Ruskin Apothecary

‘Naturopathic’ describes working alongside nature, using natural tools such as herbs, diet, body work and spiritual healing to support and encourage the body’s own process of self-healing.

In my work there are several key elements:

• Careful listening / witnessing or your story
• Body-work (ranging from clothed massage to gentle support) and breathing
• Diet, herbs and lifestyle factors than can be used to support or stimulate healing
• Spiritual healing (such as reiki and other meditation derived practices)

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Listening and witnessing

Every person has a story to tell, and every illness has a history. By careful listening to the clues given by the illness, we can start to identify those factors that support your healing and those that perpetuate the imbalance. A key theme for me is finding the opportunities for understanding and growth that illness allows, rather than focusing on the illness as a problem.

Body-work and breathing

The body often gives more clues than the spoken word. Through a process of gentle body-work, I listen to your body, and in the process enable you to listen better yourself. It is remarkably common that we are unaware where and how we are holding tension or emotions in the body. Once given a little support, these come to the surface and can start to resolve. For instance, someone fearful of social situations may not notice that they hold their breath every time they are in that situation, thus unconsciously aggravating their anxiety. By noticing and unlocking these patterns, you become more enpowered to manage your own anxiety levels.

Nutrition and herbs

In every treatment we look for any opportunity to optimise your health and support healing. My initial training was for four years in medical herbalism, which includes nutritional and lifestyle considerations. Herbs, when used appropriately, have a wonderful capacity to support the body. More on other pages……

Spiritual healing

For those new to spiritual healing, there are all sorts of misunderstandings and projections that can trip you up. The text below offers an attempt at a secular description of basic spiritual healing as I practice it (this may be quite different from another therapist), whilst the link at the top of the page describes the same process in language that will be familiar to those dedicated to following a spiritual path. I would encourage people recieving healing to always remember that the healing comes from you. The skills and awareness of the ‘healer’ simply facilitate this process.

Healing has to be experienced to be understood, though in a nutshell I help create a very still, deeply relaxed place within you. This is done partially by removing the blocks you have to remembering this place of stillness (e.g. by doing some gentle bodywork to free up tension) and partly by me coming into a place of stillness, and then you coming into resonance with this place. From this point of stillness and awareness, many things can be achieved that are very difficult within more day to day consciousness.

The crux of all naturopathic therapies is that the body is it’s own best healer – with healing, we remind the body of it’s natural state of wellbeing. Doing so can then help clear blocks to your own healing – often gently, but sometimes quite suprisingly and dramatically!

I am qualified in massage and aromatherapy and have been initiated into Reiki, Vortex healing and Theta healing. My approach to spiritual healing often involves reiki, therapeutic touch, gentle body manipulation and sound. Everyone I have treated has an experience during healing, ranging from ‘that was very strange’ to ‘wow, I don’t want to ever get up!’ or ‘I don’t know what just happened, but that was great!’ or even ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed’. Often the healing will be experienced in the form of deep relaxation, a sense of connection, a remembering of the feeling of joy or a shifting of old emotional patterns. Sometimes old wounding and trauma is remembered, but always in a way that is gentle and has a quality of peacefullness and healing about it.

NB: Healing is known by various names such as Therapeutic touch, reiki, energy work, spiritual healing – all are slightly different but essential realate to a very similar body of therapeutic work.

I offer training in Reiki for small groups on request. I believe one of the greatest values in training in Reiki is for your own development, and as your healing unfolds, your ability to help others also unfolds.