21/06/2026
Forty delegates registered for my workshop but more than a hundred crowded into the room. Apparently, my keynote presentation and earlier workshops had caused a buzz. The attendees were astonished when trauma was erased from their minds in minutes and learned that the technique was backed up by neuroscience. Then a doctor was baffled when he melted away years of his chronic pain.
“When’s your next training course?” they wanted to know.
Others asked, “Can I book into your clinic? What’s your waiting list?”
I was generating a lot of potential business. I could have sold many copies of my book if I’d remembered to bring them.
Despite the unusual topic, this was not some fringe healing festival. It was actually the biggest national medical education conference for family doctors, with 1,500 delegates. I had no standing ovation on this occasion - but I received rapt attention to a theory that challenged much of medical thinking and practice. The conference organiser was thrilled with my speech.
By all accounts my presentations and workshops were a triumph. Yet, instead of elation I couldn’t wait to flee the conference venue. Every fibre of my being was aching: my muscles were tight, my gut was clenched, I had a tension headache, and my nerves were on fire.
I’m never doing that again, I thought with grim determination. So why was I there in the first place?
In truth, I had accepted the invitation over a year earlier. However, my recent thinking about the world, and how we respond to the multiple crises engulfing us, had challenged my beliefs and led to some radical conclusions. I’d even quit my practice as a trauma therapist.
I now knew the magic that happens we we completely let go of power and create a safe space for people to discover their own healing capacity. When I tested this simple method in community workshops, the results blew me away. It was a radical insight.
The way the medical profession habitually thinks, and practices, inhibits healing and makes it invisible. The unconscious use of professional power, and the assumption that patients have a pathology that must be treated with an external intervention - such as drugs or surgery - makes the patient a passive and helpless recipient of care. All the conditions that make healing possible are stripped away. Thus in the mainstream medical world, the suggestion that patients can cure themselves is a ridiculous idea, both for patients and doctors.
The power relationships go far beyond the attitude of individual doctors. The medical system is highly regulated and protected. Only licensed health professionals may practice, they are the only ones who can receive public health funds or insurance money for their care, and the system rigidly defines what is acceptable treatment. Treatment is largely only available in clinics and hospital, not in our homes.
The trauma-healing practice I used in my clinic for six years is deemed to be “non-scientific”, my claims of benefit are “exaggerated hype”, my clients couldn’t get health funding or insurance cover for the work I did, and I was threatened with prosecution for my claims the therapeutic efficacy - despite the fact that I have seen hundreds of clients change their lives for the better.
The only way that the therapy that I use can be deemed ‘scientific’ and ‘acceptable’ is to publish multiple, placebo-controlled, randomised trials in peer-reviewed medical journals.
But radical innovations rarely get past the research hurdles. Review boards won’t approve trials of a ‘non-scientific’ therapy, researchers dependent on grants won’t risk their reputation, research funders protect the interests of corporations, and expert peer-reviewers won’t believe results that are too good to be true.
Evidence-based medicine is based on the gold-standard of placebo-controlled trials, to prove that a drug or external treatment works. It’s an inconvenient fact that many patients given placebo pills - with no active ingredient - also recover from their illness. But this natural healing response is eliminated from scientific medicine. In essence, any influence of human consciousness on our illness or our healing is completely invisible in medical science. Patients are reduced to biological machines. Our life experiences, stories, beliefs, thoughts and feelings are deemed irrelevant in medical consultations.
But if the therapy actually works through an innate healing mechanism within the patient, rather than an external treatment, you cannot do placebo-controlled trials! The very definition of medical science eliminates the possibility of patients healing themselves.
These multiple layers of power and domination deny life itself and yet they are invisible. Doctors are immersed in decades of training with no notion that they are practising scientific materialism, or exerting power. They protest that they are empathetic, compassionate, and patient-centred in their care, and work very hard to do the best for their patients.
In turn, patients become passive and helpless recipients of care and demand a pill or surgery to treat their illness; they co-conspire in the power dynamic. Any patient who tries to assert their rights, question medical dogmatism, or choose alternative treatments is labelled a ‘difficult patient’.
I have to confess, for much of my medical career I was equally blind. I trained as an anesthesiologist doing hi-tech medicine and intensive care. When someone is acutely sick or injured, a hospital is a wonderful place to be. In the short term, assuming that a human body functions like a machine is a good-enough approximation to reality and acute medicine is usually effective. As a basis for chronic care, it’s a disaster.
But here I was at the medical conference, being the expert practitioner, teaching a technique to doctors and nurses for use in their work with patients and clients. I knew I was in trouble in the days before the conference when I discarded draft after draft of my speech, and tossed and turned in bed. But the level of distress I experienced in the gathering was confronting.
Once you see the power structures, the scientific materialism that denies life itself, and the incredible healing potential that human beings and nature possess, you cannot un-see it. Suddenly you realise the same beliefs and dynamics occur in education, in food production, in human services, in the economic system, in government, in corporations. These myths, beliefs and ways of thinking pervade our modern society.
With my new perspectives, I viscerally feel and believe that our world is in grave peril. The acceleration of climate change and ecological collapse terrifies me. Leading democracies are being torn apart by corruption and violence. The world economy is on the precipice of collapse with unsustainable levels of debt and hugely inflated assets. Planetary boundaries are exceeded on almost every measure - we are consuming far more than our world can support, and we see the results every day.
There are unprecedented concentrations of power among the super-wealthy, leading to political corruption, gross inequality, poverty, and persecution of minority groups. The dominant technology companies are doing untold harm to the mental well-being of our young people, who have epidemic levels of chronic anxiety, depression and despair. Now AI threatens the very survival of humanity.
The central issue is power and domination. And it’s a form of power that denies life itself.
The patriarchy exerts enormous power over women, limiting their roles, their income, even denying their body autonomy. In 2025, there were only eight female Chief Executives in the FTSE 100 top companies. There is widespread violence and trauma against women. According to the UN, globally about 30% of women suffer physical or sexual violence.
Traumatised and suppressed women lose their voices. The feminist values of nurturing, caring, empathy and compassion have little place in the man’s world. Overwhelmingly, it is men creating violence, conflict, war, inequality, and repressive laws. It is men who are destroying nature, burning fossil fuels and denying the climate crisis.
Sitting behind this violence, greed, misogyny, and the need for excessive power is trauma. Our business and political leaders - almost all men - are traumatised individuals.
Only a deeply traumatised individual - such as Elon Musk - could need a trillion dollars to prove his self-worth, when giving away this money could alleviate so much poverty and suffering in the world.
These traumatised men have disconnected from their feelings and lost their humanity but had the privilege of eduction and wealth. They rise up in the professions, or the business world, as men lacking empathy and compassion. This mental toughness is celebrated as strength in the dog-eat-dog business world, and as clinical detachment and objectivity in the medical world. Underneath all this power and bravado, is insecurity and vulnerability.
But if people without power and privilege are traumatised, they become victimised, helpless, and voiceless. Their low self-worth allows abusers to inflict endless cruelty and pain, further adding to their trauma.
Sadly, the mainstream mental health system almost completely ignores trauma, which my experience tells me is the leading cause of chronic anxiety, depression, addictions, and intergenerational cycles of violence. The conventional approach to mental illness is medication or therapy - interventions done to the patient.
Sadly, counselling, psychology, therapy and medication are largely ineffective in the treatment of trauma because trauma causes hard-wired changes in the brain that no cognitive therapy or drug treatment can reverse.
In my clinic I used a breakthrough therapy called Havening®, which can rapidly erase the nerve connections holding trauma, using innate molecular reactions in the brain cells. When the trauma is erased, the fear, anxiety, depression and low-self-worth melt away. This practice is what I was teaching at the medical conference, together with the detailed science of the healing mechanism in the brain.
Six years ago I quit medical practice because I could no longer work in a system that reduced patients to mere biological machines; a system that didn’t acknowledge how our life experiences, stories, feelings and beliefs shape our biology and create both mental and physical illness. I couldn’t work in a system that harmed and traumatised so many patients.
My transition from medical practice to working as a trauma therapist using Havening was challenging. I had to reverse many of my existing assumptions, practices and ways of thinking. I had to give power to my clients and let them shape their own healing journey. I didn’t do therapy to clients, rather I was creating the conditions that activates the natural healing within them. Havening became the most astonishing and gratifying practice of my entire medical career and the results were life-changing for many clients.
But in the end, I quit my Havening practice too. Havening Techniques have been framed as a set of techniques to be used by mental health practitioners but they are immersed in the very power structures that inhibit healing. Also, the practice violated professional norms. Counsellors, therapists and psychologists are taught never to touch a client. In the dehumanised mental health system, the theory is that clinical distancing and lack of touch create safety for clients.
However, in over a thousand clients, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Humans have evolved as a social species, where touch is an incredibly important part of human connection, nurturing, emotional safety, love and the healing of trauma.
Alexander Fleming didn’t need randomised, controlled trials to prove that penicillin worked because the results were immediate and dramatically life-saving. While many medical treatments need huge clinical trials to prove marginal benefits, many of my clients were truly astonished with the long-lasting results of just one session of Havening.
At the medical conference, I demonstrated how a painful trauma could be erased in just ten minutes. I saw the absolute astonishment on the face of the volunteer who came forward for a demonstration, and the disbelief of the audience.
At another workshop, a doctor with years of chronic pain saw it vanish in fifteen minutes. In the minds of the doctors watching this demonstration, this result was clearly impossible. The overwhelming majority most likely dismissed the change as a temporary relief, or coincidental result, because to accept what they witnessed challenges the fundamental basis of their scientific practice.
Why I will no longer promote Havening
Even though I did my best to empower the clients in my clinic, and to insist that they were doing the healing - not me - there was still a power relationship. I was the renowned doctor, former medical specialist and international health leader. My degrees, certificates and awards were framed on the wall. While the client chose what life issue or trauma they wanted to work on, I directed the therapy and chose the techniques.
If power relationships are the thing destroying the world, and creating trauma in peoples’ lives, how much was the use of power in my own practice reinforcing the very problem that is bring the world to crisis? Also, only the clients with money could afford to attend my clinic. Could I find a different way?
When I chose to make my practice playful and creative, and used approaches not described in Havening Techniques, I witnessed hundreds of clients heal trauma in an effortless way, without the use of therapy. The essential factors were compassionate presence and safe, soothing touch.
Clients quickly developed a magical mind that could visually transform the images and stories of trauma to become innocent and even joyful. This change was effortless, spontaneous, and lots of fun. The feelings that joined us together were awe at the results, the laughter of intense relief, a warmth of connection, and an incredible sense of possibility.
If we are to save the world, we need to remember what it is to be human, to step aside from economic and power structures, and to connect together in healing. We need a Humanity Project.
The healing method I uncovered is called Somatic Compassion. It is free to use, unregulated, and is available anywhere - in your homes and communities. All you need is one other caring person and you can learn the methods in five minutes. This is what ordinary people naturally do - even complete strangers - when they come together with compassionate presence and soothing touch.
If you host a group or a class, give somatic compassion a try. On our website you can view a short film documentary of what happened when we tried this out in Raglan, a small town in New Zealand. All the instructions are there, and the surprising neuroscience of touch and healing. We ask you not to charge a fee but you may invite donations. The gift economy fosters generosity and giving, unlike the transactional mainstream economics.
If we can start to heal trauma, we can foster a new generation of leaders who find strength in compassion and caring, who know the incredible richness and creative capacity of ordinary people, who can help build connection and community, and start to save the world.
