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I’ve honestly been struggling to put all this into words because it’s hard to help people believe in the unseen. I know with absolute certainty that we are souls or spirit whichever word you want to identify with, having a human experience made possible by our physical bodies and mind. As a massage practitioner I’ve had a very diverse and amazing career. One of my special areas of interest has been in physical symptoms of emotional trauma and neuromuscular patterning. These elements are what led me to study counselling and psychology, I wanted to understand the mind more and therefore the mind/body connection. Over the years I’ve had many mentors and worked with some incredible people who are experts in things like epigenetics and energetic healing. I’ve learned to hone my skills on working with the whole human being, whether I am in my role as coach, massage practitioner or just human. I just wanted to lay down that foundation in the hope you are able to understand a little of what I’m about to share. This is a case study of a little girl I am currently working with, for the purposes of confidentiality I will call her Lucy. Lucy’s family was referred to me by a physiotherapist, she was born with chromosome deletion with significant joint hypermobility and low muscle tone, her family is Chinese and adamant they wanted to include massage as a regular part of her early intervention (this is common practice in China) they were advised that massage certainly wouldn’t fix things but that deep joint and muscle compression can have positive effects as well as the benefits of joint attention and proprioceptive awareness. I agreed to meet with them as after 15yrs of practice I saw the challenge for me as a practitioner. It would also give me an opportunity to apply all the skills I’d gained around neuro physics, neuromuscular patterns and working with the whole human. My challenge, Lucy is 2, only her father and brother speak English, Lucy couldn’t understand my words, how was I going to communicate with her. I called on every tool I have from understanding natural human development from being a parent, understanding the concept of being able to move the body on a way that sends messages in reverse through the nervous system to the brain, so many elements that I honestly can’t explain. We began our journey together at the beginning of May, this year. Lucy was unable to roll over on her own or push herself up into a cobra position, she had other testing that indicated she may have some spectrum intellectual impairment, things like not wanting to be touched, not making eye contact name a few. This further added to my challenge. I began with modified massage techniques and placing her body in positions I would have put a four month old in, she got stronger lifting up her head, then she began to roll over. As the weeks past she began to commando crawl away from me making massage more challenging. I kept putting her body into positions I wanted it to remember like a four point stance which led to her being able to crawl. We then moved onto supported standing, pushing a trolley along which Lucy is becoming quite fast at doing. Yesterday for the first time Lucy stood, no hands, for only a few short seconds but she did it. Given that she doesn’t understand my language I’ve been communicating in nonberbals and when I do speak I’m speaking to her body, to her soul, that’s all I have is to work with. To communicate as a whole human being in a way that allows her miracle to come to life. I can’t explain in an evidenced based way what exact techniques I’ve used that have been the ones to activate her body, I honestly can’t take credit for any of it because she is the miracle, her ability to be human, her ability to do the work, to practice. Being human is a miracle. I am very much a believer in that if given the right conditions the body can heal itself. I guess for Lucy conditions are right. Over the last four months working with her and her family I have seen her learn to make verbal sounds, she laughs, she will make eye contact, she claps hands and waves bye bye. She is also starting to have some nice two year old tantrums. Lucy is very switched on. If you are in any field that requires you to work with people I ask that you be open to seeing them as whole human being and work with all of them Mind, Body & Soul. 
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I’m sure you’ve all seen quotes like this image or heard the statement before? It’s a crock of shit. It implies that all that’s required of you to change anything is a shift in thinking. Yes that does come into it but in itself isn’t what brings about change. It doesn’t matter what it is these days, everyone is looking for the shortcut, the hack that helps them get where they want to go the fastest and with minimal discomfort and disruption to themselves and life. Sure Awareness and self awareness is phase 1 just choosing to think differently on the subject isn’t going to fast track you to the result. To complete a full circle of change in any area there are a 9 phases. You can’t avoid any of them. Many try but always circle back once they realise they’re still in the same place. Since teaching The Ritual of Change™️ I know exactly which phases people try to avoid. Phases 2,3,6,7 & 8. They involve the biggest amount of effort. Let me give you an example. Phase 1 is awareness so say for example someone who cares about you has pointed out to you that your leadership style is actually bullying. They’ve shown you evidence and you realise this person isn’t the only one who feels that way. Here’s where you can choose to move into phase 2 which is Acceptance. This is the first phase many stop because they don’t want to accept what they’ve heard. They don’t want to accept that a part of them is showing up in a way that is hurting others, they don’t want to accept that part of themselves that’s a bully. Typically they would brush it off, make the person who brought it into their awareness wrong, likely remove that person from their life and continue on until some point in the future when someone else brings it back into their awareness. This stops the process of change for that person, without their growth they aren’t able to change that leadership style which would continue to be detrimental to those they lead and therefore detrimental to the company they work for or the business they own. The result would be either staff not confident enough to speak up because they don’t want to be on the receiving end or high turnover of staff because they’ve had enough of this person. Either way there are costs in productivity and morale, therefore culture, not to mention the monetary costs involved with new recruitment. Stop looking for the shortcuts, there are none when it comes to change and personal growth. Do the work.  |
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