Many people who come to see me for bodywork are struggling with pain, tension and stiffness in their body. Activities which use to bring them joy, now bring hesitation, frustration, or a quiet sense of loss.

They worry that "if it's this bad now, what's it going to be like in 5 or 10 years from now?"

I know this personally because I once had a run-in with pain that prevented me walking for an entire year. Everything I tried seemed to make no lasting difference. Physio, stretching, yoga, massage, exercises etc.

Looking back, I can see why nothing worked.

I was trying to fight the pain...

...when the truth is:

Your pain isn’t the enemy.

It’s a pattern your nervous system learned to help you cope.

And because it was learned, it can be relearned — in a way that gives you ease, clarity, and better movement instead of tension.

Your brain is doing the best with the information it currently has. Pain is the safest option it currently sees.

Why Your Brain Chooses Pain

You will have developed movement habits throughout your life. Here are some examples from my clients.

• Carrying children on one hip and have been doing so for years.
• Playing violin and twisting their body to one side while practicing.
• Cutting lawns for a living and looking downwards for many hours a day.
• Knitting sweaters in the evenings with many repetitive movements.
• Pushing heavy carts on airlines using one hip.

These habits - because we've practiced them so many times - begin to spill over to other areas of life. So when we're walking up the stairs, we're still twisted to one side because of the violin practice. It just feels normal.

But perhaps, because of that twist, your ankle joint is now being used in a less-than-optimal way. Which means it's more at risk.

If I put my ankle on a funny angle and then put a lot of force on it, you can guess what might happen. Twisted ankle.

Your brain - the smart cookie that it is - knows that it needs to prevent you from putting lots of force through joints that aren't being used in such a good way.

The best way to do that is to create pain, stiffness and tension. It slows you down, makes you more timid and...

Keeps you safe.

It's a highly developed warning system / safety mechanism rolled into one.

How Real Change Begins

Real change doesn’t start with stretching or strengthening. It starts with helping your nervous system feel safe enough to try something new.

Safety creates room — room for noticing, room for curiosity, room for your brain to take in better information.

And that’s the next step: giving your brain the kind of sensory input it loves. Because right now, the way you pay attention is probably feeding it scraps — the tight spot between your shoulder blades, the pinch in your neck, the throb that keeps demanding attention. Those sensations are real… but they’re not the nourishing kind of information your brain needs to update anything.

What your brain finds delicious is relationship-based sensing:

• How does my head relate to my pelvis right now?
• What happens to my breath when I let my left leg grow long?
• How can my ribs shift shape to help me reach that shelf?

This kind of sensory clarity gives your brain what it needs to remodel old movement habits — the ones it created years ago to help you cope.

As those habits update, you move with more ease and more options.
More options create confidence.
Confidence feeds safety.
And safety opens the door for even more learning.

It becomes a virtuous cycle:

Safety → Sensory clarity → Updated habits → Agency → More safety

Each loop makes life a little freer, a little lighter, a little more yours.

What actually happens in a session

A thread that runs through all of our sessions is exploring how you do what you do.

When you arrive, we might start with simple movements — reaching toward the ceiling, shifting your weight, or noticing how you walk.

My job is to help you notice the strategies you use.

• Maybe you lean more than you realise.
• Maybe your ribs don’t move.
• Maybe your feet aren’t part of the conversation at all.

These strategies reveal your movement habits.

Once we find something interesting, we explore it together, usually with you lying comfortably on the table. We move slowly, within your comfortable range, and never force anything your nervous system isn’t ready for.

Often, I’ll feel areas of your system that aren’t communicating well with each other — little blind spots where information isn’t flowing.

Through gentle touch and shared attention, we start feeding your nervous system the sensory nourishment it’s been missing.

As this happens, your movement changes on its own.

• Muscles soften.
• Your breath deepens.
• Your body sinks into the table more fully.
• Parts of you that felt “offline” begin participating again.

Sometimes I’ll feel your body begin to integrate — a light pressure through your foot ripples all the way through to your head.

Near the end of the session, we revisit the movements we explored at the beginning. Clients are often surprised by how different they feel.

• Your strategies have changed.
• Your system has updated.
• You’re using yourself differently than when you walked in.

What people tend to feel afterward

You might not be able to name the exact change, but people often describe sensations like...

• lightness
• length
• spaciousness
• connectedness
• more range
• more softness
• clearer awareness of different parts working together
• more choices in how you move

Why it works

As these new movement patterns settle in, daily life starts feeling easier.

You might wash the dishes and realise the usual shoulder-blade tension isn’t there.

You might look over your shoulder in the car and feel your neck turn easily.

I still remember driving on the motorway one day and realising — for the first time ever — that my body was resting into the seat. I hadn’t noticed how hard I’d been holding myself up for years.

These small moments of ease add up.
Your brain is learning it has more options.

What a series of sessions can create

Many people benefit from a number of sessions together — especially if they’ve been in pain for a long time.

The initial focus is usually reducing background tension and creating safety. Once the pain settles, the real possibilities open up.

• Your movement gets easier.
• Your confidence returns.
• Balance improves.
• Strength feels more natural.
• Everyday tasks stop feeling risky.

You start trusting your body again.

How to start

If you’d like to explore this work with me, the best place to begin is simply to reach out through my contact form.

Share a little about what you’d like help with, and I’ll get back to you with next steps.

Click here to contact me for a session