Dr Maya Spencer

Maya Spencer qualified as a doctor in 1979 and worked as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Adult Mental Health in the NHS for many years.

She has now retired from medical practice and is able to pursue her long-term interests in mind-body medicine, using a variety of approaches for both physical and mental health problems as a qualified medical hypnotherapist. She holds a Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis from University College London, which she passed with Distinction in 1999 and is registered with the British Society for Clinical and Academic Hypnosis.

Maya's especial interests are psychoneuroimmunology (the influence of mental imagery on the immune and nervous systems) and the use of psychological techniques to assist people in reducing the burden of chronic illness such as cancer, heart disease and hypertension. She uses guided imagery techniques to help people discover how to connect more deeply with themselves through understanding their body's messages.

She is a licensed One-to-one Provider of HeartMath, a powerful self-help technique for reducing stress that optimizes breathing patterns and heart rhythms, both critical for the maintenance of all-round health.

Maya has been practising meditation since 1983 and fully appreciates the benefits personally and professionally. Together with Karen Atkinson, she runs our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme at York House, and other Mindfulness courses. She attended an educational course with Jon Kabat-Zinn at The Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University in 2001, and several other Bangor Mindfulness trainings since then.