The Surprising Reason Therapy Alone Won't Heal You — Rise up Story with Ben Barnett

In this episode of Rise Up and Live, Vicky is joined by holistic therapist Ben Barnett for a thoughtful and deeply human conversation about healing, personal transformation, and the wisdom of the body.

Ben has spent more than 30 years working in holistic therapy, combining physical bodywork with energy work, coaching, and a deep understanding of how our emotional experiences shape the way we live in our bodies. As a Reiki Master Practitioner, auricular acupuncturist, and specialist in therapeutic bodywork, his approach goes far beyond simply treating symptoms.

Together, Vicky and Ben explore what it really means to heal beyond the surface.

They discuss how early childhood experiences can quietly shape our beliefs, relationships, and sense of self, and how many of the patterns we carry into adulthood began as strategies to help us survive emotionally difficult environments.

In this conversation you’ll hear about:

• how the body often reveals what the mind tries to hide
 • the emotional patterns that can shape relationships and identity
 • why healing is not about fixing something that is broken
 • how awareness allows us to release old patterns and create new possibilities
 • the difference between trying to heal the past and transforming the present

Ben also shares his own Rise Up story — the personal insights that changed the way he understood himself, his relationships, and the way he works with clients today.

This is a conversation about awareness, compassion, and the powerful realisation that many of the struggles we carry may have begun with ideas about ourselves that were never truly ours.

If you want to follow Ben or get in touch with him, here are his social media links:

https://www.instagram.com/ben_barnett_htbb?igsh=bjRmdzFuOXQwOWo1

https://www.facebook.com/share/1DUx8d8K4p/

https://youtube.com/@htbybenbarnett?si=iCVPKVjt7cCtUXEU

And for access to Alchemy of Being:

https://thealchemyofbeing.me/

Referenced in this episode:

Ben mentions a powerful video illustrating how early experiences shape behaviour and self-soothing patterns.

You can watch it here:
 https://youtu.be/XY9vY1dh7n8

Transcript

Welcome And Rise Up Stories

Vicky Ross 0:01

Hi, and welcome back to Rise Up and Live Podcast. My name is Vicky Ross, and I am your host for this show. Now, this particular episode, and I'm going to do quite a few of them, are going to be Rise Up Stories, where I am going to be having conversations with people that I think are just remarkable and have something to share with you, my audience. So today I've got a fabulous person with me by the name of Ben Barnett.

Ben Barnett 0:33

Hi, Vicky. It's been a pleasure spending some time with you.

Vicky Ross 0:37

And if nothing else, I've always said to Ben, he's got such an incredible voice. Never mind everything else that he's doing. So I think you'll agree with me as you listen to the show. But Ben, before we actually talk about your rise-up story, because that's really what I want. Can you just tell my audience a little bit about who you are, what you do? Yeah. And then we'll talk about that journey of how you got to be who you are.

Ben Barnett 1:00

Love

Ben’s Path To Holistic Therapy

Ben Barnett 1:01

that. So I am I'm a holistic therapist and coach. I've been working in the field of holistic therapy for about 30 years. This is my 31st year, technically. Prior to that, I was a professional sports person, freshman footballer. And my dad was a singer. I used to sing in Jamaica. Oh. So I think I've got a little bit of his voice as a result of that. So thank you for noticing that. And I do use it actually in my therapy work where I do a combination of physical therapy. I work with energy, I'm a Reiki master practitioner, but I also work with my voice. And so I guide clients through the experience of what's going on with their body and kind of help translate some things that may have become biomechanical issues so that people can understand how they're connected to, you know, how people talk to themselves, what they've been through in the past, what they're looking to create in the future.

Vicky Ross 1:51

So that's fascinating.

Ben Barnett 1:53

Yeah, and I and I'm very passionate about what I do. I love it, you know, and I've been lucky enough to travel quite a lot doing it, like teaching aspects of it as well.

Speaker 2:02

So you I know that a lot of people go, okay, holistic, that's anything but the Western kind of medicine stuff. So I know that you specialise in a very certain kind of holistic modalities.

Hydrofusion Massage On Water Cushions

Speaker 2 2:16

Yeah, so the I the first thing I learned when I started to formalise my journey in holistic therapy is massage. I learned Swedish massage. Okay. But as I was waiting for my certificate in my Swedish massage qualification, I met a guy at an exhibition who would develop this way of doing massage where the client would lay on their back on a almost like a cushion of water. Oh wow. And the therapist could then put their hands underneath the client's body and massage the client while they were laying face up. So you and it'd be your body weight, the client's body weight that would provide the pressure of the massage. It's called hydropherm. It's a British invention. It's pretty, it's pretty much the same age as my massage career. So I, you know, I literally met the guy, he was just starting to make it a commercial idea, fell in love with it. It was actually designed to stop people from getting wrist and thumb problems, you know, like repetitive strain injury for therapists, right? But then it's evolved into this way of working where anybody who can't lay face down, yeah. So elderly clients, pregnancy, clients who've had surgery on the front of the body, clients with mobility issues, can all then access bodywork and massage therapy. But it's also extended my career, so 30 years in, I'm not having any problems with my thumbs and my wrists. So I kind of did what it said on the tin.

Speaker 1 3:35

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 3:36

Um, you know, and I sometimes work with you know bodybuilders and you know, large clients, but equally it allows me to be very subtle with my massage and work with clients who are quite ill, quite poorly, quite elderly, like you know, clients in their 90s. I've worked with, you know, end-of-life palliative care type therapies where you're just kind of giving people a quality of life, you know, as they come towards the end of their love, how lovely. So it's yeah, it's really opened up my work as a therapist, but and also protecting me, which has been great. Uh and then I've combined

Reading The Body’s Truth

Speaker 2 4:06

that with what the water does is it actually lets the therapist get some quite subtle feedback from the client's body. Oh wow. So when you're on a hard surface, if someone presses you down, you get this kind of sandwiching effect, which can help with tension in certain areas, but you can't necessarily feel how much of the resistance against what the therapist is doing is coming from the surface underneath, like the massage table, or how much of it is coming from the client kind of pushing back or trying to help or trying to anticipate what the therapist is going to do. And so it's allowed me to really understand the role of the mind and emotional absorption of things, like whether it's you know on a large level trauma, like in including physical trauma, but also just that low level of you know trying to handle life and trying to deal with relationships and dynamics and things like that, and how much those strategies become habits that then get in the way of other functionality in the body, right?

Speaker 5:06

So I find that so fascinating because I know with and I say this, I say this on a lot of my podcasts, the body hasn't got the ability to lie or to hide. Exactly. But we've just not been taught to be in tune with our bodies. And I find that now so fascinating with what you do that by you working with the body, you know, it doesn't matter what I think and say, my body's going to tell you exactly what's going on.

Speaker 2 5:31

And actually, on top as well as that, that's it's great that you've identified that straight away. But so I was trained as a coach, parallel to my holistic training.

Speaker 1 5:39

Okay.

Speaker 2 5:40

Uh and then what I found was, you know, clients would always have really great reasons and justifications and excuses for why they couldn't do something, why they behave the way they did, blah, blah, blah. And and as exactly as you say, I could cut through all of that by just going directly to the body. And and so I might ask the client's body a question. Yes. Almost like kinesiology. And and then as the client is having their opinion about it, oh, I've dealt with that, or oh, that's not a big deal for me. Yeah, it doesn't bother me. Their body's going, oh, thank God someone's l actually listening, like you know. And you could feel the body respond, and then you could feel the client almost from a surprise point of view going, oh, there's more to that than I realised, you know. Yeah. Self-talk or like, you know, acceptance or rejection or whatever the client's issue is.

Speaker 6:24

I just I just love the way the body has that wisdom. And I do think the body has a huge amount of wisdom. I have seen and witnessed where people are just going to put in some pressure on certain parts of the body and people start crying. Yeah. And they're going, I don't know why I'm crying, and then going, don't worry, your body knows. Yeah. Exactly. Which is which is so wonderful.

Auricular Acupuncture Explained

Speaker 6:46

Oh, well. And and you also do Reiki, like you said, and you also do acupuncture.

Speaker 2 6:51

Yeah, so I I'm an auricular acupuncturist and I used to teach for the British College of Auricular Acupuncture. But people won't know what that is, but so auricular acupuncture is auricular's ears.

Speaker 7:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2 7:00

And so if you um you can't look at your own ears, so you have to look at someone else's, or you have to take a picture. But if you do, what you'll notice is the ear looks quite a lot like an embryo, like a baby upside down. So the head is down here by the lobe lobe, yeah. And then you if you look at the curve through the ear, you can kind of almost start to see a spine. Um, and actually that gives you the basic physiology of where particular acupuncture points are. So in the earlobe, you'd find the sense organs and the brain points and occipital points, and then coming around, you go into you know the neck and the mid back and the lower back. And so you can treat people, you can treat people for physical conditions, for in fact, all systems of the body are represented in the ear.

Speaker 1 7:47

In the ear.

Speaker 2 7:47

You kind of have the same number of acupuncture points in your ear as you have in the whole of the rest of your body. Wow. And because they're distinct, they're distant, if someone has an injury in a particular area, sometimes you can't put a needle in that area, but you can put an a needle in the point in the ear, in the same way that you would use reflexology to work on a particular area. And there was a there's a famous documented case where Richard Nixon went over to China in the 70s. Okay. And one of his aides actually had append ruptured appendix, and they did an appendectomy, took his appendix out while he was conscious, using auricular acupuncture. Oh wow. And that is supposed to be how auricular acupuncture got became really like, you know, the new thing over in the States, and then kind of moved its way through the West.

Speaker 8:38

Fascinating, really, really fascinating. Now, my next

Early Wounds And Codependency

Speaker 8:42

question. Yes. What made you do all of this? You know, these are rise up stories. So we're talking about what made you rise up, what made you do what you do, be who you are, to the point that you've got such huge passion and knowledge and experience. And I d I don't think it was like you were in school and you thought, I'm gonna be a therapist when I grow up. No, none of us did.

Speaker 2 9:07

No, like I said, I was a professional sports person before I trained in massage. And actually, I trained as a massage therapist because I didn't want to end up being one of those footballers who was always in a bar somewhere. Okay, and it's you know, that was the culture in the days when I was playing like in the 80s and 90s. Train really hard, get really fit, then go to a bar and kind of reverse it all, like you know, with the beers and whatever. So I really recognized that and realized I didn't want to use my my afternoons for that. So I thought, what am I interested in? I was interested in fitness, I was interested in health. My mum was a midwife and a nurse, and so health had always been around me. And and so on the surface, it felt like I was just naturally, you know, formalizing something that I'd been interested in. But actually, now on reflection, when I look back, I can see that actually some things that happened to me in my like you know, right back in my earliest years were there underpinning the reason why I felt like I wanted to help people, I wanted to heal them, and it actually connected to you know a very personal part of my own journey. So what so what I realized was that I well to my to give you some background, my parents got divorced when I was a year and a half. Thank you. It's quite a difficult relationship for them at the beginning, and so I don't have a memory of that split or of my dad kind of like you know moving away in the first instance, but I do have a real sense of like being very sensitive to abandonment or neglect or like you know, those kinds of energies, which actually affect the lower abdomen and the back, right?

Speaker 1 10:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 10:53

And then inside of that, worrying about disappointing people, upsetting people, like as you can imagine, a child that's kind of sandwiched in between two parents who've gone separate ways. It's like which one do I side with, which one do I go to? And I realized that, you know, I would lived with my mum when I was very young, and my mum had her own issues, and she's a single parent and trying to like you know to um

Breaking Patterns And Repairing Relationships

Speaker 2 11:16

survive. Exactly. Yeah, and so I was in that energy, I was in that mindset, and I realized that what I decided to do, there wasn't any other man in the house, so I kind of tried to become that support structure for my mum and tried to help her, you know, heal her, fix her if you want, so that I could help myself. So it's like, you know, if she's well, then she could look after me. It was like, you know, very simplistic way of looking at it. And in fact, it connects to a video I saw just a couple of days ago, which really kind of moved me, you know, you know, had a big impact on me. And so some people may have seen it. Like there's a monkey in an enclosure, and it moves over to to try and you know get uh close to its mother, and the mother kind of rebukes it, pushes it away, whatever. And then it turns and it goes like now on the other end of the enclosure, there's a stuffed monkey, like a toy. Yeah, right? And it picks up the toy, it drags it off, and the camera's following it, and then it puts it on the ground, almost in the position where this toy's got its arms like that, and then it lies on the toy and it brings the toy around it like that. And I was like, I that was my my uh my response to it immediately. I was like, oh my god, it's actually replacing the hair and the mother that's the get you know, the love that's not getting from the mother with this toy, like a self-soothing thing. What was fascinating for me was that that was really emotional for me, and then when I was talking to other people about it, they had a completely different response. And like some people were, oh, that's really cute, and some people found it funny, but I actually found it very like emotional, yeah. And I realized that it was because it was reflecting some of my experience where I had been looking for someone to take care of me or someone to love me or be there for me, and then creating these relationships that had been codependent, really. Yeah, like you know, and I will fix them, and then they can look after me. And and actually you know, sometimes you this thing happens where you see this kind of almost like a hidden thread through your life, right?

Speaker 1 13:19

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 13:20

And I went, Oh, that's why all my relationships have been like this, and why sometimes I've tried to be a therapist and a partner to people, and sometimes I've not been able to let clients go once I've worked with them for a certain amount of time. Or I'd feel particularly sensitive if someone stopped coming to see me as a practitioner.

Speaker 13:38

It's almost like that whole rejection and abandonment all over

From Fixing To Transforming The Self

Speaker 13:42

again.

Speaker 2 13:42

All over again, exactly.

Speaker 13:43

And and until you can see it, you can't see it. Yeah. And and you think you're okay and you're not.

Speaker 2 13:51

No. And and here, you know what's really interesting for me about that? And inside the, you know, the reason for this podcast, right? So I did a course, and in this course, it had us look at our relationships and realize what had been driving the quality of our relationships in the past. And when I saw this, I was like, oh my God, I had inadvertently convinced people in my younger years that there was something wrong with them. Okay, like, and not like making something up, but just listening enough that I could hear what they thought was wrong with them, and then engaging with that as if, oh, I'm gonna save the day and I'm gonna help them and whatever. Even before I was a therapist, right? And so I went back and found about, I don't know, five or six of my exes, fake, and just went to them and said, Look, I just want to let you know that there was never anything wrong with you, like, you know, as far as I'm concerned. Like, you know, I don't know how you feel, but like, you know, you you were perfect as you were, and like, you know, this is not me trying to get back together with you or anything like that. And it was really transformative. Because hot. Yeah. And actually at the back of that, I then felt this whole shift in my relationships where I felt that I could be more adult in my relationships. I love that. And I and I had two or three people then that I I had long-term relationships with and maybe thought, you know, this could be the person I'm gonna marry or whatever, and then I found my wife and we got married, and you know, I've got divorced since, but there was just a whole different quality of relationships.

Speaker 15:17

A different energy. Yeah. Because it sounds like in the beginning, and and I know this because I do it, or I've done it, and I don't do it now, but I I've done it so well, that you you're so desperate to show and prove yourself worth, that that you are good enough, and therefore they should be loving you. Yes. You know, they can't abandon you. They they they look look at me. Look, I'm actually really, really great. I'm I'm so useful, I'm helpful, I'm you can rely on me, anything that you want, I'll go and get it, I'll do it, I'll clean it, you know, all of that kind of stuff. I'll save the day. And yes, it makes us natural therapist healers because we are always we we're very dependable, almost to the point that we don't want people to think that they will be better off without us. Yes, they have to stay with us to feel good.

Speaker 2 16:11

Yeah, and I totally, you know, that these are themes that now come up in my therapy sessions, but from a much more detached place. I can be a detached

The Body’s Innate Intelligence

Speaker 2 16:21

as I work with someone in that space and and create the the opportunity for them to detach from those things as well, right?

Speaker 16:28

It's so familiar to you, even you know, because healing doesn't mean you forget about it. No, of course. But it's so easy for you to see it in others.

Speaker 2 16:35

Yeah. And I, you know, I always say to my clients, the game of of being well is to recognize your patterns quickly, to take responsibility for them more quickly, and then to move through the spaces of them. So it's not like you fix them and you never do it again.

Speaker 1 16:51

No, no, no.

Speaker 2 16:52

You just go, you know, for me it's like, oh, I've been engaging with this person for five minutes, I've already started to create this like normal bond. I'm trying to find out what their problem area is. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, if they want to talk about that, fine. If they don't want to talk about that, then that's fine too.

Speaker 17:07

Yeah. And and and like you say, you know, I find the w the thing that I talk about a lot with groups and people in my membership is people tend to feel scared with triggers, and they'll use it as an excuse, oh, it wasn't my fault, I got triggered, and all that. And I'm going, no, no, look at triggers in a different way. Triggers are such blessings because that's where you know you've still got pain. You've still got a wound that's bleeding. If somebody pokes at you, but there's no wound that's bleeding and passing over, it doesn't hurt. You kind of look at them like oh, whatever. But if there's a wound, oh my goodness, does it become very, very personal until you recognize that this is the gift? Yeah. So did you was it at that course that you had like that complete turnabout to rise up even more?

Speaker 2 17:57

Yeah, completely.

Speaker 17:58

Because before it was all unconscious, you just kind of followed a need.

Speaker 2 18:01

Exactly. And so I was able to bring it to consciousness, and that's allowed me to work on it personally for myself and also to support people in dealing with that more effectively. But it also started to change in my work where I stopped looking at what is it to heal or fix a person, and actually started to look at what the the it's a bit of a buzzword nowadays, but I was really trained in the authentic relationship to transforming.

Speaker 1 18:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:28

So what is it to transform, to let go of the old version of you, which might have the wound, the scar, whatever, and then create a new version of yourself. And so a lot of my therapy work is now about that. And there is a certain amount of developing the self in that work, yeah, but it's more developing the self until you're strong enough to be able to set yourself free from those old patterns and then create new versions of you that are not scarred with that trauma, and that's not forgetting or being in denial, it's more like imagine that you train as a soldier in a time of war.

Beliefs, Diagnosis, And Possibility

Speaker 2 19:06

Yeah, and then the war ends. But you've got this training, you've got this experience, and you've got almost like this pride of doing that well. It's very difficult to let all of that go. And you can find yourself gravitating towards conflict and issue and problem, and only feeling comfortable when you can play that role. So, this is about creating a version of self in a therapeutic, relaxing, positive, like you know, safe environment. And then you're basically creating yourself out of that. So it's not like you know, my who I was was created inside that fractured marriage.

Speaker 1 19:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2 19:43

And then I was always going to end up pulling those same kind of fractures, those same kind of challenges, and being afraid of the end of relationships. And then and so I was able now to step beyond that and acknowledge, you know, all relationships naturally come to an end in some in some way. Yeah. Even if it's like, you know, we both die together at age 120 or whatever it is, right? But there's the not being afraid of the end, so you're not enjoying what's happening on the journey.

Speaker 1 20:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2 20:12

You know, and then being able to help my clients and my and even with myself to to end things powerfully so that then you can move into truly new things. Next.

Speaker 20:24

You know, I assisted Richard Bander and Paul McKenna on the NLP things for about seven and a half, eight years. And I remember Richard saying, so you've said something that's just reminded me of that. Richard was saying that when people come to him, he sees a perfect human being that is presenting itself as broken.

Speaker 2 20:46

It's really fascinating, you say that, because I do, there's a certain amount that I help clients and I tap into some subtle sense, right? So I often would have this thing, the first time I met someone, there was almost like this glow around them, right? Like I'd meet their highest version of themselves. And then the next time I met them, I would meet who they wanted to present.

Speaker 1 21:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:06

And often that would be the person who's a little bit flawed or a little bit broken. And then people would try and kind of enroll me in this is who they are, you know, like, oh, this is my makeup, and this is my poor shallow. I was like, no, no, no, I've already seen who you are. It's like, you know, the I love you. The yeah, exactly. And then I was interested in talking to that version that's that doesn't need fixing. Yeah.

Speaker 21:27

Bringing that to the forefront, like, you know, and and it's interesting because this is something that a lot of my clients and my audience struggle with. So we hear it in the works of Joe Dispenser, we hear it in what you say and what I say, that you have to let go of the life that's not working and create the life that you want, that is on your terms. And people go, but I don't know what that is. And I'm going, actually, you do. It's everything that you're not enjoying now. Yeah. Because what you're doing now is your competition. Compromising,

The Alchemy Of Being Toolkit

Speaker 22:01

you are behaving in a way that you think is what is expected of you rather than this is what I want to do. So it's interesting how as children, and and I work a lot with that, I love talking about it because I want people to get it right, that in those first few years you have your imprint years where meaning to life is assigned. Your mother gives it to you. Your mother will let you, through her behaviors, your father, through his behaviors, tell you what you mean to this world. So if you do not mean that I'm important enough to be loved and cared for, you'll do everything to try and prove them wrong, heal their perception of you.

Speaker 1 22:45

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 22:46

And and actually the truth of it all is, and it's it's beautiful and it's tormenting and it's transformational. The beauty is that there's never been anything wrong with you other than an idea that wasn't yours that says you are not good enough. So I love, I love what you're talking about because this is the journey, and and and I love that you do it through the body because, like we said, the body can't lie, it just cannot. Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:14

And one of the aspects of that, actually, it's lovely the way that you word it as well. For me is I will often say to clients two things. Number one is during the session, allow yourself to release anything that you've inherited about what it is to work hard, what it is to make progress, what it is to be safe, successful. Exactly. All of those key things. It's like, you know, we're we're when we're born, we don't have a manual of what it is to be alive, right? No. So, and then we, you know, we reach out to the newest people to us and we assume that they are experts because they were they're here before us. Yes. And then it's only at like you know, key moments which can often be quite traumatic. We suddenly realise this person doesn't really have all the answers. And sometimes they have no clue where they're going. No. But they think they're supposed to be leading me because they're older, they're a parent or a sibling or whatever, right? And it's very scary to just let go of those old imperfect strategies.

Speaker 24:10

Because we've been taught that you're being defiant and that's disrespectful.

Speaker 2 24:14

Exactly. And and so to get to that point where you can go, oh, do you know what? Maybe I've never been clear. I've never been at my full power. I've never been calm, for example. I've just been what's reflected by those people who are around in the early stages. So when you clear a space inside of the self, yeah, and you stop, it's not so much whether we're wounded or not that becomes the issue. It's actually the strategies we're using to try and fix the wound, which assumes that a wound's there, right?

Speaker 24:53

Well, the wound can't exist without the idea that it exists. Exactly. So what are you healing from?

Speaker 2 24:58

Completely. So I so once you but once you

Barefoot Shoes, Biomechanics, And Balance

Speaker 2 25:01

let that go, then a whole nother kind of experience just gets sucked into that space. So you actually don't need to know how to be this newer version of you. What I often say to people is holding the space of what would an amazing future, amazing job, amazing relationship, or a vibrant self, what might that look like? Not answering the question, but the question being a space, then life starts to provide you with two things. Number one, often what it's not, you get really super clear of that it's not that, and and then what it is, or what it could be. Yeah, you know, and I love to play in my treatments with okay, you're feeling really great now, but we're only halfway through the session, so what would twice this feel like or three times this? And you can kind of almost like feel climates going, oh my god, I thought this was going to be it, and I'd just be at this level. But again, there's that whole thing of really underestimating what we're capable of as in terms of experiencing and in terms of who we are.

Speaker 26:02

And and and I agree with you because I think for all of us, but and you know, so I'll talk from me and for people that I talk to, we haven't got a clue who we are. We we get glimpses of how powerful we are, and then we're like, oh, it can't be me because of the old conditioning. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 26:19

Exactly.

Speaker 26:20

And then there's that always that whole we don't want to overshadow people, we don't want them to feel like uh instead of showing people how magnificent they can be through your own actions, because oh, I can't be magnificent because that will make the other one feel bad.

Speaker 2 26:36

And I really remember as a child again having thoughts like that, where it was like, you know, oh, if I'm really great at something, then someone else is not going to get a turn, or like, you know, then I'll be favoured and somebody else will be the underdog or whatever. And you know, some of the things that happened to me like in my childhood through in terms of injury around my sport, around my education, getting ill just before my exams, was actually all about almost self-sabotage.

Speaker 27:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:01

To keep myself at that lower level, right?

Speaker 27:04

We just don't see it, do we?

Speaker 2 27:06

Yeah, and it's that you know, but when you do see it and when you experience it, it's like it's such a relief. You go, oh my god, it all makes sense. I'm okay. Yeah, exactly. And then okay can become this, like, you know, like actually I can be great and I can be content and I can be healthy, like, you know, and and sometimes I will work with clients who, you know, are so far down the road of dis ease and illness that it they it's almost impossible for them to believe that they can reverse that, you know. So then it's much more about like you know what quality of life can someone have, like you know, between now and you know when life stops visiting us, right? But but actually I've had some amazing experiences with clients where they've you know they've been told lots of things with by other professionals. And it's not that their work is is wrong, it's just that you know it we in the West especially we are very much we love diagnosis. Oh, yeah. We love to work on a single symptom or a single area of the person. And so you can just miss out on, for example, the emotional content that would be in an injury not healing or

Closing, Links, And Community Invitation

Speaker 2 28:12

a disease not improving.

Speaker 28:14

You know, it it's interesting. When I first started doing the NLP, Richard Bandler was actually ill. So in the beginning he wasn't there, which I thought was pretty normal. I I didn't realize that Paul actually physically works with him. So then when he came, then he started saying he said that the doctor told him that 90% of patients will never ever recover. So then he turns around to the doctor and he says, because he's he's a cheeky genius. He turns around and he says, Well, thank God I'm part of the 10%.

Speaker 2 28:45

Yes, I know exactly, right?

Speaker 28:47

So the doctor says, You don't get to choose. And he turned around and says, You don't get to choose. Wow. This is my body. What a great, what a great idea. Isn't that beautiful? Because you know, and and I've got this in my accelerated healing meditation, which I created for somebody. Is that we take for granted how amazingly mysterious, intelligent, magical we are. You know, there was a cell, an egg and a sperm that came together and went boom, and they started to duplicate and duplicate and duplicate and duplicate and duplicate. So we're like a mass of cells. Where did the instruction come in to say, okay, guys, stop duplicating? Right, you you become skin, you guys become heart, you become but somehow they know they knew when to stop doing the duplicating, duplicating, and start transforming. And then, you know, so that all comes together. And again, I find that the thing with the heart mass that when they look at embryos that are about four weeks old, you know, you can hardly detect them. It's a heartbeat. Yeah, amazing, huh? And the heartbeat just does everything. So anyway, we get born, we don't have the same heart or the same skin or the same bones or the same anything. We are constantly changing. You cut your finger, your body knows how to heal. There's never a question that we go, oh, I don't know if that's gonna heal. I don't know, I might have a cut for the rest of my life. We're kind of going, oh, I don't know, the body just does its thing. And and how does the body know to stop healing so that you don't grow an extra finger?

Speaker 2 30:26

Yeah, exactly right. And then some and sometimes people get that keloid scarring, they get that excessive.

Speaker 1 30:31

But other ones not.

Speaker 2 30:32

But other ones not. And actually, there's a one of the things that I'm really fascinated with is you know, when people are told that they've stopped growing. Yeah. They start dieting. I've stopped learning, you know, when I leave school, or I've stopped growing, but I'm still growing fat and I'm still growing old. And so then growing stops being this great, amazing adventure, and it becomes something to try and resist. And and it's like like you know, just a little thing like that in the body can have such an implication or an effect on recovery from injury and illness, from still tapping into our capacity, you know. And I love spending time with older people who are still have this ride of eave and they're still exploring their mind and they're doing new things, they're traveling. You just really get a sense of okay, that's why they're alive.

Speaker 31:21

Yeah. You know, and still doing things. I mean, I remember back in the 80s, maybe even in the 90s, they really believed that once you had all your brain cells, that was it. Yeah, I know. You know, from there on it was downhill and you couldn't replace it and they weren't fixed. And now they're going, oh, we were wrong.

Speaker 2 31:40

But unfortunately, people like kind of take that information on.

Speaker 31:43

And they still believe it.

Speaker 2 31:44

Yeah, I know. And so I have, and I do this thing in my treatments where I go, okay, you know, I I one of the things I specialise in is where particular considerations concerned, limiting beliefs, where they where they let's say, where they source themselves in the body. It's not like they stay in one area, energy obviously is moving around the self all the time, but it's like how can I put my finger on a particular area and have the maximum effect on a particular concern. So, like self-talk, for example. Is there a part of the body I can massage and that the way I talk to myself can be affected, impacted? And I got really then interested in how people hold and where they hold their beliefs about their beliefs, right? And when those beliefs get created, and how much of the time that we spend is wrestling with those beliefs. And and so I used to say to people, okay, think of all the experts who've told you stuff about you, about life, about the future. You go, okay, you want to be clear, none of them is an expert in the next moment or in you. Because it because it hasn't happened yet, and equally, yeah, exactly. And none of them are an expert in you. They might be, they might know a lot about human behaviour or like you know, common traits in human beings, we're all unique. So take all of that expertise and just hold it lightly. You know, you don't have to invest in this is completely true. I've had clients who, you know, have got to the same age as their father and then have decided, oh, I'm gonna die now.

Speaker 1 33:17

Yeah.

Speaker 2 33:18

And they and they feel like they're living on borrowed time. Yeah. Which, you know, you'd think would have somebody like you know really go and do their bucket list and like, but actually it just had them be completely terrified all the time.

Speaker 33:29

And given up.

Speaker 2 33:30

Yeah. Um, and just being able to free people from something like that, in the way that I was able to free myself from that very one-dimensional experience of relationship, is just like a real gift for me. It's one of the things that really drives me as a therapist.

Speaker 33:44

So your rise-up story and your aha wakening up to how magnificent you are, we are, is what you now use to work. Exactly. Which I love. Yeah. I love that. I absolutely love that. Ben, we are definitely going to have another conversation because I know there's loads. And I mean, God, you know, we went for a walk earlier on and we talked, and we still we we haven't even scratched the surface. Ben and I are part of a group called the Alchemy of Being. So we are alchemists because we say so. Which started by Charlotte Phelps. Um, what do you want to say about that? And what do you see about it?

Speaker 2 34:26

Yeah, I mean, and and again, you know, there's parallels with the conversation we've just had, with my journey with Charlotte. But in essence, the Alchemy of Being for me represented an opportunity to take all my experience, like, no, my whole life actually, but the last 30 years, definitely the formal interaction that I've had with the idea of wellness or illness, disease, and improvement and recovery, all of those things down to the like, you know, oh, I had this supplement or I bought this pair of shoes. We would we spent like a significant amount of time talking about our shoes today, didn't we, Vicky? We did, like, and being able to put all that information in a place where someone can who doesn't have the same depth of knowledge, wouldn't know where to find all these different things out, can go to almost like a one-stop shop to then build what we call a toolkit for life.

Speaker 1 35:13

Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 35:14

And it I, you know, for me, I was like, oh my god, I've got all this stuff going around in my head, all this all this advice I want to give to people. You know, and sometimes like you can be overwhelming when I start to talk to somebody about what they should do and what they should have and what they shouldn't do. It's like if I can just put it somewhere, they can peruse it at their leisure, they can try out things, they can find out about practitioners and modalities and supplements and all those things. It like, you know, it just takes away some of the pressure and the overwhelming and also the embarrassment sometimes people have like, oh, should I already know about turmeric? Should I already know about vivo bear for choose? Should I like like you know, like, and so they can kind of in the privacy of their own home, look up things, check out modalities like massage or Reiki or you know, whatever it is. And then when they've been on the journey a little bit and it's time to look at the next thing for themselves, you know, we've got some really handy um link-throughs, connections that help people to do that. And so I was thrilled when one of my clients who I'd worked with for uh more than 10 years now, who had really benefited from my work, decided that she wanted to pull the team of people together, including yourself and myself and other people, and like you know, just create this resource for clients who then could, you know, dip in and out of it as much as they wanted, and could go really in deep if they wanted to really, you know, go into the onto the skinny branches, I call it.

Speaker 1 36:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 36:48

But equally, if they just were looking for, oh, you know, what would be my thing for 2026 in terms of you know, something for my mind, my my mental health, something for my body?

Speaker 36:57

What what I love about it is that you know, I find that personal development is a mind field because you know, w where do you start? You know, if you think about it, body, mind personal development is body, mind, and spirit. Yes. So do I start at spirit or do I start at mind or do I start at body? I really don't know. And I always say to people, go with what you're pulled. If you if you if you're pulled towards getting to know your mind, or if you're pulled towards getting to know your body, go for that. And that's what the alchemy of being allows people to go and it's all it's almost like a shopping mall, isn't it? You can walk around and go, oh, I wonder what that is about, and you can hang around and you can try things out. And I've always said to people, you've got to trust that inner knowing, that intuition that we've got in ways that you can't possibly explain. They will go there and if they see your massage and stop, there's something there, and they can explore that equally so they can look at the work that I do or the other alchemists. And it's just a beautiful place, a beautiful website for people to just go and look. So the link to this alchemy of being will be in the notes. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, by all means go and visit the site.

Speaker 2 38:16

Yeah, it's exactly and both of us have got our own separate parts on there. Yeah, you can find out more about us. Yeah, but you know, you in the middle of that you might go, oh, that looks interesting, and click on that, and then you're off on your own journey.

Speaker 38:27

Yeah, yeah, and you've got to just trust the process. Now, Ben, um obviously all your details are gonna be in the notes as well. So if you want to know more about what Ben does in the alchemy of being, he's there. But you can also go directly on the links and have a look at his fascinating work and then just look out for when we're going to do another session with Ben. Can't wait. We definitely, like I said, we we this is not over. This is this is just the beginning. It started with shoes, by the way. Rights today started with shoes. We both like barefoot shoes.

Speaker 2 38:59

We both um I so we like for the anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, those shoes that separate your toes out, and you can have two different versions. One that look like normal shoes on the outside. Both Vicky and I have got these that you know, they look like normal shoes, but they've got a little bit of partition, a little bit of separation. Great for circulation and mobility, especially when we get older. And then you've got the extreme ones, which I walked in in today, which are which actually look like gloves and they have the five individual bits. And I sometimes, you know, I wear them and sometimes I see people staring at my feet, and sometimes people are like, oh my god, no, I can't like you know, I can't, I can't do it. And I'm like, what do you mean? This looks like a foot, it's got five toes. It's like, you know, why would you want to put it's like having mittens, you know, like when you used to be a child and you put your hands in and you couldn't use your fingers. Yeah, I'm like, that's what normal shoes are like. So why would you not want to have something that actually reflects your feet? But like, you know, there's some people who are just like, Yeah, they've they've chosen what they've chosen, but it's uh again, this is one of the things that yeah, I mean it's the first thing that I noticed. Yeah, I've got a little link, people can find out where I got my shoes, and so um that begins their journey in that regard.

Speaker 40:07

I've only been I'm I'm brand new to this. I've been looking at them for about a year, but I've been wearing them for say two months, and I would say I probably wear them 90% of the time. What I'm fascinated with, it's fascinating to me, is that on the odd occasion where I wear normal shoes, they are so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 40:27

That's interesting, isn't it? You start you suddenly notice, but you know, it's just like a conditioning. It's the almost in any area of life. I came to them because I had played football. And you know, footballers, you don't really think of footballers having to wedge their feet into really small boots, but actually that's what we need to do. Often half a size too small. So it's like wearing, you know, like it's like wearing a stiletto. Um but without the glamour from that point of view. And then, you know, oh and then as I started to get older, I started to have issues with my feet, like quite serious issues. And from investigating, I discovered how you can rebuild the arch in your foot, right in your main arch. Oh wow. And why sometimes trying to do that doesn't work. So that's something else you can find out via the alchemy of being. But also I found the value in your all the muscles in your foot being able to work independently. So in a normal shoe, you can't use your big toe. And your big toe connects all the way up to the buttock in terms of your primary drive and moving forward. So if your big toe is over to one side like a bunion, you might think, Oh, it's you know, I just need to manage the discomfort, but it actually stops you from being able to, like, you know, really propel yourself forward.

Speaker 41:38

So here's a scary thought, and I know we're at the end of the things worth saying. Watching my poor mom, she my mom is now 88, she loses a lot of balance and she falls over. And I was just as I was watching and and feeling frustrated for her, I saw this video that talked about that one of your key reasons or things for balance is your big toe.

Speaker 1 42:00

Yes, it is.

Speaker 42:01

And I thought, oh my goodness, I better make sure that my big toe stays healthy and strong and and and practice the balance to actually let that. And this is what I've noticed that since I've been wearing these things, these wonderful shoes, other shoes feel really uncomfortable. And I can walk. I went and I walked the whole day in London with a friend of mine from Greece. I had my barefoot shoes. I it was like I was walking barefoot on in London with a slight thin rubber sole. Yeah, I didn't have the normal foot pain, back pain. I had a bit of back pain towards the end of the day.

Speaker 2 42:35

But how many steps did you do? 16,000. That's a lot of steps. So you'd expect it's like going to the gym for like, you know, a couple of hours.

Speaker 42:42

But normally, like when I do my walking and uh walk in the forest and all that, I don't have the back pain that I used to have.

Speaker 2 42:48

Yeah, and I'm the same. And you don't have to be able to do that. And I find that you know, you don't realise quite how much biomechanically things are connected.

Speaker 42:54

Yeah.

Speaker 2 42:55

But but you know and then until you do realise, and then it's kind of obvious why did I think that it was so Yeah, I'm like, I don't think I'm ever going to wear anything else.

Speaker 43:03

I'm just gonna increase my I'm gonna get rid of the rest.

Speaker 2 43:06

Oh my god. We have to have some some five-toe shoes that have got a heel on the foot when you go when you go glam for the black tiger.

Speaker 43:14

A barefoot glam shoe.

Speaker 2 43:16

It'll be nothing. Someone will invent it.

Speaker 43:18

Somebody will invent it. Right. This has been so fabulous, Ben. It's been so, so lovely. And thank you so much for coming and sharing your rise-up story. I'm not sure what everybody has taken away because there was a lot to take away. So I do know that what was meant to land will have landed. Of course, if they want to get in touch with you, Ben, your the details will be in my show notes and we will have you again. And for the rest, if you want to be part of my community, I've got a beautiful membership, lovely people, it's your tribe. If you like this kind of stuff, if you want to expand, learn more, then my membership attracts. Those kind of people, so it will be your tribe again. Show notes if you want to join the membership. And for the rest, I wish you well. I wish you a good week, and here's to your success. Thank you for listening.