Penarth's Alchemy Hypnotherapy is offering a new online clinic to help people around the world deal with mental health issues and life challenges from the comfort of their own homes.

The company based in Rowan Close, Penarth, offers Advanced Medical Hypnotherapy and Clinical Solution Focused Psychotherapy as well as a choice of NLP, CBT, Mindfulness and Coherence Healing according to the customer-patients' needs and wishes.

Their new online clinic already has customers from around Wales, the UK, and abroad.

"We built the online clinic so we could offer our services online to people further afield from the Penarth catchment area and to anyone not otherwise able to get to our clinic in Penarth," said Alchemy Director, Enfys Jones.

"Some of our customer-patients from Penarth, Cardiff and The Vale are now choosing to see us over the internet if they are self-isolating because they may have cold or flu symptoms, or because they just don't want to go out in this current climate of concern," she explained.

"It's great that we can offer this alternative. It means existing customers don't have to miss sessions if they are feeling under the weather and want to do the right thing according to the NHS and government advice - they can stay connected.

''It also means anyone wanting the type of specialist mental health support we can offer can reach out from wherever they are. We now have customers in all parts of Britain, some in Australia and America, and UK and international corporate contracts to deliver their workplace wellbeing programmes online," she added.

"The software behind our online clinic is like Skype on steroids!" said Alchemy Director, Gareth Strangemore-Jones.

"It's much more stable and has lots of great therapy consultation functions such as a whiteboard for us to draw pictures of the brain; the ability to share, edit and annotate documents; screen and browser sharing and great admin tools like an online booking calendar, online payments and appointment reminders," he explained.

"You don't have to have to download anything or have any additional software yourself. At the appointment time, you just click a personalised link that you get sent upon booking and you are into your own consulting room. If you want to remind yourself of anything we talked about in previous sessions, you can go back into your online consulting room and see the notes to remind yourself of what we talked about," he added.

Alchemy Hypnotherapy is the new name for The Penarth Practice, established by Consultant Medical Hypnotherapist and Clinical Psychotherapists Gareth and Enfys in 2015.

The name was changed as part of a rebranding to communicate to a wider audience. The couple, who are life and business partners, are among the highest qualified hypnotherapists in the UK and have been named in the top bracket globally.

"We see people mainly for stress, anxiety and depression as well as a range of mental health issues and life challenges," said Enfys. "The Coronavirus outbreak is clearly an issue that is adding to people's stress levels and the last thing many want to do is add that stress to their existing challenges. We regularly deep clean the clinic in Penarth and have anti-Covid19 specific practices in place for before and after every client. But the online clinic is proving popular for people just not wanting to go to out as well as for those who just can't get to Penarth."

"While it is clearly important to be informed, aware and mindful of the rapidly-developing situation," said Gareth. "Stressing about it will not help. Indeed it will actually make things worse. Stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline are great if you are in a physical 'fight or flight' emergency but if they are in your mind and body for hours, days or weeks they will have a harmful effect on the immune system which could make the difference between catching Coronavirus or not or how badly it affects you, especially if you have an underlying condition that puts you at greater risk.

''The work we do actually improves the patient's psychoneuroimmunology. The 'Happy Reward Chemicals' released such as Serotonin, Dopamine, Endorphins and Oxytocin all boost the immune system and can have an important role to play in combatting viruses such as Covid19."

Alchemy Hypnotherapy offers a free no-obligation telephone consultation. For more information, see Alchemy Hypnotherapy or call 02921 409218.