Therapist Lesley Broadhead uses a range of unusual techniques to help her clients improve their lives. Women's Editor Christen Pears reports.

ON the wall of Lesley Broadhead's office is a picture of an iceberg. The tip is visible above the surface but beneath the water, there's a vast, unseen structure. It's a perfect metaphor for the human mind.

"The conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg, the part you use when you're actively thinking. The unconscious mind is everything else, the bit underneath that you don't see," explains Lesley.

With 16 years of experience, Lesley has recently set up a practice in the North-East, based at the Stockton Business Centre. She began her career as a family therapist in Leeds and worked with more than 8,000 people, mainly families with emotional difficulties, before deciding on a career change.

"When I was working in Leeds, the thing I enjoyed most was when people came up to me and said I had really changed their lives. It was wonderful knowing I had motivated somebody like that and when I stopped to re-think my career, I realised I was looking for something that could move people on. I wanted to get away from people telling their story again and again. It's about focusing on the future."

Lesley, who now runs Inner Potential, uses a variety of techniques to inspire and motivate clients towards making positive changes in their lives. These include neurolinguistic programming or NLP, a sophisticated branch of psychology that helps clients discover what they want out of life and take control of the future.

She is also a qualified hypnotherapist. Consciously, we are only able to process around seven pieces of information but the unconscious mind can process and store millions. By using hypnosis, the therapist can communicate with the patient's unconscious.

"The implications it has are amazing but some people worry about it," says Lesley. "You can't be made to do anything you don't want to do under hypnosis. You can get up and walk out of the session at any time but you don't want to because you're in a wonderful sense of relaxation."

It's particularly effective in dealing with smoking cessation, anxiety and self-confidence, as well as more deep-rooted issues.

"Sometimes you come across something which appears to be a problem but is, in fact, just a symptom. You need to get to the cause and often that's in the unconscious."

The third therapy at Inner Potential is Emotional Freedom Technique, a relatively new therapeutic invention based on the ancient Chinese technique of acupuncture. While traditional acupuncture uses needles, EFT involves gently tapping the various meridian points located throughout body.

Based on the belief that negative emotions and illnesses are caused by a blockage or disruption in the body's energy system, it works to restore the energy flow and is a technique that can be taught to clients so they can use it on themselves.

Although widespread in America, EFT is practised by only a handful of people in the UK. It's typical of Lesley's interest in new techniques and therapies that she is one of them. She is constantly expanding her skills and has just started studying thought pattern management, which aims to re-programme the brain into new ways of thinking.

Lesley's approach is holistic. "We don't just store things in our minds," she says. "Information is stored throughout the body, at cellular level and as energy. People are realising, for example, that some illnesses have an emotional base. They're emotional issues manifesting themselves."

Lesley believes very strongly in energy forces and subscribes to the theory that we get back what we give out.

"There is a magnetic field around us. If we put negative thoughts around us, they only attract negative things. Just think about when you're having a bad day. Everything goes wrong."

Some people believe they have little or no control, but by focusing on the positive aspects of their life, they can eliminate negative feelings. "It's a habit and as much as you can learn to be negative, you can learn to be positive," she explains.

She used the metaphor of a path. When you have a thought, it fires off the neurotransmitters in your brain. If you keep having the thought, a path develops and it gets wider and wider until it becomes a motorway. You can re-route that path and go down a new one, but it's something that has to be learned.

* Inner Potential can be contacted on (01642) 677456 or visit the website at www.innerpotential.co.uk