How I practice and what to expect

I have a particular interest in helping people who have complex, challenging and chronic conditions: people who have not been able to get help with other things they have tried.

To do this, I start with the assumption that your body is amazingly good at healing and repairing itself. If that isn't happening as quickly as you would like or expect, I try to understand the CAUSE. If your condition has a name, my diagnosis will involve working out what that is; but that is the start, not the finish, of the way I will try to understand why your body is doing what it is doing.

Because I look for the cause of your ongoing ill health, I think about CONNECTIONS: the mechanical and connective-tissue connections between one part and the next, and how your body responds to gravity; the communication connections, in terms of how the nervous system and the endocrine (hormonal) systems are functioning; and the fluid-flow connections, of how easily blood can get in, and how well blood and lymph can drain out. I try to make sense of the whole picture.

Very often, the cause of ongoing ill-health is some sort of CONSTRICTION affecting: how your body is working mechanically; how it is communicating with itself; and/or how freely blood and lymph can flow through it. Where this is the case, I select from a wide range of hands-on techniques, from the quite subtle to the quite physical.

Where that isn't enough, I'll use these principles to keep digging.

If you are someone with a complex, challenging and chronic condition; who has been to a lot of practitioners and who still isn't well; if you have tried virtually everything, then I can say:

1) I see a lot of people in this situation.

2) As an osteopath, I’m focused on facilitating your own health; helping your system to work well, so that it has the best chance possible of dealing with your problems.

3) I will take the time to understand.

4) I’m not just trying to work out what is happening; I am interested in why it is happening and think very broadly about this. Treatment will involve spending time working with your body, finding out as much as I can learn about what your various tissues are doing and how they are responding.

5) I will consider whether your habitual posture and movements are being influenced by “retained primitive reflexes”, what your biochemistry is doing (I use a variety of tests from several different laboratories, as appropriate), what part stress is playing in what you are going through (and what can be done about it), and more..

6) At the same time, I won't pressure you to keep you coming back if you don't feel that what I am doing is working. If I can’t make sense of what is happening, or if your body isn’t responding the way I expect, I will be very up front in raising this with you and talking through the options.

7) I work with like-minded people who are the most highly-skilled I can find (integrative medical doctors, naturopaths and consultants in neurology) to work together with for people with really challenging situations.

8) My aim will always be to help you to get as well as possible, as soon as possible.

Focussing on helping people with challenging conditions; looking for the causes of ill health; thinking about the connections throughout the body;
freeing up constrictions that stop things working well; and working with the complexity of each individual.