Havening: The anti-anxiety treatment you'll want to try

Here at Beaut.ie we're always on the lookout for new and effective alternative treatments. We're determined to cut through those that sound like nothing more than a money-grabbing hoax and discover practical tools to improve our wellbeing.

Whether you've been struggling to get passed a bout of anxiety, living in denial about a phobia or feel that there's a particularly distressing experience you've had that's acting as a roadblock when it comes to your day to day happiness, Havening is something that piqued our interest, and will yours too.

We tried Havening out for ourselves with two sessions, and found it both incredibly relaxing and impressively rooted in neuroscience, meaning any initial skepticism is quickly appeased. Ireland's foremost certified Havening practitioner Stephen Travers explains how the latest breakthrough in psychological therapy works:

"Havening is a psycho-sensory therapy which means it uses pleasant psychological distraction techniques and relaxing touch which can be applied by the therapist or by the clients themselves. The treatment itself is very calming, comforting and relaxing. It affects a part of the brain called the amygdala which controls your stress response. Havening switches off the signals from the brain that cause emotional and physical distress. These powerful healing results can often be achieved within minutes and last a lifetime, which makes it an extraordinary therapy."

Founded by medical doctor and neuroscientist Ronald Ruden, we now have an insight into the ways in which traumatic memories get encoded in the brain and precisely where this happens: the lateral amygdale. From this breakthrough, Ruden then worked out how to remove the emotional and distressful symptoms from the memory or trauma, which lead him to this psycho-sensory therapy. Also known as Amygdala Depotentiation Therapy, Ruden's work has been hailed by many of his peers as one of the most significant ever breakthroughs in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. It's simple, it makes complete sense, and it's incredibly effective.

From my guinea pig perspective, it's totally unlike talking therapy or anything else I've tried; rather than just sitting there chronicling the myriad ways in which you feel you're struggling, with no real changes occurring in your brain, you get straight to work here by replacing what's set in your mind as a negative, stressful feeling with one that's relaxed and content, via the sensory touch your practitioner employs. This touch sends the loveliest delta waves to your brain, meaning that when you then go back to think about what it was that set you off in the first place, you don't feel it in the same way. There's also lots of distraction techniques involved, which at first might seem ridiculous - I think at one point I was humming 'Old MacDonald had a farm...' - but are very effective in terms of interrupting those negative thought patterns we find lodged in our brain chemistry.

The most common issues presented at a Havening session would be those relating to anxiety and stress, and with more and more people both as clients and medical professionals turning their heads towards this treatment, it's soon to go fully mainstream.

After two sessions, I felt more relaxed and less affected by bad memories, as well as enjoying a confidence boost in all areas of my life. With thousands of completed case studies and the first published paper on the benefits of Havening via King's College, London, this is a treatment that's well worth your time. From anxiety to phobias, fears, PTSD, cravings, IBS, chronic pain and more, this treatment gets two emphatic thumbs up from us and of course it's entirely side-effect free.

Check out Stephen Travers' work here , the recently published study here in the Health Science Journal and stay tuned for more when we explain how you can master this stress-relieving technique at home.