My Account
A passion for working with people and helping them to achieve personal happiness is the driving force behind Charlene McIntosh’s new Integrated Insights clinic in Whangaparaoa. Offering a blend of holistic counselling, hypnotherapy and life coaching, Charlene works with people of all ages to provide tools and strategies that will boost their confidence and reduce stress.
She says after a career in management, her decision to retrain as a holistic counsellor and hypnotherapist is the best she’s ever made.
“The best part of any job has always been the people side for me, mentoring staff or looking after them,” she says. “I’ve always been a people person.”
She says holistic counselling differs from traditional counselling in that it focuses on moving forward to find solutions, rather than discussing the past at length.
“There’s an acknowledgement of any known traumas, then we focus on what people want. People usually focus on what they don’t want. This is all about what you actually do want and how to achieve that.”
She says hypnotherapy is also a great way to change old perceptions and patterns of thinking, and even one session can result in lasting changes, although clients will usually have more than one session.
“Hypnotherapy relaxes the barrier between the conscious and subconscious mind to the state where you can talk directly to the subconscious mind and change old beliefs and behaviours. But the client remains 100 per cent in control; I can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to,” she says.
With two treatment rooms, a workshop space and a roomy reception area, Charlene is keen to make Integrated Insights something of a natural health hub, with plans to have other practitioners in to run talks and events in the workshop, and a second complementary therapist based there.
“I want it to be a busy little place with lots of good stuff going on. A lot of practitioners work from home, so I can give them a space to educate and promote natural wellbeing within the community,” she says.
