Suse Ashford is a Clinical & Advanced Hypnotherapist – her work has been shaped by more than two decades of personal healing, study and motherhood. As a single parent to two young girls, she understands firsthand the emotional load of modern parenting: the exhaustion, identity shifts, and the physical and emotional changes that come with raising little ones. Through her Mangawhai-based practice, she offers a gentle, trauma-informed approach that helps women, particularly new mums, reconnect with their inner strength and find calm amidst the chaos. With her grounded, compassionate and intuitive approach, she supports her clients gently and safely to move beyond suffering, reframe unhelpful personal beliefs and rediscover a deep sense of inner confidence – offering something that goes beyond surface-level relief to bring about enduring healing. Here, she talks to The Natural Parent Magazine about the passion behind Mangawhai Hypnotherapy, how she balances work and family life, the challenges she has overcome, and her hopes and dreams for the future.
The Passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
This is a fabulous question…but also a difficult one. Because my business has really been 22 years in the making. I didn’t know, at 18 years old, that life would eventually lead me to a dream career in hypnotherapy. But the seed of it all was planted back then.
It was the 23rd of March, 2004. I was working in Smith & Caughey’s as a perfume saleswoman when I received a phone call that would change my life. It was my best friend’s mother (my best friend since I was two years old) calling to tell me that my friend had taken her own life. The news shattered me. Shock, confusion, fear and heartbreak flooded in. But somewhere within that heartbreak, something else was born: a quiet, steady passion to understand the mind, to help ease human suffering, and to one day offer others the kind of help I wish my friend had received.
My path from that moment has been anything but straightforward. Over the years, I’ve walked through additional loss, betrayal, chronic illness and single motherhood. I’ve weathered grief, shame, fear and trauma; and I’ve slowly learned how to turn those experiences into something meaningful. Through it all, I gathered not only qualifications: a Bachelor of Communications, a Graduate Diploma of Teaching, a Graduate Diploma of Health Science in Psychotherapy and a Diploma of Advanced and Clinical Hypnotherapy; but also, the kind of lived wisdom and understanding that can’t be taught in a classroom.
And yet, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned, both personally and professionally, is that pain cannot be measured. There is no hierarchy of suffering.
Early on in my journey, before some of life’s cruellest lessons had even been handed to me, from the outside, my life looked perfectly fine, but on the inside, I was being tormented by my own thoughts and feelings. It taught me that the human heart doesn’t need justification to hurt.
So, when someone walks through my door, whether they’re grappling with a lifelong trauma, the emotional load of new motherhood or something that might seem “small” to others, I hold space for them equally. Because to me, there is no such thing as a small problem. There is only the very real, very human experience of pain and the possibility of healing.
Now, from this place of understanding, I get to do what I love most: help others rediscover their own strength, self-trust and sense of peace. Every story that enters my room matters. Every person deserves to be met with compassion, curiosity and care. And every healing journey, no matter how big or small it may seem, is worth taking.
To start a business that is both heart-led and often-times quite literally life-altering for my clients, it has truly been all of these experiences: the pain, the learning, the growth, that have inspired me. And it’s that original spark of passion, ignited all those years ago, that still burns quietly within me today, guiding every session, every client and every small moment of transformation.
The Launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
I began by offering free hypnotherapy to family and friends for an entire year, determined to gain as much hands-on experience as possible before ever charging for my services.
While I continued training, my skills and confidence grew alongside me, as I guided people I cared about through all sorts of challenges. Each session broadened my abilities, refined my techniques and slowly shaped a style of practice that felt authentically me. I was deeply honoured by how many people came forward and entrusted me with their most vulnerable experiences. It was a humbling beginning. One I will always be grateful for.
By the time I was ready to officially launch my business, I had already accumulated hundreds of hours of practice. From there, it was simply a matter of setting up a clinic space and getting my website up and running.
These days, many of the people who reach out to me are new mums navigating exhaustion, worry and identity shifts after birth. So much changes in those early months: your body, your sleep, your emotions… and hypnotherapy offers a gentle, deeply restorative way to come back to yourself amidst it all.
The Innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
The biggest breakthrough for me was realising I could trust my clients’ own inner wisdom.
When I first started out, I believed I had to come up with all the answers and then somehow “insert” them into a client’s subconscious during trance. Everything shifted, though, when I was practising on a family member with long-term, unexplained pain in her side.
At the time, I was using a technique called the “magic box”, where the subconscious presents answers in the form of metaphors. She opened her “box” and saw tent poles with elastic string. Next time, a child’s slinky toy. Then, finally, a jack-in-the-box. At first, none of it made sense. So I asked her conscious mind to step aside, using a simple counting exercise, and suddenly, her subconscious spoke clearly: “Oh my goodness, I just need to stretch!”.
She saw an osteopath a few days later, stretched, and the pain disappeared.
That moment changed everything for me. I realised my role isn’t to dictate or provide all the answers, but to help clients connect with the incredible wisdom already within them. Our subconscious minds hold the key; it’s usually our conscious minds that get in the way.
For new mums especially, whose nervous systems can be running on high alert from sleepless nights and endless giving, this approach can feel like exhaling for the first time in months. Hypnotherapy helps quiet the noise so the body and mind can finally listen to themselves again.
Since then, my approach to hypnotherapy has been about sitting alongside my clients, not above them, creating a safe space where their own inner guidance can surface and lead to powerful, lasting change.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I’m a single parent to two fabulous little girls, Paige (7) and Lola (6). One of the biggest attractions of running my own business, rather than working for someone else, is the flexibility it gives me to shape my hours around my children and their needs. I want them to grow up, with that confident knowing that they were/are always first on my list of priorities.
In saying that, however, there is of course the odd time when something comes up that absolutely requires my attention and I need to ask for help with my kids. I’m very fortunate to live close to my parents, who are a wonderful support if ever I need them.
Asking for help, though, has been one of my biggest personal lessons. I’ve always been cautious not to “put people out”, but over time I’ve realised that when I ask myself, “What’s truly best for the kids?” the answer can sometimes include leaning on others.
But, in doing so, I’ve discovered something beautiful: that in asking my parents for help has also given them precious and enjoyable one-on-one time with my kids. I often share this same message with new mums in my clinic: asking for help isn’t weakness…it’s wisdom. It’s how we build the village that every parent deserves.
