for so many of his own injuries, ranging from whiplash after a car accident, tennis elbow, muscle tear after a dislocated shoulder, shin splints and tendinitis.

Nev took a redundancy from flying on a Thursday and by the following Monday, was on a full time course in remedial and dry needling therapy at the Australian College of Massage.

Two years later, he finished his master practitioner certificate in hypnotherapy, NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and timeline therapy.

Nev did this with a training company in the United States and is registered with the American Board of Hypnotherapy.

He has now finished one year of his four year degree (Bachelor of Health Science, majoring in acupuncture,) and established a practice here in Nuriootpa.

Nev has also become a major sponsor of the Angaston Netball Club.

Due to having limited free time to study during university, Nev tried hypnotherapy in the hope of both increasing his memory to help him accomplish a credit grade point average and also lose some weight.

After his hypnotherapy sessions he achieved a distinction average and had lost 23 kilos.

Inspired by the results, Nev decided to practise hypnotherapy. Now, due to its success, hypnotherapy has become his primary line of work.

Nev understands the concerns people have surrounding hypnotherapy; that they’re afraid of being controlled or made to jump around like a chicken, like you see on stage hypnosis. Hypnotherapy is completely different, and Nev enjoys educating people on its true nature.

It’s a process of following directions and using one’s imagination to achieve a positive state of mind.

Hypnosis is something we experience each day. It’s merely getting lost in our own thoughts.

One example is the driving trance; when you may have driven somewhere and you get lost in your thoughts.

The next thing you realise is thirty minutes have gone by and you have little recollection of the journey when you arrive.

During the initial appointment, Nev asks his patients to imagine how they would like to be: their target weight, free of addiction, free of grief …

He then asks to make that picture very clear in their mind, and proceeds to guide them into installing that as a future memory. You are aware the entire time.

To help understand how hypnotherapy works, we must first learn about the critical faculty of the mind.

We learn from a young age how to perceive the world, and that we have two minds, the conscious and the unconscious.

The space that separates them is called the critical faculty, which does not get established until we’re seven years old.

Unfortunately, this critical faculty is also what holds our limited beliefs for ourselves.

By leading his clients into hypnosis, Nev is able to bypass the critical faculty, and communicate directly with unconsciousness to install a positive state of mind.

A study was made in the seventies, using closed doors with handles on the same side as the hinges.

Most adults would try the door knob and leave it, assuming the door was broken, while kids under seven were able to solve the problem with ease.

“Children under seven are literally living, breathing and walking unconscious minds,” says Nev.

“They haven’t had a lifetime of knowing which side of the door the handle is meant to be on.

The same principle applies to anything we have learned in life; over time our beliefs and habits, good or bad, become deep seated. Hypnotherapy loosens the grip on these bad behaviours and eventually we can throw them away.”

There hasn’t been a person yet that Nev has not successfully been able to hypnotise.

So if there are any areas in your life you need help with, whether it’s to quit smoking, insomnia, relaxation, removing phobias, negative emotion, guilt, anxiety or depression, Nev is available to help anyone of any age.

Though for depression, Nev suggests checking with your doctor first to see that hypnotherapy would be a suitable treatment option.

♦♦♦