My primary interest has been in taking a holistic approach to helping people who
are dealing with health problems, particularly pain, stress-related illness and those
whose illness defies medical diagnosis or treatment.
I have based my work on these
principles:
- Health is not just an absence of illness, but the positive balance of all aspects
of a person - body, mind, emotions and spirit. Accident, injury or stress (physical
or emotional) can throw this balance out and lead to uncomfortable symptoms or disease.
Often, symptoms can be recognised as a message that something is not right in one's
life.
- Recognise the body's own ability to heal and re-balance itself, and design treatments
to stimulate and support this function and thus strengthen it for the future.
- Focus on the individual, his/her unique way of life and response to their condition
(rather than on the symptom or disease).
- Recognise that individuals need not be isolated; each of us is connected to others,
to society and our environment in complex ways.
- Help each individual to regain control and the power to optimise their well-being,
by means of respect, information and skill-building, thus avoiding inappropriate
dependency on drugs or the services of others.
- Everyone has creative ways of dealing with the stresses of their life. Aim to help
clients use that creativity in a positive way to recreate situations as they would
want.
This leads to an approach that is:
- as natural as possible: the aim is to reinforce the body's own natural healing resources
wherever possible, rather than override them
- complementary to other treatments, including orthodox medicine: I would recommend
another therapist if the two therapies will work well together
- alternative: where diagnosis, drugs or surgery are unacceptable or have failed, it
can be valuable to explore alternative strategies
- holistic: I see each person as a whole individual within a complex context, not just
a symptom or problem; where the sense of wholeness has been fractured the aim is
to restore balance between the different parts of the whole.