Move over 1066, its 2016 and this Hastings Osteopath has returned from his travels and come back to his roots. Having spent the last ten years running a movement and osteopathy clinic in London I am super excited to be back in my home town, a town where you just have to breathe in the healing fresh air and look out to sea and you start to feel better instantly.
An osteopathy clinic with a difference
Moving out of London allowed me to break the mould and make my clinic space everything I always wanted. If you already know how I work then you know what to expect but if you don’t here’s a little heads up
Taking the time
When ever I see a therapist I love to natter. I love to find out what they think is going on, I love to chat about the therapy they use and I love them to take the time to figure out where my body is, what it is up to and then explain it to me. I never believed in the ‘half hour session’ model or even less the 10 minute crack, whack and see you next week philosophy. I truly believe that our bodies re-organise themselves around old injuries and to unravel this case history takes some time and detective work by both myself and the person I am working with. Not rushing means we can actually enjoy this unravelling process and marvel at how ingenious our bodies are.
Movement
Without watching movement I quite simply have no idea where to start (click here to see a video clip of what to expect from our initial movement assessment and treatment). As the saying goes “if you are not assessing you are guessing”. My first patient in Hastings was my step mum. Her left knee had been giving her all sorts of trouble, so on went the detective hat and we took a case history then watched her walk to see if we could figure out what was going on. The first couple of steps gave it all away. Having broken her right leg a couple of years previously, her body in all its wisdom had decided to avoid putting weight into it – the result was a very over worked and extremely annoyed left knee. We could have treated that left knee till we were blue in the face, but her solution was to reintroduce her right leg back into her body using movement, then sit back and allow things to reorganise. What a rewarding start to working from home.
Empowering
It is all well and good to balance a pelvis while on the treatment table or to reduce the symptoms of a stiff back, but what happens when we stand up and find ourselves stepping off with exactly the same compensations as before. I am a great believer in hands on couch based work, be it massage, manipulation, acupuncture or cranial osteopathy, they all create a window of opportunity but that window has to be kept open and explored outside of clinic and this is where movement comes in. Movement homework allows you to break the cycle of repeat visits and to start training back in the good habits that make a difference. Before you know it tissues start to strengthen, joints become more mobile and stable and body amnesia is exchange for body awareness, agility and coordination. Treating/Teaching/Training all morph into one therapeutic hybrid.
See you soon
If you live in Hastings (or fancy a short journey for a lovely day trip to the coast), please pop in and say hi. In the mean time to find out more pop over to https://www.facebook.com/DanielBainesOsteopathy/ where I share loads of exercises and tips that I hope you you will find useful. See you soon!
Dan