Have We Lost Touch: The Art & Science Of Body Work

More self-care advice from advanced clinical massage therapist Louise Enticknap. We talk about touch, prescriptive hugs, and why you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about taking your clothes off! Louise treats the body as a holistic whole and discusses how trauma, PTSD, and unprocessed emotions can be stored within the body and how massage can offer release. We talk about how our views towards intimacy and physical contact have changed as a result of the pandemic and Louise offers a calming practice.

Transcript

Welcome to Finding Your Right Mind with me,

Vanessa Potter.

And episode two of this self-care series where I'm talking to Louise Enticnap,

Who is an advanced clinical massage therapist with over 18 years experience.

Now,

I've known Louise for several years,

And I wanted to include her in this series because of her understanding of the body and its mechanics,

But also the deeper insight and awareness she brings to her work.

We're going to get into touch and the world of touch research and see where we're at now we're a year into this pandemic and see how the lack of physical contact is rippling out across all of our lives.

We'll talk about the psychological effects of bodywork,

Interplay with our nervous system,

How the body holds onto and manifests trauma in a physical way,

And the emotional feedback loops that therapists have to manage.

So our self-care message today is,

Massage is so much more than just a birthday treat at a spa.

It can have a profound impact on our mental wellbeing as well as our physical bodies.

And Louise shares one mind-body practice you can take away and start right away today and sometimes.

As always,

If you like what you hear,

Do subscribe,

Write me a review,

Share the love.

So hi Louise,

Thanks so much for talking to me today.

I'm very excited.

I know we've got a lot of things planned about what routes we will take to talk about massage,

But what I thought would be really helpful is if you could just give us an introduction to you and actually how you came to be a massage therapist,

Your passion in this field.

Hello Vanessa,

Thank you for inviting me to talk about my passion today.

Just as a way of introduction,

I am an advanced clinical massage therapist based in London,

And I've been on this career path for the last 10 years and it was a career change.

So I'd had a job as a civil servant,

But my path to becoming a massage therapist started many,

Many years before that.

It's one that maybe is a common theme if you speak to a lot of therapists,

Why did you decide to go down this path?

And it often stems from a personal experience.

My personal journey has been one that started with some trauma.

And when I was 20,

I was involved in a road traffic incident,

Which meant that I fractured my pelvis,

Had to have reconstructive surgery and was really in a process of recovery for well over a year and through my twenties.

Inevitably that left me with some physical difficulties and some emotional trauma,

Which you sort of crack on with,

You get on with the recovery process,

Do physiotherapy.

But there was a bit of a turning point in that I started to get sciatica,

Something that a lot of us experience over our lifetimes.

But when you're in your twenties,

That's a bit debilitating.

And a colleague suggested to me,

Why not go and see my massage therapist?

He's great.

So I took myself off to see my massage therapist who has been in that role for 25 years now.

We've become great friends.

I embarked on a different journey and relationship with my body and what had happened.

And through massage,

I discovered that my body could feel better,

But that I could also process some of the emotional trauma that I held within my body.

And it was quite a journey and remains quite a journey.

We still see each other when COVID allows.

I was so inspired.

I thought,

Wow,

I'd love to do this for other people.

And I started my massage training and the rest is really history.

Thank you for that.

I think,

Like you say,

This is a very common theme.

I'm really interested.

I'm going straight into you process the trauma in your body.

My ears pricked up at that.

Can you just flesh that out a little bit more?

What do you mean by that?

Yeah.

So in terms of my experience with taking my slightly broken body off to see a massage therapist I'd never met,

I'm not even sure I'd had a proper massage before that point.

Bearing in mind that I had some quite extensive physical scarring,

Lots of aches and pains,

I really felt that a part of me was still broken,

Even though it had been repaired.

I also became conscious in the process of somebody else putting their hands on my body and trying to ease those aches and pains.

There was the part of my body that I disconnected from.

I perceived my right hip as something that was broken,

That would never function properly again and I felt anger associated with that part of my body.

And also sadness that some physical capabilities had been taken away from me.

That sounds quite dramatic,

But I think in my subsequent experience of talking to other people,

That's not unusual.

But all of this happens without you really being conscious of it and through having body work and this wasn't just a sort of,

You know,

Regular spa massage where you walk in and walk out.

I'm lucky enough to have found a therapist that works on a really deep level.

And that work enabled me to start to reconnect with the damaged part of my body and also to process some of the emotions that went with it,

Which is really half of the journey.

Yeah,

It was quite a few years actually of having that work that got me to a point where I could feel okay and really start to embrace my new body again and just go,

Yep,

This is the way it is and that's okay.

Yeah,

This is so interesting,

Isn't it,

That we think processing is in the mind.

It's thinking,

It's mulling over,

It's talking about an experience.

But of course we know,

And the famous book has got the title,

The Body Keeps the Score.

And I think you've just explained that exactly right.

Emotions are stored within the body and it's good you've distinguished between a spa massage and the kind of therapeutic massage that you do is a much deeper healing,

A much more profound experience.

And we do store emotions and it's interesting you talked about anger.

I relate to that.

I think the body stores anger an awful lot and that can manifest in so many physical ways.

But you're right,

Unless we understand that and actually don't overthink it,

Just allow those emotions to come up.

And I suspect you have many clients who express emotion when they're having treatment from you and of course that's the body releasing,

Isn't it?

Yes,

It's been an interesting experience as a therapist,

Seeing that happen in other people.

We have to be of course very careful not to transfer our own feelings,

Emotions,

Attachments to our client.

But you're right in that for many individuals,

The body work enables them to start to understand what is happening within.

And sometimes they might come to me with low back pain,

For instance.

And there's no particular reason,

As is the case for a lot of low back pain.

But I've seen this in many circumstances where that might have been triggered by an emotional experience.

So maybe a bereavement,

Stress at work,

You know,

There are a multitude of things.

But power of the body work is not just helping people get out of their painful situation,

But it's really helping them connect with what's going on in their body and their mind and making the link.

And it can be a real revelation for people to go,

Oh,

That's where it's coming from.

Sometimes they instinctively know this,

But they've been pushing it away.

But that is part of the journey.

It's not a quick fix for a lot of people.

Some people push away those difficult feelings,

Don't want to accept that there's something else going on that maybe they need to address,

And that you can't just be the one to fix the problem for them.

And this is where we need to work together as therapists and clients to try and assist them on that journey,

If that's where they want to go.

Not everybody wants that.

I am not equipped as a massage therapist to take everybody on that journey.

But sometimes what I can do is help them have that awareness that there's something going on that maybe they want to look at that is beyond the pain that they're coming to me with.

We could talk about this for hours,

That there's such a large body of work now.

But I think it's what we instinctively know already.

But the science is almost catching up.

Oh,

Absolutely,

Within the whole bodywork and embodiment field,

I think the fact that it is such a booming area,

The science has really caught up.

There's a number of researchers,

We can put some in the show notes actually,

Of some really interesting work that's being done.

So it's making me think,

I don't need convincing of this.

I'm a believer.

I know exactly what my body holds on to.

I think it's very interesting.

You talked about intuitions there.

But it's making me wonder about the world we're living in right now.

This idea of contact,

But not just emotional contact,

But physical hands on contact.

Are we touch deprived at the moment?

Do you think this is going to become a really big problem?

Yes and no.

I think it depends on who you ask.

Obviously,

COVID and all that that has brought has really put touch in sharp focus to the point where we're afraid of touch,

Which is really a tragedy and goes against our deepest,

Deepest instincts.

There's no doubt about it.

And I think most people that you ask will tell you that that has been a real struggle,

Not to reach out and touch a relative,

A friend.

These are the things that people often have missed the most,

The grandparents hugging their grandchildren,

A friend hugging their friend,

Particularly when they're having a hard time,

Like a lot of people are.

We provide some sort of physical comfort to people who are in pain or having emotional difficulties.

And to be told that we can't do that really goes against our deepest instincts.

It will be really interesting to see how we emerge from the lockdowns and how we get back to wanting to touch other people.

And there might be different barriers.

We might embrace our friends and family but still have that reluctance to reach out and you know,

Touch a stranger on the arm which can sometimes just come out of nowhere.

Are we touch deprived?

There are researchers out there who are studying this field and have identified something called touch hunger.

We can get so wrapped up in our individual lives.

A lot of people live alone for different reasons.

We are absorbed in our technology.

There are different types of touch and sometimes it can get,

The waters can get muddy around touch.

What we're talking about here is safe and consented to touch.

We are not talking about the other sort of touch which can be very traumatic for people.

So it can be quite a confusing area I think.

I think people can have really mixed emotions and really mixed experiences of touch.

We mustn't forget that and as massage therapists we have to be very,

Very aware of individuals' boundaries when it comes to touch.

This particular Covid crisis has revealed our relationship with touch and from my clients I'm hearing that they just want to get back on that massage couch and have a massage.

And I'm positive about the future because I think when we can people will find ways of getting the comfort that we get from whether it's a massage or from a hug and I don't think touch is disappearing anytime soon.

There's so many different threads that I want to pick up from what you've just said.

I'm going to backtrack slightly.

You said everybody has different interpretations,

Different habits around touch,

Different needs and different,

It's a different language isn't it for people?

I was looking at some of the touch research because it's an area that for me personally I find absolutely fascinating and there was a study in the 60s that came at this from a very cultural point of view and I think that's quite pertinent at the moment,

Particularly as this is a global pandemic,

That looked at conversations between two people in different countries around the world and they found that we all vary how much we touch each other and we're talking,

You know,

Taps on the arm and just a shrug but then a nudge,

Just that incidental touch.

And it was quite shocking when I read the stats because I suspect that it's still very relevant today.

Americans touched each other during one conversation twice.

The French,

They were all over the place.

They were 110 times.

Puerto Ricans,

180.

But how many do you think British people touched each other?

It was shocking.

It was zero.

Zero,

Yep.

Zero.

And I read that research and I felt incredibly sad because when I think about how my relationship to touch and I wonder if there's a gender divide because obviously the research,

I didn't see that in the research,

But for me,

Touch and that connection,

That physical human connection was probably one of the most medicinal things that I could do.

I wrote in my book actually,

I described my relationship with my family at one time,

We became a human octopus.

We all intertwined literally with the children,

All of us.

And because I couldn't see anything and I couldn't touch,

You know,

I had lost the sensation in my legs and my hands,

But I couldn't,

I knew when people were hugging me,

I had enough sensory experience to know that.

And this idea of being this human one living,

Breathing thing,

This mass of compassion and connection and love was one of the most visceral and powerful things that I could do.

And then on the physiological side,

Of course,

We were co-regulating,

Weren't we?

You know,

Our heartbeats would synchronize,

We transmitted heat between each other.

It was an incredibly healing thing.

And I'm really interested in that side,

The physiological aspect and how you can transmit and release those kind of emotions and feelings through touch.

Maybe that's something that you can pick up on.

Yeah,

Your story is a powerful one because it just reminds us,

I think,

Of who we are as human beings and as primates.

Touch is so innate.

It is fundamental to our societal bonds,

To how we communicate with other individuals and more widely.

And we can't really operate effectively without us.

There's a quote that's come up in a couple of things I've read recently,

Which I really love and I think I'm going to put it on my wall.

It's by Professor Francis McGlone,

Who is an expert in touch research.

And they say that touch is not just a sentimental human indulgence.

It's a biological necessity.

And as you found Vanessa with your own experience,

When other senses have been removed,

What do you fall back on?

We know touch is the first sense that babies experience.

We know that preterm babies,

We put babies skin to skin with their parents,

Because touch is such an important sense for that baby.

And that's what helps them thrive.

There's a study,

Sounds like quite a cruel study,

Actually.

Look,

Baby monkeys were deprived of their actual real mother,

But given substitutes,

One offering food and one offering touch.

And actually the baby monkeys chose touch over food.

That shows us how significant it is.

And it's not just an optional extra,

But unfortunately,

As we've seen in our society,

It has become something else.

It has become something maybe that we only experience with close intimate relationships or if we pay for it,

Coming for a massage is one way that we can get that when we don't maybe have touch elsewhere.

And I know in other countries,

I think somewhere in Scandinavia,

There are people who are professional huggers,

Which I think is fantastic.

That's great for the people that don't have a relationship where they get that physical contact.

I find that fascinating.

A professional hugger.

I am on a mission.

If anybody's out there who knows a professional hugger,

I want to talk to you.

Because you know what?

The hug concept,

I'm very aware.

We often throw these thoughts away.

We don't put the relevance and the importance on them.

Oh,

Like we all want to get back to hugging,

But hugging is on a sliding scale.

So you can do a quick cursory,

Hello,

Hug,

Walk away.

Then you can do a hug for a minute.

And if you try hugging someone standing up,

Connected to them for five minutes,

It is a radically different experience.

And if you continue and hugs one for 10 minutes,

I mean,

There's research on this.

So many biological processes kick in.

So many neurochemicals are released.

It's a completely different experience.

So I suspect that those professional huggers know all about that.

And maybe they diagnose and they kind of prescribe different length hugs for different people.

I'm all over that.

I'm like,

How they do that,

I would love to know.

I think it's great.

It's all sad on one level in that,

You know,

Maybe there is a need for that because some individuals in our society aren't getting that through their natural relationships.

And that makes me feel a little bit sad that people are at a come distance.

And actually,

We know we can't survive as just individuals.

We do need to be part of our society and community.

But just going back to what you were saying,

Vanessa,

Science is catching up with what we know.

It's explaining now how touch works.

Why does touch make us feel good?

Why does it make us relax?

And we know there are pressure sensors under the skin that send messages to the brain,

The vagus nerve that turns down our sympathetic or fight or flight nervous system,

Blood pressure,

Heart rate,

Cortisol levels drop,

Relaxation,

Brainwaves,

White blood cells,

Oxytocin,

Serotonin,

All these good things increase.

There's a physiological process behind touch.

That is the biological necessity of it.

And there's more we could go into all sorts of detail about how touch also impacts on our endocrine system.

But there is now the body of evidence which says,

This is how it works.

In a way,

It's a shame that we're having to justify touch through science.

But actually,

It's really,

Really interesting.

Why do we feel good when we have a massage and when we have a hug?

Our nervous system is particularly attuned to slow stroking.

And if you've ever watched a mother stroking a worried child's breath,

Or if you've done it yourself,

You'll notice there's a particular pace.

It's quite slow,

Steady pace.

It's not erratic.

It's not too fast.

And this particular rate of stroking has a particular effect on the nervous system.

And we instinctively do it at that rate.

We're designed for touch.

We're designed to respond to certain types of touch in certain types of ways.

And it's really important that we acknowledge that and nurture it.

We all need it.

When people come to me for a massage,

It might be because they're in pain,

Or it might be that they need to relax.

What is it that's happening to that person on the table when I'm massaging them?

And now we're getting an insight into,

Oh,

Yes,

This is what's happening.

It's these nerve fibres that send messages to different parts of the body.

And it has this effect on our nervous system.

So it's an endlessly fascinating area.

Most people who come from us,

I don't really want to know that.

They just want to feel the effect.

They don't necessarily need to know why.

Because I think the nervous system,

And I'm thinking about polyvagal theory,

These things are becoming,

I mean,

I'd never heard of that a few years ago.

Now I see it in literature.

I see it coming up in talks.

The vagus nerve,

We were discussing that.

I think we are starting to look a little bit deeper on the inside,

Actually,

What is happening.

So I think there is this weird cultural shift where maybe we feel less apologetic now about finding out about our bodies and how it's all connected.

So what I think would be really helpful is if someone's never had a massage,

But they're intrigued and they maybe are thinking,

Yeah,

I could do with relaxing or this sounds really nice.

I'm relating to a lot of this.

Is there some fear about what happens when you come from a massage?

I'm thinking about the kind of privacy,

Trust.

How do you talk new clients through that process to make them feel at ease?

And maybe you could just explain what happens because if you've never had a massage before,

You may not actually really realize what the process is.

Could you take us through it?

Yes,

Of course.

And it's really interesting.

Every so often I get a client,

Usually a female client,

Sending their partner or husband to me.

And often with the proviso that they're feeling a bit nervous,

Not quite sure what to expect or haven't had a massage before or.

I understand and I sympathize with people who feel like that.

And this goes back to what we were saying earlier in that we have a rather complex relationship with touch now,

Particularly in our modern Western society.

We've become detached from a lot of the intuitive touch that we would have received.

So I think it's really important to establish trust quickly between the therapist and the patient.

And the first point of contact is really when you start to do that.

So when somebody calls to book an appointment in this day and age,

We get an email,

A text,

And I make a point of speaking to people beforehand to get a sense of what is it that they are looking for from a massage treatment.

And this is as much for my benefit as it is for theirs.

I want to be sure that I'm the therapist offering the treatment that they need.

So it may be that they've got something that I think might be better treated by an osteopath for instance.

And that's great.

So I'm always very honest with people.

So we have a conversation,

Book in the appointment.

I have my own practice based at home.

So people will turn up.

During the last year when I have been doing hands-on work,

Some of the consultation has been done remotely to minimize face-to-face time.

But there is always a conversation,

A consultation.

Once we've established a course of treatment,

I will explain to them exactly what's going to happen in terms of,

Okay,

I'm going to leave the room now.

You can get undressed,

Leave your underwear on.

That's often the question for people.

What do I do?

How much clothing do I take off?

And it's understandable.

People feel guarded at times.

As much as you try and create a very safe environment for them,

The client will be covered and only the part of the body that isn't being worked on will be sort of revealed.

And I will treat that area.

So at all times,

People feel very comfortable and relaxed.

That's absolutely crucial.

There's no point in having a massage in mind.

They're feeling embarrassed or exposed in some way.

And that goes as much for women as it does for men.

People have complicated relationships with their bodies and allowing other people to see them and touch them.

I am interacting with their body in a certain way without judgment.

I'm there to hold them and accept them for whatever they bring.

We have to be gentle with people.

And this is something that happens during a treatment and before and after also,

Which I think is really important,

Is about listening to people and their story.

For some people who come with,

You know,

Maybe a trauma or complicated pain or a feeling very stressed,

Actually,

Half of the therapy is listening to what people are saying.

And that can come out during your treatment or in the aftermath when you say,

How did you feel?

And then they might say,

You know what,

When you were massaging my left shoulder,

I started feeling a bit tearful.

It reminded me of something.

That was a really difficult emotion for me to process.

I'm not a counsellor.

If there was something that I thought needed further support,

Then I'd refer people.

But that is a really important part of our therapeutic alliance between the client and the therapist that we listen because that is relevant to the bodywork that we do.

It is not a separate part of them that has to be dealt with separately.

Sometimes the only way they can access maybe a difficult feeling is through the bodywork.

And we have to respect that.

I then conclude and say,

You know,

This is the end.

I'm going to leave the room now.

I'll leave you to get dressed and just,

You know,

Come out in your own time.

Sometimes people need five or ten minutes to really come round from the treatment.

We will say our goodbyes and have a review if anything came up in particular,

Ready for the next treatment.

It's a real privilege to be able to treat people,

For them to put their trust in you in what could be quite a vulnerable situation.

Yes.

And I'm thinking as you're talking through that,

Perhaps people who are looking for solutions,

This whole series is around self-care and all the different ways that we can help ourselves.

Massage might not be an obvious one.

Stress or some mental health issues.

Maybe that's something you could talk about because you talk about people coming to you for pain,

Which I can totally see.

Lower back pain,

Yes,

Massage.

It's an obvious thing that people suggest.

But if you have high anxiety or stress,

It may not seem intuitive or an obvious therapy to pursue is a massage.

Maybe you could talk about how your work can actually positively impact mental health.

We can't really move at the moment for discussions about our mental health and wellbeing,

Which is brilliant.

We've come a long way from pushing these things under the carpet and pushing them away to people feeling OK to say,

You know,

I'm really struggling.

And this is something we have heard so much in the past year,

More than ever.

Where massage can help is it can bring an awareness to what's happening.

By bringing somebody into their body and out of their head sometimes can actually be really,

Really helpful.

As we know through meditation,

That grounding in the physical body sometimes gives our brain a little bit of a rest,

But can also give us the space to explore what is really going on.

I think people have used massage for a long time for relaxation and actually in some ways that the massage profession has gone in a bit of a full circle in that massage used to be seen as just a treat for relaxation through to actually justifying our existence on the basis of we can help heal people out of pain and becoming very focused on the physical.

And we've now gone the full circle back to,

But we also do this as well.

And that's what we've always done.

And this is where we differ from maybe going to an osteopath or a physio.

We are looking at the whole person and always have done this,

The holistic experience,

Because we know that the mind and the body are not separate.

Our mental health and our physical health are not separate entities.

They are absolutely interconnected and you can rarely have one without the other.

So there's all sorts of stuff that happens when people are having a massage.

We look at,

Go back to this research that we know about touch and the effect it can have.

So we know that touch can increase serotonin and can help us sleep more deeply.

So that's one of the physiological effects.

And during sleep,

We see the production of substance P,

A neurotransmitter.

And this is intimately involved in alpha sections of pain.

So physical pain,

Stress,

And our emotional response.

So there's a very clear relationship between the touch you receive in a massage treatment.

And that can be the relaxing sort of stuff.

It doesn't just have to be the clinical treatment.

We're looking for trigger points.

I love looking for trigger points and they feel great when they're dealt with.

But all the other stuff that that's packaged in the holding of people,

Just still just cradling somebody's head,

Placing a hand on their chest or their belly.

This has a really big effect on people's nervous systems.

And that's part and parcel of what you get with a massage.

As you were saying that again,

It's sparking all these ideas,

But I'm remembering an older piece of research as well that I saw through Berkeley about this idea that touch actually communicates specific emotion.

Not that we just transmit emotion randomly backwards and forwards,

Which we kind of know it does that,

But you can identify emotion.

There was a very interesting study done where they put a barrier between two people and you sort of shoved your arm through it.

A person on the other side had to transmit a specific emotion.

Like compassion was the really big one.

They did other emotions like fear and anger and gratitude,

Which is a subtle emotion really.

The success rate for the other person to identify what emotion was being transmitted through that touch with no direction was 60%.

It was really much higher than they would have predicted.

So I'm intrigued with that,

With taking that idea into the massage arena.

Are you conscious about what emotion that you transmit to your clients or do you try to be neutral?

Because obviously if you're having a bad day yourself,

You obviously would do part of your practice is to not bring that into the room.

Do you sometimes feel like you transmit compassion to your patients actually through touch?

Yes,

It's such a fascinating thing to actually think about.

As a therapist,

You try to be really true to who you are and what you're bringing to that treatment.

But we also have to be careful,

Of course,

As I said,

To not transfer our feelings,

Emotions,

Interpretations of the world onto our clients.

We have to be able to accept and see them for what they are and what they're experiencing.

So that's really important and practice that we,

Well certainly that I do and that there's a lot of my fellow clinical therapists do is a grounding exercise before we even touch a finger on our clients.

And that can be really simple.

I work barefoot so I can really connect with the floor.

Before I start to start the treatment,

I will stand next to the client,

Really check in with how I'm feeling and take some slow deep breaths and consciously get rid of any sort of negative energy that I might have been experiencing before.

I work from home so,

You know,

When my kids were younger,

There was a mad rush around before a client arrived at 8pm to get the kids into bed.

Now don't really want to be doing a massage,

Feeling frantic,

You know,

As lovely as my clients are.

They're coming to relax and the time is theirs.

Every therapist will tell you that there have been times when they've picked up on this energy,

Whatever that might be,

However you might choose to interpret the energy and whether it's real or imagined or felt is up to you.

That you can be treating somebody and you get so sucked into whatever's happening for them that you start to feel maybe tired.

I've picked up a headache from a fellow therapist that I was treating.

We were doing treatments and halfway through I was like,

I've actually got to stop this exchange of treatments because I've got such a crazy headache and this woman also had a really bad headache and it was so powerful and,

You know,

We stepped out and that can be overwhelming at times.

You do have to try and as much as you want to give and show compassion to your client,

You need to establish that there's a boundary between you and them and be careful not to blur the lines.

That's not to say that you can't offer compassion and empathy but you have to be aware of what is your feeling,

What is their feeling and of course there must be times when as a therapist we relay some of our feelings and emotions onto our clients unwittingly because we have not grounded ourselves or we haven't formed enough of a boundary between us.

That's important.

Otherwise we exhaust ourselves,

You know,

We can't be feeling everything else everyone else is feeling.

We'd be emotionally drained by the end of it.

Yes,

This is a really interesting area,

I think,

This idea of this feedback loop.

Again,

If you've never really thought too much about massage,

It may not be something you've ever even considered and yet we are doing this feedback loop,

This biofeedback with everybody all the time so if you put yourself into that intimate situation where you are skin to skin in a therapy room,

Then I imagine that that's just amplified.

I find it quite fascinating,

Not just that it happens but then how we can direct it and actually utilize it and actually bring that empathy into that therapeutic field.

You get such a multifaceted experience as the client in that you go in for your sore calf muscles from running but actually you're getting all this other exchange,

All these positive chemicals that get released in the body and this sort of swirling lovely,

That's how I see it,

I see it in quite a physical kind of colourful way.

Energy is such a,

It's such a non-word today,

It's got so many weird meanings but we do use it in common parlance,

We use it in our language,

You know,

The energy was high,

Well what does that mean?

It was really positive energy,

Oh she gave off really negative energy.

We know exactly what it is but because we can't measure it,

We just fling it aside whereas actually it's a very tangible thing and in your experience you've got a headache.

We've all been with somebody who has sapped our energy,

I'm just using some of the phrases that we use.

I'm going back to when I was ill,

When I'd lost my sight,

I had a very low threshold for energy actually and I could only have positive energy come towards me and if somebody was negative energy,

I didn't have the wherewithal,

The latitude to be able to take it on.

So I would just have to shut a door down and go nope.

I'm very aware of that energy exchange,

I think it's an incredibly powerful thing but particularly in the therapeutic fields where we harness it,

Where it's actually used for positive,

I think that's where I get very excited because we're working with an innate force but in these incredibly positive,

Healing and therapeutic ways.

So that's just my ramble but a question is coming on the back of it and I'm just wondering if keeping people anonymous and without identifying anybody,

If you've got,

I mean you've got your story about the headache exchange but have you got any kind of positive stories from your clients but is there anything that stands out where massage was a breakthrough perhaps for somebody?

Oh dear,

There are probably so many aren't there?

Maybe one that is positive but in a slightly not such an obvious way but maybe I'll give you this story to begin with.

One that really stands out for me because it doesn't happen very often as a therapist was a new client coming to me.

She'd had massage before and she was,

I suppose she was testing herself because she hadn't had a massage since the birth of her child and she'd had a very traumatic experience during the birth.

I think she was aware that she hadn't properly processed but she wanted to have a massage because she felt that that's what her body needed but during the treatment she went back to that place of feeling traumatised which was really difficult for her and we dealt with it in the way that we do in that we keep the connection with somebody so they don't disappear down a rabbit hole of trauma and in her case it turned out that she had PTSD that hadn't yet been diagnosed but the discussion that followed the treatment was for her recognising and accepting that this trauma had happened and that she needed some further help and she went and sought it and that was was extremely beneficial for her.

So that's a standout one just because it was quite an extreme response to a treatment but it has a really good outcome because it propelled somebody to get the help that they really needed but to really understand what was going on in their body and it was the physical work that allowed that where she'd been pushing that emotion aside and that sounds a little bit I hope that doesn't sound too bleak but I just felt that that was a really positive experience even though at the time it was it was like slightly scary you know you're you know you have a responsibility to your client to look after them within the treatment and as a consequence of it and we kept in contact and that was the really a good outcome for her I think.

Absolutely you're reminding me actually I think that is a good example because it's not so obvious that sometimes these therapeutic interventions can be quite and I'm going to use the word explosive they can be big they can be profound and deep and actually you've totally brought back a memory for me before I had met you because we met through school and children but when I was pregnant I was seeing a massage therapist regularly near my work and it was very difficult to get a proper pregnancy massage back then where you could when you were seven or eight months pregnant because you couldn't lie on your tummy but she had these amazing cushions and she propped me up and I could lay on my stomach and so I had a proper massage with her I was very pregnant so I was probably yeah maybe eight eight and a half months something like that and she afterwards because we had a relationship and I'm sure you relate to this we had such an intuitive relationship between us and she's like okay I almost could see inside your mind I'm you were doing something during that massage and I said yeah I was meditating you've just learned that recently I was like I have I was actually using some hypnobirthing skills during the meditation she could pick that up we had a very intuitive and very sort of very weird chat we're like oh my god how do we know that between us and then she also said I think you're I can feel that your baby is it's not going to be late put it that way and I said I have this really strong sense as well and she said well there is a little place you can just very gently touch on the inside of your leg and she said if you feel if you get those feelings that it's feeling right you can just very gently and it has a direct connection to your uterus so I sat one evening and I told my husband I had to pump up the birth pool because I said baby's going to come and I'm going to press these massage points and I'm going to have the baby and it went yeah right and and I'm sure you're rolling your eyes going yeah and of course I did I did that in the evening before and my water spoke at six the next morning and I'm absolutely convinced that I kicked off a series of events they were so positive it was all connect like my body knew can't tell you why or how my body directed me to do that it's almost like I was meant to have the conversation I was meant to learn that about the touch I was meant to just gently stimulate my uterus and the baby was meant to come in the way you know it did and so it's all I find these things really quite incredible that that's just touch you know that little bit of touch on that inside of my leg at that exact moment then kicked off birth but it is that powerful isn't it it is that powerful and therapists of different disciplines will tell you this and there's so much I suppose that we don't understand scientifically but eastern medicine in particular has known for millennia so so all of our revelations about oh you know this is why and this is what happens and here's the connection and this is really powerful this is something that we have really known about but we try to to separate out a modern you know hospital space you know western philosophy medicine science has tried to compartmentalize these things and we are still stuck with this belief system now that the mental emotional and physical is separate and that it can only be seen when in fact we know that the human body is so incredibly complex there's so much that we don't yet understand in scientific terms but actually our experience tells us otherwise and as you know one of the things I thought of as as you were speaking was about the role of the therapist really and that we are an agent for change we don't do the healing we don't fix people necessarily and it's a two-way process between the therapist and the client and that's when you see the greatest change when there is a relationship and an understanding and a willingness on the side of the client to pursue something and to be an active agent in whatever it is that they're dealing with and they're not just looking to you to to fix them and that can sometimes be quite a long process with some individuals so um sounds like you had the right therapist at the right time which actually led to something pretty amazing happening for you Vanessa yeah absolutely and I think we sometimes underestimate how powerful these things are which actually leads me to ask you because we're all stuck at home we're all in lockdown still here in the UK and self-care is so important is there something you could share with us that we can do ourselves today at home that's from your massage toolbox that might just help ease some of those anxieties or those stresses that probably in a lot of our lives at the moment there are so many things I could share with you um and I wouldn't even say this is really a massage technique but I just find it a very very effective way of calming our nervous system and checking in with our body and that is to place one hand the palm of our hand on our breastbone so the sternum the area just below our throat and place the other hand on top of that hand and really let those hands sink in and connect into that part of your body and this is our heart center working on this area can have quite a deep emotional response for a lot of people and we're not really doing anything with our hands we're just letting them sink in and we're finding a connection between our hands and the rest of our body and then we simply breathe so to focus our minds we might like to take three slow deep breaths in and out and the breath really going into our belly and when we exhale really imagining and visualizing that breath leaving us along with maybe some of the worries that we might be holding on to and this is I suppose an exercise which combines the physical aspects of my work with the meditative side of what I'm exploring now sometimes we don't have to be doing too much but it is simply being in our bodies and placing a hand somewhere even on our own selves can provide the focus that enables us just to make that connection so that would be my tip you can do that anywhere anytime without people thinking you're a bit weird and it's really effective.

I love that of course anything meditation you know you have my attention and I love the heart meditation and actually what I particularly like about that is it's the combination it's this non-compartmentalized view of the mind and body I mean that's the absolute ultimate connection because you're doing a breathing meditation essentially but with this connection the touching of your own body and I think that's an incredibly powerful tool to use and like you say highly portable because sometimes meditating if you're sitting on a bus even you know if you put your eyes just half closed can feel a little bit like you're being watched but gosh you could do the heart breath with your eyes open and gaze out the window and get all the benefit and nobody would know what you're doing and just a few minutes of that just gives you that grounding doesn't it brings you back into the body and out the head which is so important and I think it's probably worth saying you can do these things several times a day when you need like a little fix and the more you do it regularly the more they become habitual and then the more you become conditioned to know what you're doing and then those benefits happen even quicker.

Yeah I think there'll be very few people that would disagree with that you know my own experience over the past few years I mean I've practiced yoga for a long time so you know that practice itself is bringing together the mind and the body but you know luckily I've explored meditation in a bit more detail and by no means an expert but it's certainly helped a daily meditation practice has really helped me through a stressful couple of years to be honest and this past year at the beginning of 2020 rather than making a new year's resolution I made an intention and and part of that was to build my resilience and at that point because I knew that there were some health problems within the family one of the things I'd identified was meditating and that has carried me through 2020 I have to say self-care has been a crucial part of my routine and how I got through a challenging year on on lots of levels it's been a space that I can create to to let go of some of the let go of some of the worries but also it's moderated my reactions you know in the rest of the day I'm more mindful of this is why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling and just being able to check in with my body you know what's what's going on and the physical touch is I suppose quite an obvious way of reinforcing that as well and that's something that I'm used to using through massage and I've been sharing that with a number of other people through some online work that I've been doing which has brought together self massage movement and mindfulness meditation with my colleague and friend Priya Khan and we've done a lot of this work and it's been a revelation for a lot of people that they can do a lot for themselves that actually you don't always need to go to somebody else to fix something we're teaching them the tools that enable them to recognize their thoughts and feelings for what they are and to you know regulate their stress which is seems to be the main thing that people are struggling with so it's exciting times I always think it's really important that any therapist walks the talk to practice what we preach and particularly then you talk from the place of experience and I think also that creates more empathy with the people coming to you with the same problems that you experience yourself fantastic well I will put all of those details in the show notes thank you as always that was very interesting and I think I often find this we just touch the tip of the iceberg if we just if our chat has just inspired someone to go and even if it's just one person go off and give another person that they're allowed to a safe hug and maybe hug for just a fraction longer than you do normally then I think that's a positive conversation absolutely we all I think we all need more hugs so yes I'd second that Vanessa let's go and spread the hug it's Valentine's Day today let's go and make sure we hug as many people as we are allowed to in these covid times Louise it's been fantastic chatting to you thank you so much thank you