‘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)

 ___________________

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.

___________________________________________________________

Research: So far several tens of papers have been published concerning therapeutic touch/reiki - a very small quantity, but an interesting start. Area’s investigated include anxiety, relaxation, muscle tension, wound recovery and on reducing pain. By the way, if anyone reading is in a position to develop research projects related to healing I’d love to be involved! Some interesting links to research relating to spiritual healing:

• Healing helping reduce anxiety and hospital stay following bypass operations

• Therapeutic touch in chronic neuropathic pain (indicating positive effects on well-being and reduction in fatigue and confusion)

• Healing may help reduce tiredeness, anxiety and pain in cancer treatment whilst also improving quality of life.

• Therapeutic touch appears to even have an effect on cells in a test tube!

• Experience of a Reiki session ‘Participants described a liminal state of awareness in which sensate and symbolic phenomena were experienced in a paradoxical way. Liminality was apparent in participants’ orientation to time, place, environment, and self Paradox also was seen in participants’ symbolic experiences of internal feelings, cognitive experience, and external experience of relationship to the Reiki master’

• An interesting paper on the psychopysiological effect of distant healing.

• A small trial of distant healing on chronic pain.

• Other research of interest: Energy work practises, Supporting cancer treatment, Prayer, ‘Six pillars of energy healing’

Links:

• Heartmath have a good collection of research links. In my clinic I sometimes assess Heart Rate Variability as a biofeedback device for help bring people into their heart consciousness.

• Neurofeedback and the impact of alpha/theta brainwave states. There is a huge emerging field around this, of which the ‘Peniston Protocol’ was one of the first approaches. This protocol was geared towards rehab. for addicts (with great success), but touches on a more universal self-healing response. During 2010 I am training in using Neurofeedback in my practice, and will be offering this therapeutically from 2011 onwards.

• A good article on past lives and relevance in therapy/healing. From my point of view I rarely if ever actively go seeking past life information, but it does often ‘pop up’ during treatment. This is often as a body memory or emotional resonance with a visual or kinaesthetic story attached to it. The great thing working with past lives is that it makes absolutely no difference if you believe in them or not - when you hit one of your own, it has a power that is undeniable, wherever it comes from! For those who don’t believe in them they can be seen as a highly charged and personal symbolic narratives touching on archetypal human themes. ‘Past lives’ is easier to say tough ;-).