Vivian McKinnon

As well as a havening practitioner I am a clinical hypnotherapist registered with the General Hypnotherapy Register/Standards Council (GHR, GHSC), Master TLT Practitioner registered with the Time Line Therapy Association (TLTA), Master NLP Practitioner registered with the American Board Of Neuro Linguistic Programming (ABNLP) and a Master Practitioner in hypnosis. I ama also a Health Care Trust approved Mental Health First Aid trainer and regional coordinator for SMART recovery.

Life wasnt always this way. After many ACE's and subsequent adult trauma resulting in comprimised Mental Health and unhelpful coping strategies i had tried every trick in the book to avoid the pain of the past. A near death expereince empowered me to create change.

In 2015 I founded Hydro-ease, Northern Ireland’s only dedicated Floatation Centre, and WellnessConsultantNI. I have since developed RAFT (Recovery and Floatation Therapy) where i combines all of the approaches listed above along with restricted environmental stimulation therapy (floatation) to support and sculpt neurological, physical and behavioral change.

After working in science and being part of the team who cloned Dolly the sheep I then spent 3 years with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. Then in 2003, I entered the charity and voluntary sector, beginning in youth work services focusing on youth homelessness with young people who were leaving the care system.

After moving to Northern Ireland in 2010 I then spent 5 years within addiction services, in both operational and strategic services, providing support to young people and then laterally people living with the symptoms of PTSD/PTSI and Addiction before setting up Hydro-ease in 2015.

I have secured various contracts and service level agreements to bring my brand of recovery to the people of Northern Ireland and further afield

My passion and enthusiasm for havening has seen me being sought out by individuals, community groups and organizations committed to healing the wounds of the past, a recent client compared Havening to having laser eye surgery;

'When you first get laser eye surgery you keep a hold of you glasses in case the improvements are only temporary then you realize things have changed permanently, I found myself trying to activate the trauma and get a hold of the emotion... after a few weeks I gave up as I knew it was gone for good and no amount of trying would bring it back"