Coronavirus: update on appointments

This is an uncertain and worrying time for many of us. Just when you might most want a massage to help you cope with it all, the contagious nature of coronavirus means that we have to follow careful protocol in order to keep ourselves and others safe. As a therapist your welfare is extremely important to me and I wish to take the best care that I can.

I am still available for appointments with those of you who are not having to self isolate and are not in a vulnerable group (I am following advice from my professional body), but I will be allowing a larger gap between clients to allow for extra cleaning time, and to reduce the number of people that are in reception at any time.

Please can we ask you to pay by card rather than cash to reduce handling.

The guidance from the Government is as follows:
Social distancing measures should be taken to reduce social interaction between individuals in order to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID 19).

Those who are at particular risk of severe illness from coronavirus (COVID 19) are to be particularly stringent in following social distancing measures.

This group includes those who are:

• aged 70 or older (regardless of medical conditions)
• under 70 with an underlying health condition as listed below, including those instructed to receive a 'flu jab as an adult on medical grounds.:
• chronic (long term) respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema or bronchitis.
• chronic heart disease 
• chronic kidney disease
• chronic liver disease such as hepatitis
•  chronic neurological problems such as Parkinson's disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Multiple Sclerosis or cerebral palsy.
• diabetes
• problems with your spleen such as sickle cell disease
• a weakened immune system including from medicines such as steroids or chemotherapy
• being seriously overweight (BMI of 40 and above)
• those who are pregnant

I am so sorry but if any of the above applies to you or to someone you are in regular close contact with then you are asked not to book appointments to see me at the 919 Clinic until further notice. I  know this will be disappointing to many, especially those who are 70 or over and feel in excellent health. For insurance reasons as well as for the benefit of all I have to follow the guidelines given to me.

In addition, please do not book or attend an appointment if you have:

• a cold, or 'flu like symptoms
• a continuous cough
• a fever

If you have the last two symptoms the present Government advice is to self isolate yourself and your family for 14 days.

To reassure those who are still able to come in for treatment (as they are not in any of the above categories) that the Clinic is as safe an environment as we can make it, we are regularly cleaning all hard surfaces and disinfecting - something that Wendy and Anthea have always been stringent about, but they have raised their game even more! I will also be giving each client clean towels, and wiping down door handles. We have hand sanitiser available. I always wash my hands thoroughly before and after each treatment. We are now asking you to also wash your hands before and after treatment if you don't already do this.

If you are not able to come into the Clinic I can still offer advice by telephone (07957 162347) or email  (herbalkate@gmail.com). I recommend email if that is suitable for you.

Hope you and your family stay safe and well.

Coronavirus

A massage treatment involves being in close contact with another person in a small, enclosed space for a significant length of time; with this in mind I am giving serious thought as to whether I should continue to offer treatments whilst we are seeing a rapid spread of the virus. At present I am still treating people.

If you are coming for a treatment please could I ask you to consider:how likely it is that you have been exposed to the virus; if it seems likely, please wait two weeks before booking your appointment. 

If you are pregnant, or elderly, or have a compromised immune system, or are in regular contact with someone who is: please consider waiting for the outbreak to be contained as I will not be able to guarantee whether or not I have been exposed to the virus.

Please do not come in for a treatment if you are feeling unwell; this is standard advice regarding massage treatment. If you are feeling feverish, coughing and aching, please look after yourself by staying at home, and if your symptoms become worrying ring the NHS helpline. 

Sharing the load

Are you standing up? Try raising one arm up above your head; how easy did you find this?
Now feel your feet on the ground and imagine that the movement is beginning from there, passing up through your body, along the arm and flowing out through your fingers. Does this feel different? Did your arm move further? Compare the two ways of approaching raising your arm again. Use the hand that is not moving to feel what is happening with the rib cage on the lifting side.

If you felt both ways were equally easy you may be one of those people with intuitive understanding of where movement is generated and how it travels through the body. For many people, moving the arm often involves an isolated movement relying on the upper shoulder girdle muscles and recruiting in extra help from the neck. Shifting this to a movement where more of the body is invited to join in allows the body to free up as well as share the effort, allowing the arm to move further and with more ease.

Now play with your posture. Allow yourself into that slump that we see so much of; try raising your arm. Let it back down and imaging your spine lengthening upwards and up out the crown of your head, supported by a helium balloon. Your shoulders are left behind, nicely relaxed. What happens when you raise your arm now? Experiment with tensing your jaw and seeing how that changes the movement. and then again with tensing up your neck muscles.

We often see this full body movement in sport; a tennis player uses their whole body to generate the power and control that begins in the feet and legs, travels up through the pelvis to the middle of the body and on to the shoulder and emerges through the arm into contact between racket and ball, whilst a footballer's upper body and arms will be working just as hard as their legs to kick that ball.

Allowing our bodies to find a position of ease from which to initiate movement and allow that movement impulse to travel through the body and out can make it all so much easier once we can find a way for our bodies to rediscover this knowledge.
 

Tuning in

We often tend to think only about the big, conscious movements we wish to make: hitting a ball, jumping over a puddle, running to catch a bus. However our bodies are continuously in motion as the postural muscles make tiny adjustments in response to messages from our nervous system that uses sensors in our muscles, tendons and joints to monitor where we are in space; this is often referred to as proprioception. Ideally we use as little energy as possible for movement, aiming for efficiency and ease, but often tension gets in the way both of this continual unconscious adjustment and of our more conscious movement. 

A habit I have cultivated is to explore gently how I am holding myself. I often begin with my feet; letting my foot sink into the ground, then feeling the weight shift across the foot as I shift my weight. Seated, it is interesting to explore how much you can release your leg as you keep the whole foot in contact with the ground. Encourage your ankle to move to transfer pressure across the foot as you shift your weight - the whole foot still in contact with the ground - from the inside edge to the outer edge whilst your upper leg remains still and relaxed. You can use your hands to feel the bones moving in your lower leg as this movement happens. People often find it difficult at first to initiate this movement but be patient and remain relaxed, and the movement will come.

Standing, allow your feet to sink and relax into the ground then slowly shift your weight backwards, forwards, side to side, noticing how this feels. Imagine a helium balloon is drawing you up from the crown of your head so that you are standing relaxed and upright over your feet (I also like to imagine my spine expanding upwards), then rotate your upper body - whilst keeping your feet where they are - to look behind you, then come back to face the front before you turn the other way; can you feel your weight shifting over your feet, following your movement even whilst they stay flat on the ground? 
Can you use your feet to help this turn, whilst keeping them on the ground? 
Do you feel you are keeping over your feet as you turn your upper body? 
How relaxed are your feet, can you feel them spreading out? 
Can you feel the movement travelling up through your body - how far? Does it change as you make alterations to how you are moving? 
You can transfer this awareness of your feet to when you are walking, just taking notice of what you feel. 

I also like to relax my shoulders by turning my hands in and out whilst my arms hang by my sides. Sometimes I turn the hands in the same direction, so one palm faces back and the other forwards; sometimes I turn them both out and then inwards. I notice how this feels through the rest of my body and ask if there is any tension that I can release, and if that changes what I am feeling. I play with allowing the hands to lead the movement and see how that feels, then see what happens when I initiate the movement from the shoulder girdle, for instance from the shoulder blades. This can be done whilst standing, lying down or walking.

All of this exploration benefits from being done very slowly and meditatively, allowing the nervous system to process and make adjustments. I find it relaxing and balancing, and hope that you will too.

Another year already!

I really am not a natural when it comes to social media and blogging. So often when out walking the dog I think of ideas to share, but somehow never get round to logging on and typing them up! A year (roughly) on from my last post here is a synopsis of some things I will write more about later, if I can create a strong new habit of blogging more frequently!

Somatic movement:
So much of what I have been learning about over the last few years comes back to giving ourselves the space and time to listen to our body and allow it to address patterns of tension and restore flow and communication, improving efficiency and ease of movement. As Joanne Elphinston says, sometimes we need to get out of our own way! We tend to get stuck in patterns of movement and posture that reflect chronic or acute aspects of our life - for instance work patterns, mental or emotional state or an accident or injury - and it's the getting stuck that's the problem. Tensing up temporarily for a specific reason is fine, but we need to also be able to release this. Effective, easy and efficient movement includes rapid response and release as appropriate. The JEMS training I have been doing (Joanne Elphinston Movement System) incorporates this, and I also attended a four hour somatic movement workshop with Samantha Holland that was open to everyone including non practitioners and that I can highly recommend. The gentle exploration of simple movements allows us to listen to the nervous system as it provides feedback that our brain can act on once we are not in over ride mode. For something so simple and gentle, the results can be profound.

JEMS:
I have a new book! The Power and the Grace by Joanne Elphinston. This includes ideas to explore with clients during treatment sessions so I hope to be doing more of this.

CPD:
I have continued to develop in other areas over the year, for instance a workshop with colleagues where we looked at pain perception and response. Pain should always be taken seriously, but sometimes it is the brain warning us of a potential risk rather than something that has actually just happened to cause pain. A frequent example of this is where someone has experienced pain from an injury that has now resolved but the trauma around it continues to cause the brain to send out pain signals to stop you doing a movement it associates with the pain even though it is now safe and indeed often beneficial to move that way. This is where exploring movement in a safe way can help the brain to relax and stop sending the pain message, or maybe at least dampen it down.

I am considering undertaking more training in working with the fascia following on from treatment I had on my knee which I found interesting and feel would benefit my massage clients. So much more has been learnt over the last few decades about the role of the fascia in our bodies, in contrast to when it was seen as a tissue with very little function.

I think that is quite enough for now; if I write much more I will have less incentive to log on next month!  

Back at work!

I am now back at work, albeit on a reduced timetable whilst I build up strength in my leg again and the knee continues to stabilise; it is great to be back.

I have had some lovely support from my clients whilst I have been off and it has been much appreciated!

A short (hopefully) break from work

As some clients will already know I am at present off work and recovering from surgery. 

Back in 2016 I experienced a meniscal tear which I was able to manage successfully for a while with physio and exercises. However, the combination of too strong an exercise last autumn followed by a nasty virus that reduced my activity levels for several months resulted in the knee getting beyond my management this year. Turns out that both menisci in my left knee were torn; one has now been repaired and the other tidied up.

When I first tore the meniscus I was still able to manage work. This time it coincided with a trapped nerve in my back that made work impossible.

I am really disappointed to not be at work at present as I love what I do. I hope to be back by the beginning of September.