HYPNOSIS is helping dozens of high-pressured professionals thanks to a Skipton man's unique new business.

Qualified clinical hypnotherapist Stewart Hood is teaching people self-hypnosis and other methods to help them succeed in high-pressure business environments.

Working under the company name, Psi-Com, Stewart's service is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK and he is currently building up a client list of professionals like lawyers, accountants and architects within a 25-mile radius of Leeds.

Based at Watsons Houses, in Skipton, he also uses a technique known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which, he claims, can help people detect when someone is lying in one-to-one meetings.

Stewart explained: "What I do is really for middle-management professionals like accountants and lawyers. They learn what to do at university but they don't learn negotiating skills there.

"My three-day courses are proving very popular. With NLP my clients find they can analyse people in terms of facial changes or changes in skin colour, which can point to how they are thinking.

"With self-hypnosis I teach them how to eradicate any fears they might have. If a businessman has failed to clinch a deal at a previous presentation then they can hypnotise themselves to remove the fear that it will happen again."

Psi-Com is something of a departure for Mr Hood, who has spent much of the last four years lecturing in business studies at Craven College.

Before that he was a product marketing manager and sales manager in the computer industry and worked for US giant Texas Instruments.

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