The Intelligence of the Body

EP 9 | What Do the Best Therapists Understand That Others Miss? | Aubrey Kavanagh & Alison Gowing

• Paula Nutting • Season 1 • Episode 9

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What separates a good therapist from a truly exceptional one? In this insightful conversation, Paula Nutting sits down with siblings Aubrey and Alison Gowing, founders of the Holistic College Dublin, to explore the evolving world of massage therapy, holistic health, and practitioner education.

Drawing from decades of experience in teaching, clinical practice, and professional development, Aubrey and Alison share their unique perspectives on what it takes to create meaningful change for clients and build a lasting career in the therapy profession. From anatomy and manual therapy to mindfulness and nervous system regulation, this discussion highlights the importance of blending technical skills with genuine human connection.

Together, Paula, Aubrey, and Alison explore how therapist education has evolved over the years, why continuous learning remains essential, and how modern technology is creating new opportunities for practitioners and clients alike. They also discuss their innovative streaming platform, designed to make high-quality education more accessible to therapists and the general public.

Whether you're a massage therapist, bodyworker, student, or simply interested in health and wellbeing, this episode offers valuable insights into the future of therapeutic education and holistic healthcare.

In this episode:
• The journey behind the Holistic College Dublin
• How Aubrey and Alison entered the world of therapy and education
• The role of mindfulness, breathwork, and relaxation techniques in wellbeing
• Why anatomy and body awareness matter for therapists and clients
• The evolution of massage therapy education over the past three decades
• The importance of lifelong learning and professional development
• Manual therapy, movement, and helping people move beyond pain
• Making quality education accessible through online learning platforms
• Building confidence, skill, and clinical reasoning as a therapist
• Creating meaningful client outcomes through a holistic approach
• The future of therapist training and continuing education

Timeline Highlights:
00:05 – Paula welcomes Aubrey and Alison Gowing from the Holistic College Dublin.
03:27 – The siblings discuss their roles as educators and business partners.
04:53 – How massage therapy education has evolved over the years.
07:27 – Growing up with yoga, mindfulness, breathwork, and holistic health.
08:39 – Training with industry leaders and expanding their therapy knowledge.
09:46 – The vision behind their new educational streaming platform.
11:15 – Why anatomy, body awareness, and palpation skills matter.
18:00 – The role of mindfulness and nervous system regulation in modern healthcare.
25:30 – Corrective manual therapy and helping clients achieve lasting results.
34:20 – Balancing hands-on treatment with movement and rehabilitation strategies.
46:45 – Why therapists need simple, effective home-care solutions.
58:33 – Understanding stress, pain, and the body's natural healing responses.
01:01:09 – Why stress isn't always bad and how recovery influences health outcomes.
01:02:01 – Making home care simple enough for clients to actually follow through.
01:03:08 – Resources, education, and the future of therapist learning through HCD Watch.

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https://youtu.be/Sk6ptiCck_k

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Connect with Aubrey & Alison Gowing:
🌐 https://holisticcollegedublin.com
📘 https://www.facebook.com/holisticcollegedublin
🎥 https://www.youtube.com/@holisticcollegedublin

Disclaimer:
The following program is for informational and educational purposes only. The content discussed regarding musculoskeletal health, injury recovery, and physical therapy techniques is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Listening to this podcast does not establish a therapist-patient relationship between you and Paula or her guest presenter. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or physical injury.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or emergency services immediately. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast is solely at your own risk.

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SPEAKER_02

Hey everybody, welcome to our next month Ask Me Anything vodcast stream. I'm Paula Nutting, your musculoskeletal specialist, and I'm really excited that we've got a duo on uh this this month, and not from Australia, not from America, but actually from Ireland, and it is Aubrey Going, I've been told, I've always said going, but going, and his sister Alison, and they run one of the holistic schools in Ireland, in Dublin, I believe, and they've also got so much more to offer. So please, without any further ado, um, Aubrey and Alison, do you want to come and join us and let's have fun for the hour?

SPEAKER_05

Hey Paula, hey audience.

SPEAKER_02

Hello from Ireland. Yeah, is it Slante?

SPEAKER_06

Slante.

SPEAKER_02

Slante. Is that hello or is that uh would you have a drink?

SPEAKER_06

Cheers, hi, can be pretty much anything, it's fairly universal.

SPEAKER_02

Great, excellent. Well, Shlante, Schlante. Um Sloncha.

SPEAKER_06

Slansha.

SPEAKER_02

Shloncha, Slansha. Great. Well, welcome everybody and welcome to you both. It's so amazing to have you here. Uh blessed with, as I said, the Holistic College of Dublin. That's uh, but there's more great, wonderful stories about the two of you because you're siblings, um, and I'll get to that in a minute. Uh, but I also want to do a really quick shout out to our fantastic sponsors, Q Academy, who are an Australian-based college based in Queensland, which is my part of the world, the perfect one day, terrific the next. Um, and we have uh college opportunities that take international students, they have an online and a face-to-face and an interactive portal that they get through the students. And not only do we are we having the uh Diploma of Myotherapy and or the advanced diploma of myotherapy and our diploma of remedial massage, but we've also got our associate degree that we're in the process of writing. So that'll be really exciting to see that we can actually slide people across from our industry into more of the uh the allopathic fields. So thank you. If you're looking at trying to get a new job, you're in a career change mode and you're thinking about do I get my hand into massage, then contact Q Academy, Queensland in Brisbane is their primary, but there's spaces all around that you might be able to get some more information and maybe do some study for. Anyway, back to you guys. Siblings. I want to know about who runs the roost, who's the brains behind the team effort. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Very much partnership, always has been.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no fighting.

SPEAKER_06

No, no, we're we're tend to be surprisingly on the same page. We have uh a slightly different approach to things. Um, it's interesting where you were saying about you know, people starting a new career and training as massage therapists, literally just on this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, we had our most recent group of students go through exams. And it's funny, they always say, like, I tend to give them the facts, how things are, and Ali tends to look after them. So they always refer to us as kind of like mommy and daddy on a course, which is a little weird, but it is those kind of roles of you know, support, guidance, and a clear path to how to progress. And it's just amazing seeing new students like that graduate, and you go, You're the people who are going to shape this industry into the future, that they're starting on really for what has been for us an incredible journey. And the students always say at the end of the training that they learned so much more than they expected going in. You know, there's so much more to it. They actually love the anatomy by the end of their training, where sometimes people feel a bit daunted. So it's an amazing journey for people to get started on.

SPEAKER_02

So, how long is your college like how long does the a course, if I want to become a massage therapist? It's in Australia, it's different because we're really structured. We've got the health training packages and the registered training organizations, and you have to, they have to match, and it's X amount of hours for certificate for X amount of hours for diploma. But it can be done as much in as quickly as a year, which I kind of worry that maybe people are only getting foundational knowledge. But I like that you've said that that they get so much more, they feel like they're they're getting more meat. Tell us about the system over in Ireland.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it varies a lot. Um, I trained 36 years ago, and I actually dragged Aubrey into the industry. I was like, you know, there's something really interesting about this bodywork stuff. So um it kind of developed independently, um, it has changed a lot over the decades in terms of uh foundational training, what's required to meet the standards of the awarding body. Um, a lot of it has gone digital now, where we have an online learning platform, and a lot of the theory is done in lectures. So it's kind of blended learning as well as in-person training. So you can do a comprehensive accelerated course in like six months, or you can continue through to uh three years. So it does vary a lot depending on what level you want to progress to. So each each level has a particular uh set of skills, and then the further you go into the training, the greater your skill base. So that's kind of where it's at.

SPEAKER_06

It's not not that regulated here though. So you do have quite a bit of variety within the market, uh, even in terms of recognized qualifications. Um, one of the big ones here in Europe, uh I think they're in Australia, but I don't think they're that big there is iTech. ITEC are based in the UK, and they are regulated by OFQAL, which is their office of qualifications and things like that. But there isn't really a requirement for that. It's more kind of industry-led. Uh so yeah, it varies quite a bit. And I suppose there's a difference between the relaxation therapies where people tend to just do it's it's considered to be a foundation level, it's what they call a level three. So after your your primary education, um, so we here we'd have like the leaving cert, so it's post-leaving cert that I know there's different names of the qualifications all over the place after high school for our US audience. Yes, that the they they tend to just you study that therapy. Whereas the big change, I think, in the last 10 years has been within sports massage, where they actually broaden it out that there is a level three, a level four, and a level five, which is uh ordinary degree standard in the UK. So there is that option, yeah, to go all the way to level five, but just with sports, not with the other therapies, but a lot of students will do level five for reflexology, also. Oh yeah, and that they're talking about aroma, I think, as well.

SPEAKER_02

Clinical aromatherapy, yeah. So and there's so much adversity like this the research in in um clinical aromatherapies is just volumes coming out there now, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we kind of started off um as kids. Our dad was interested in all health and wellness, and the stuff that we're talking about now, he taught us 40 years ago, the mindfulness stuff. Um, and he was just kind of ahead of his time. So we were brought up uh learning yoga exercises as kids, uh, breath work, um, relaxation techniques. Um, mum trained as a massage therapist, and she practiced on me, particularly when I was doing exams, and I was like, wow, this really is impactful. So that kind of led us into the whole industry to study all of the relaxation therapies, sports massage, physical therapy. Uh, we studied in Europe, I did um manual lymph drainage in the Dr. Voder clinic uh for to treat treat lymphedema, and really every therapy we could find uh and got to train with the industry leaders and expand ourselves on what we learned.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So it's a constant evolution and progression in understanding, and we get to share that with all our students. So that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah and talking about sharing is um guys, if you're listening, anyone who's listening, and I'll I'll tweak and remind, please, you'll in the comments just down below. If you've got questions for these two masterminds in so much of like we're already hearing uh mindfulness, breath work, uh yoga, um, meditation, like and we were talking beforehand about some of the stuff they do with meditation as within the the streaming platform that's that we're very excited to announce. Put them in the comments box so we can address them and they can answer your questions. So don't be scared, put in a hi. I've got a got a few things I want to ask. Um and if it comes in after the case, I'm sure we can get them to to put make comments into the into the streaming that we've that we'll have here after it. So don't be scared to ask questions. So the streaming platform, because I my big thing for me is is my massage mentorship program. And when you were saying the stuff that you do, I was like going, there's so much worthiness in having a one-stop shop, which is kind and from your educational background. So can you tell us a little bit about what you what you're what it is, what it's doing, and who's it for?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, this has been a big project for us over the last few months. Um, we've been saying, Allison in particular has been saying for probably decades that you know people don't really get an idea of what we're doing until they're actually in the classroom. And obviously, there's a limited amount of people that we can take into any given classroom, even in some of our big seminars. And this streaming service really does keep up, give people that opportunity that on our website previously, you know, we had lots of micro modules, we had lots of um training videos, but they were kind of fragmented. You know, people had to purchase an individual video. Whereas with the streaming service, it makes it really accessible and really affordable. So people can just literally go month to month. It's like any streaming service. I mean, people are so familiar with streaming services now, and there's a lot out there in the entertainment world, but not so much in the education environment. So these are literally for anybody, that it's not just therapists. We have done a lot of these uh kind of free short clips on uh YouTube and Facebook that people oftentimes talk about. We did our Wednesday wisdom for about a year where we would talk about an element of anatomy. You know, this could be one of the things contributing to your back pain that you know, people that we know, friends and family and stuff, will be saying, Oh, I saw your latest video, that one was really interesting. They're not therapists at all. So there is literally something for everybody.

SPEAKER_01

Um there's just so much um, I think, uh, in relation to body work that people don't realize they don't have to be in pain. Um, apart from relaxation, reducing stress, gaining a better connection with yourself through the nervous system. I think um the corrective manual therapy is going to be huge that people can resolve ongoing issues, doing the right thing at the right time, balancing out muscles around joints, making sure there's enough joint space, taking pressure off nerves, getting fascia moving correctly. I mean, it's just phenomenal. When we're teaching students to palpate an area to feel the texture of the tissues and feel it change, and we've little exercises we do with them. We might get them to get a sheet of paper and put a coin under it and see can you feel where the coin is, then get a paper clip and see if you can feel the edges of the paper clip and then put a hair under it. Close your eyes and can you feel the hair under the paper? And they just love these um exercises to really start tuning into what they're feeling in the tissues so that they can resolve the issues in the tissues.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I mean, we even saw this, Paula, when you were um in New Zealand. Was that last year?

SPEAKER_04

May last year, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So uh, well, we did that presentation for Massage Myotherapy Australia and uh Massage New Zealand. And in a demonstration, I mean, we we did this both days on the Saturday and the Sunday. We took somebody out of the audience who had uh six out of ten, seven out of ten back pain. And over the course of the demonstration, as we're chatting and explaining, you get that person literally to zero that this they're completely pain-free. And that I think a lot of therapists don't often realize where they learn a ton of techniques, the connecting, as Ali says, to the individual client, palpating, treating until you feel texture change in the tissues, that you know you've actually achieved your goal before moving to the next structure or the next depth within that same structure, that with that kind of care and focused attention and addressing each of those tissues, that's far too often we're kind of divided up into I do muscle, tendon, fascial work, I do joint work, I do neurological work. That when you bring these together, the effects can be not only profound, but incredibly quick. So, like I said, on our streaming service, we have like entire seminars. So you can literally watch all the lectures and all the demonstrations and practice along. So, like, forget next Netflix and chill, you can Netflix and learn, you know, actually develop a deeper understanding by taking a whole seminar from home that you just get a friend up on the table, start working, and practice the techniques, listen to the explanations, really hone your understanding. And like I said, because it's it's a real class situation, you get all of the detailed explanation in a lot of the things, some of the seminars that are going to be added to the platform, because we've we have a ton more footage that we'll be adding over the next few months. There is techniques where I'm oftentimes I'll be demonstrating to the class, and then for people practicing at home, I'll say, This is how you could adapt this technique for self-treatment.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So another win for therapists that you go, oh, okay, I can learn how to adapt a lot of these techniques for myself to help preserve the longevity of my career, make sure I'm staying pain-free, and see how, like I said, quick and profound the change can be.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So some people might recognize the terminology as um evergreen, which is like a you recorded something. Uh, because I think Americans use that term a lot. They might be kind of going, I don't know what you're talking about, but an evergreen for you guys is uh something that's been recorded in a class environment. And then I love the fact that you kind of direct yourself to the camera and go, okay, this is how we we can do a self-adaption for self-care. And and coming back to the the depth, because that's the thing I see most therapists. Two things that therapists do. One, they decide to go as deep as they can, as quick as they can, and not using um a mindfulness, and that's the big key word that people are using now. Even Walkfritz, who was always MFR, MFR is now talking about the connection between you and your client, and that mindful interplay that you have. And I don't think that's it's not normally taught in a foundational course because you don't have enough time. And that means, and people need to have a like a an aware, like a self-awareness, self-reflection. What level of your of the course do you start to do you try to integrate that right? Starting to do that.

SPEAKER_06

Straight away, yeah, from day one. That we will talk about um you know techniques when people are are learning therapy for the first time, particularly the sports type stuff, the the corrective manual therapy, that we'll talk about feeling tissue texture on day one. So they're they're practicing palpation every single class session, where we'd say, okay, every time palpate the tissues, you're checking for temperature, texture, and tone. You're using three different parts of your hand because you're going from superficial to progressively deeper. And one of the things that we say to remind students is if your hands are getting tired, if you feel like a technique is strenuous, that is your cue to say you're being impatient. You're trying to push too deep too soon, and it's causing too much physical effort. That if you back it off by just sometimes as little as 10%, it becomes much more manageable. You are now an invited guest in the body instead of barging your way in, that you're waiting for the tissues to give you permission to work a little bit deeper. So I always say it's an all-round win. It's less physically demanding for the therapist, it's a more comfortable experience for the client, and it actually yields better, quicker results.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02

So what oh no, no, you're right. We're just gonna be um what out of 10? Because some people say the pain scale should be no higher than six or seven, but I think you said something about four or three in Auckland.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so four is kind of our benchmark, and we'd even talk about this in terms of how to calibrate and recognize what a four truly is, because you will have people with different sensitivities, but there are involuntary responses that the person will give when there is excessive, when it's starting to alarm the nervous system, when it's starting to create guarding. So I would always say, like, you want to be strong enough to be effective, light enough to be pain-free, that there will be intensity. You know, people never get off the table and go, Oh, I didn't feel like enough was done, or that wasn't strong enough, or anything like that. It's strong treatment. But when the person is at the point where they're saying, Oh yeah, you're on something there, I can feel that, but they haven't started to like at fives and sixes, there'll be facial twitches, there'll be responses. The person will clearly be telling you they're they're not happy, that there's these non-verbal communication signs. Once you get to sixes and into sevens, the person is starting to guard. They're tensing. Now, I always love Ceto's turn of phrase here that he said, relaxed tissue is transparent to palpation. And we can flip that on its head and say, tense tissue when the person contracts is now opaque to palpation. You can't feel through it and you can't work through it. You have been pushed back out towards the surface. You have now been a rude guest and you are being shown to the door instead of being that invited guest and being allowed deeper into the body. So the non-verbal responses are oftentimes a better cue, but I'll always still ask for a verbal response as well. So you can calibrate what is this person's sensitivity like? Um, and if you keep the nervous system calm and the tissues remain relaxed and soft, you can access those deeper tissues just amazingly quickly. And I think the big benefit as well, instead of, like you said, pushing deep into the body too quickly, is you are not just trying to treat the dysfunctional tissue that you have identified, but you're normalizing texture and function in every layer from the skin all the way down to that tissue. So it's more profound because everything is being treated.

SPEAKER_01

And then eight and nine.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Oh, eights and nines. Yeah, we didn't, we only went up to seven. So when you get to uh eights, people start like changing their breathing, they're really flinching quite significantly. Eights and nines in particular, they'll start to tap out. There's a reason why in martial arts people will use that as a signal, it's because it's the last ditch. Oh my god, I can't take this. Yeah, when you get to a true 10, the person will involuntarily pull away. They cannot bear that intensity. So we never go up to that. Occasionally you'll hit fives and sixes where the person will go, they'll flinch, their breathing will change, they'll either breath hold, they'll take in a sharp breath, there'll be some visible and also audible response with these kind of non-verbal kind of things because you will hear the change in breath. So as soon as we hear that, we back off a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

And the fact is that when you pump the tissues, get the nervous system to calm down within a few seconds, you can get deeper again. So it's just really taking your time to tune into the person, to be present, to connect with what you're doing, and to just allow the process to um evolve and that you can really work down layer by layer by layer, and there's no rush, and it actually happens really quick because you're bringing the calm to the situation, and their nervous system actually starts to relax and work with you. It's pretty phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02

And as I say, the second the second you put your hands on someone, there's already that nervous system, we're already stimulating your serotonins, your oxytocins, your dopamines, etc. Like we're actually allowing that just from first touch. Um I I also believe that breath workers take breath work has a large point of this um as someone is breathing, uh exhaling that they thought you can actually get in a little bit. Um you can hear the tissue, you can kind of be directed by the tissue in that kind of space as well. So I think that there's real value on not having that. God, this is killing me. Um there's a question. There's a couple of people with hearts and claps. And things. Um, but um Libby, John's Aflarity, has got a question here about treatment times. Sometimes I struggle a bit with timing because I want to get the history and the holistic look at their story. I sometimes seek to run out of time and not get as much done as I would have liked in an hour. What do you think about a 90-minute session? Too much input for the body? What do you think is an ideal time to have a client on the table for?

SPEAKER_06

Well, we'd always say, you know, there's no such thing as right or wrong when it comes to therapy. There is more or less appropriate, depending on your stated goal. So I think when you're working in this kind of gentle way with the nervous system, you're not overloading the body. You know, like an old school, aggressive, beat you up therapy session is like a really heavy session in the gym. You need a lot of time to recover. Whereas you go for a gentle walk, you don't really need much time to recover. So I don't know that you have to have longer or shorter treatment sessions. It depends on the style of work that you're doing. But I will frequently treat clients for two and even three hours. So I don't think you're overloading the nervous system with this type of work.

SPEAKER_02

Um you hate the cock.

SPEAKER_06

That's exactly what I was about to say. Because when Libby said that, it's like, well, the simple answer is charge more and see fewer clients. So when you charge more, you have flexibility. I frequently will do this because we are so involved in education and all of the different projects around that that I see very few clients at this point now in my career that I tend to see people by referral. So it's usually other therapists who send me their really tricky cases, which I love. And um I will tend to see maybe two or three clients in a day. I allow big gaps so that I can spend a lot more time with somebody if I need to. And because I charge significant charge rates, I generally don't charge them any extra if I'm doing 90 minutes instead of an hour. So to have that versatility, uh, Benny Vaughan states this quite well. He says, I don't sell time, I sell results.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Oh, that's a great quote. I don't sell time, I sell results. And that's so uh that's about having people that recognize the outcomes, and the outcomes better be long-lasting. Because you know, people leave in two days' time, they come back and say, I've got a new pain. I don't know that I can imagine that would ever happen with you, Auri, but what would happen on that odd occasion? Do you get them back for free?

SPEAKER_06

So if the the person is, like I said, because I'm I'm generally working by referral, I will do oftentimes just one treatment to see if I can get to the bottom of what the primary cause is. Because I always think a fresh pair of eyes, I find this when I send clients to other people as well, it's always useful. People will spot something different. Everybody brings their own unique lens to every single treatment. So, what I will oftentimes do is I will provide treatment, but also provide a report. So I'll send that person back to their original therapist saying, This is what needs to be focused on for the follow-up session. So I'm not always doing the follow-up sessions, sometimes I do. Um, I would say that I still am going to charge people for a follow-up session. So if it was something like um, you know, sometimes after a treatment session, I will do a taping for somebody, and you might say, come back in three days, because the neurological effects of the tape is diminishing. And after about three days, you're still getting the physiological, like if you're doing a joint support or something like that. But from a neural processing point of view, you're better off retaping after three days. If I'm just going to take them in for 10-15 minutes and do uh re-evaluation and retaping, I probably won't charge them for that. But more often I would say, well, if you need a follow-up session, there's this the stuff that we refer to these as the Golden Gate Bridge clients, where you start their toes, you work your way to their head, and by the time you get there, you start back at the toes. Uh, because the Golden Gate Bridge takes four years to paint, and the paint lasts four years. So when they get to one end, it's time to start at the other end again.

SPEAKER_01

Um, so maybe five, 10% of the population need pretty regular treatment.

SPEAKER_06

It's pretty small. Most people, I think, I would always say like therapy really doesn't fix anything. Therapy creates a moment in time, a window of opportunity where you can move more with less pain. So you need to make use of that time to do something, to add something to your week, to your daily routine that is helping to offset maybe your working posture, the fact that you have to sit at a desk, or as therapist, you have to stand leaning over a client. Treatment will get you to the point that you can now maintain yourself, but you must maintain yourself. And this is where things like taping, I think the food and floss, uh self-cupping, there's a lot of the kind of the general sort of stretches. Like there aren't really that many problematic muscles in the body. You know, we did our essential eight series, we also did a free uh essential eight stretches where we'd go, there's kind of one muscle in each part of the body that is most commonly dysfunctional, contributes to the broadest number of conditions, and you find if you took 100 people in off the street, 99 of them are gonna have issues with those simple eight muscles. So it's the the real shortcut to achieving really good results. Obviously, everybody is a unique little snowflake, but their petal out of flower, whatever you want to snowflake has some negative connotations. Um everybody is unique and they'll they'll have they'll have other elements, but these are predictable patterns of dysfunction that we're gonna find are at the root cause of a whole slew of seemingly different conditions within a given area of the body. So that really helps people a lot because it gives them that that quick roadmap to achieving superb results. And I think if you even just did a few of those stretches, because not even every client needs to do all eight of those stretches, if they're doing two or three and then maybe one or two simple strengthening exercises, they should be able to offset any kind of repetitive kind of stuff that might be associated either with their sport, their hobby, or their job.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay, they're all good questions. I remember us looking at um the tibialis posterior as being one of those nasty little bad boys, but I'm thinking, I don't actually know a stretch that's effectively going to work the tip post.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah. So this is where for a lot of people, a short type posterior tibialis will tend to cause anterior shunt of the talus, which will limit dorsiflexion. So, this is what I'm saying. A lot of people are in this kind of catch-22 where they're too stuck to do their rehab. And therapy really breaks the log jam that if you can soften up the posterior tip enough, you can get the talus properly centric again, increase the person's dorsiflexion. Now they can actually stretch and maintain extensibility in their posterior tibialis.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So you're you'd be working it at a four or or less within the tip post, which is quite tricky because it's yeah, a lot of nerve endings in that space. And and I love it, love it, love it that this is a great idea because there's so many people that get in there and beat the crap out of the calves, the lower limb, tip post. Uh yeah, it just it's brutal.

SPEAKER_06

So even if you take nothing home from this, everybody, to be gentle within that's that space to allow it's incredibly sensitive on most people, and yet we work it at a four out of ten. It's simply work your way down through the layers of fibers that if you go in aggressive, as Eric Dalton often says, you know, getting in there with your grubby little fingers, if you go sticking in really aggressively, the person is going to leap off the table. But if you keep the point of contact, we we talk about the overarching principles. There's about uh eight of them that are going to really enhance your practice. And one of them is work from superficial to deep. And then we talk about intensity, where we'd say the four elements of intensity are area, angle, pressure, and pace. So you should always be able to decrease or increase the intensity to match the client's sensitivity and the tissues that you're working on. So with posterior tip, I would say flatten out your fingers. Use the length of the pad of the finger rather than the tip of the finger. Pump those tissues to hydrate them, go through graded exposure to calm the nervous system, mobilize that layer of fascia, and then go down to the next increment. You know, you're not going massively deep. You might only be going a millimeter or two deeper. But as you work your way through, within 10-15 minutes of relatively pain-free uh myofascial work on posterior tibialis, it's not sensitive anymore. You know, you can go in quite strong, and the person won't experience that same soreness.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I find even using the cup if they're in a prone position and you're using a cup and you're getting them to um move a little slow towards you. Yeah, they uh as you're moving the cup up, you're getting them the movement they're creating from the inside and the cup lifting the superficial layers, you get a really rapid release in posterior tip.

SPEAKER_06

It's a good example of like how a dysfunctional muscle like posterior tip can mimic a lot of other conditions because you had a recent case in a young golfer, who else crippled with pain, couldn't walk, they had so much pain in their foot. And of course, they were told they plant her fasciitis because it was in the sole of the foot, but it was in the arch. So it's the attachment side of posterior tip. And by treating posterior tip, and then there was a lot of adhesion kind of through the tarsal tunnel. So the cupping really helped to free up the tissues, along with, like we'd always say, like pump and stretch. So you kind of pump and then you drag the fascia in different directions. But the cup was being used to create space and drag. So you're kind of multitasking, which is one of the things that I think really leads to those fast results that really are quite startling.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, one technique doing multiple things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So do you have with within the streaming platform or or on your holistic college Dublin website? Do you have courses that people can do in um in cupping?

SPEAKER_06

Uh we do, we we have an in-person course that we do called therapeutic tools. So it's using vacuum cups. Well, actually, doing myofascial work first, because obviously you want to do the hands-on. We do myofascial work, then we do uh cupping, we use um scraper tools. People call it like guacha and grass down and all the rest. I kind of like I like to call things by what they do. It's like it's a scraper, you know, creates fascial abrasion. Uh, and then we use some cryotherapy and we do some kinesio taping as well. The combination of those is just phenomenal. So we probably will get around to adding that. We do have an assessment and taping course that people can do, but we haven't actually filmed it's kind of it's been in the pipeline, the back burner for a while, but we probably will get around to filming that and do a whole comprehensive treatment.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the taping course is really good because it has all of the orthopedic assessments for each part of the body as well, so you can really hone in on the structure that needs work, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

And then the taping application to and that that's kind of the difference between like on our website, like I said, people can buy individual courses like that, like uh virtual classes, micro modules. Some of them are quite long, some of them quite short, but it's like a single purchase. Now, the advantage of supposed is that you have it forever, and with a lot of them, there's actually certification. But a lot of therapists just they want to know techniques, you know. That's the thing you always hear in seminars: technique, technique, technique. And I think that's the advantage with the streaming. I don't know if we can maybe share uh screen and maybe show um a little bit of what's on our um we call it watch hcd.ie because our website, there we go, is hcd.ie. So we have this kind of like a rolling banner that we've literally just coming out today is episode four. It comes out a little bit earlier on our watch platform. Um, we have our Periformus Paradox, we have a load of different techniques coming here, some TMJ stuff, but we have separated this out into categories. People recognize this from other streaming uh services that you have like introductory to sports, so we have our whole conditioning sequence. Some of these are quite long, like nearly half an hour just on the back of the leg, where we explain as well as demonstrate the techniques. Then we have our holistic therapies, there's like reflexology, hand reflexology, which is quite an unusual one. We have corrective manual therapy, so this is a whole series. Uh I think actually that's that we're talking about the anterior shunt of the uh talus, that's our uh taller correction for taller dysfunction. That's a bit over an hour, that video. Uh, we have tibial trouble, you know. There's there's a whole range of things here. We have a lot of our shorts, but like our seminar stuff is in here. So assessments for the shoulder, uh, assessments for the knee and foot. There's more of these being added. Here's one of our treating trap nerves. This is the upper extremity part. Each of these videos is kind of 40 minutes to an hour, and you can see this is real classroom stuff. We use some of our augmented reality. Um so a huge amount of content in there. Um, or there's seminar uh for the hip, knee, and ankle. So that kind of like lower extremity kinetic chain stuff where we're talking about that all-important pelvic torsion correction. Um, we have shoulder, neck, arm, and hand. So these are whole big long seminars. There's then some of the other stuff we did, like um our interviews, our podcasts are there, and then we have our coming soon. So we're gradually releasing our essential eight. So next one up, as we said, is peripherus, and then we have locking lumbers. So this is, like I said, maybe 50% of our content. There's a whole slew more that is yet to be added. Some self-treatment. There's a nice video there showing different methods of therapists treating themselves or facet dysfunction. You know, there's a whole shin splints, yeah. Tons and tons of stuff.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, terrific. That looks great.

SPEAKER_01

Um, showing at eight uh 8.99 euro. So in Aussie dollars, that's like 14.95 um a month.

SPEAKER_06

And there's a three-day free trial, so people can actually just log on, have a little bit of a browse around, see if there's stuff in there that's of interest. I'm sure they'll find plenty. Our feedback so far has been phenomenal. Uh, I believe where you said Libby is on. Hi, Libby, how are you getting on? Uh Libby gave us some great feedback as well. She said, I didn't hesitate, I jumped in, I got the whole annual subscription. So you can save another 20% by buying an annual subscription, or like I said, try the three-day free trial. If you like it, you can sign up for a month at a time and it's uh $8.99 in Aussie dollars, it's $14.95 terabytes.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, it's uh everything's a lot in Australia. Yes, Libby sent a really handy course of therapeutic tools. So um just pulled her on to be with me as well. But uh, she she and I were actually both over in Costa Rica last month with Eric doing Eric Dalton's uh course on myoskeletal alignment techniques. Yeah, that was he is great.

SPEAKER_06

It's one of my favorite classrooms in the world. That that uh classroom in Costa Rica is just amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, the first day we were there, we were she said, I just want to see a toucan. I was like, we actually call them toucans, but she's like a toucan because it's on the the the um Guinness.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah the next morning we were sitting down having um having coffee, Costa Rican coffee, and I'm sitting down looking at the the louvers, and I said, there's a toucan out there, and then the next thing there was two, three, four of them right outside our our window on the tree, bang, and uh the the guy said they they never see them. So these four toucans, because I said there's falcons, four cans, um were there for Libby. It was pretty amazing. Um I was gonna say what we might do is I might just get um we might throw to a little advertisement for the fabulous Q Academy because I get lost in translation and forget, but I'll this is some of the most amazing things that you can get uh if you are interested in doing a sea change into remedial massage or um myotherapy.

SPEAKER_00

So my name is Jade Afu. I studied uh CERT for massage in 2014 and then went on to remedial in 2015. I was working in Essex, I was retail, yeah, Lorna Jane. The real reason why I went and studied was I my daughter was um she's been quite sick for about seven years on and off. She's had a couple of um chronic conditions. So um I found it hard working in a job and then having to leave because my children are sick, or I've got to go to hospital, or there's just so many things going on. For me, I needed another option. I've been set up for about eight years now. Um, working from home, having a home business has been like such a blessing to my life. I I don't think I could have done what I've done somewhere else just with my own circumstances. My life's very busy, I've got three kids. Um, and this year has been a little bit different again because now I've got three kids playing sports every afternoon. Um, so I do try if I can work in between school hours. I feel like you can make it work to your advantage. So you can either work as hard as you want and be stressed and all the things, or you can make it flexible.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks so much. And the the fantastic stories that you would hear every day, right?

SPEAKER_06

Oh, yes, yeah. I was gonna say it's really interesting that it really is the same around the world. Like having taught seminars on four different continents, you hear the same kind of things that people have such passion for therapy. There is those advantages of it being a lifelong career. You can endlessly develop. I think we're a pretty good example of that where we continue to study ourselves. Um, that there's always new stuff to keep you excited, engaged, and learning. And you're working with people, you know, you're helping people. That it's not, you know, something that you'd say is, you know, no face-to-face interaction where you're just on a computer all the time, or it's very superficial if you're in retail, that people are coming and going. How much are you really impacting those people's lives? Whereas when you do therapy, you are getting people out of pain, you're improving function, you're getting them back to the things they love doing. I mean, it's just amazing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's an incredible space. And it's all about touch, and it's all about the um, I always say thank you to every person who comes into my clinic because you are allowing me to physically connect with you. And that happens with hairdressers, beauty therapists, uh, massage therapists, and and in unwellness, like you know, the nurse that has to roll the patient over, etc. etc. But we have the luxury of of or the beauty of being able to touch. In a world that it stopped, and then when COVID hit, it really was evident that people were starved for touch. Yeah, people don't realize uh the responsibility we have as therapists.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. We always say, like the the amount of communication, the depth of communication, the volume of information that is transmitted through touch is phenomenal. Like Tom Myers does a great exercise where he has people kind of go hand to hand like this and say, Okay, match my movements, and even moving in three dimensions, the person has no problem matching the movements. When you compare that to visual, so if we take our hands apart and I say, Ali, match my movements, it's much harder. And then if we go audio and I start describing it, there's no way she's going to keep up. So you probably know this. I I know I do an awful lot of video editing, and you'd relate to or people will probably like downloading files. Audio files are pretty small, video files are much bigger. If we were to have true haptic files, they would be enormous.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So when you think about almost like bitrate, the amount of information that can be conveyed, touch is unparalleled. So when you're working on your clients, the communication between your nervous system and them at a level that we aren't even consciously aware of is just phenomenal. That the the connection, we always use this term connection because you can't work on somebody and not connect. I think if you if you were that kind of person, I'd only get last in therapies. So yeah, you're making that very, very deep connection uh with every single person that you work on.

SPEAKER_01

And changing life.

SPEAKER_02

Stephen Le uh Levin Levin, he's uh involved with again the the fascial side because that's where everyone talks at a different level. Um as we said earlier, some of us are fascial, some of us uh uh live uh live, some of us are neural. I I agree, it's a it's a holistic package, it has to be as well like a holistic college of double. Um but they have uh do a uh a facial integrity party, and it's uh it's uh podcaster or you the YouTube, but that's the same thing, is it's the the when they make that phone call to make a booking, we're already starting at a neurological level. And then it's just accelerated with the haptic process where we're actually talking, touching, receiving and acknowledging their problems because a lot of times people don't acknowledge like someone's had chronic back pain. And their par their family are non-supportive because they're sick and tired of hearing you being sick and tired. And then they come in to see us and they feel nurtured. I think it's it's it's the whole bag. It's that but it stems from them realizing that that you honor them and prepared to to have help on their healing, their healing journey, not us healing them. I hate that when people say, oh, you've healed me or you've cured me.

SPEAKER_03

Oh it's terrible.

SPEAKER_06

We always say in class, you know, that's that's the real F word that we don't allow in class, fix and we don't fix, we facilitate, we help, we assist, uh, we hold space, we do all those things, but it's their own repair mechanism, they're doing the work, we're just helping them along on their path. But I think it's awesome you say about the people being very into fascia, and you do definitely have like unfortunately, people tend to fall into camps. You'll have the the fascial camp and then you have the neural camp, and they nearly want to just fight their corner. Not everybody, there's some people that are much, much more broad in their views. But I would always say that some people think everything we do, every response we see in the body is fascial, and other people think everything is neural. And I go, there's some stuff that's definitely fascial, there's some stuff that's definitely neural that we really need to pay attention to both, that you need to work the tissues in a way that is helping the fascia to unstick and start to move better, but also talk nice to the brain, you know, communicate well with the nervous system, that you're getting the best of both worlds.

SPEAKER_03

I love this.

SPEAKER_06

It explains me how much that divide is still kind of exists, where people just they they have a particular um person that they're listening to, uh, or I don't know, camp they subscribe to, or a lens through which they look. And if we treat people as just fascia, you're missing a lot. Unfortunately, it was the opposite way around for years, and I think fascia did have to step into the light and claim its place. Uh, and that is absolutely fantastic. It has informed our practice so well. But we do need to address the other systems in the body because people aren't just fascia, they're not just a nervous system, they're not just a skeletal system.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's exactly right. And and I'm gonna do a quick plug for me, but aside from everything else, because I never plug myself in in any of these anyway. But I'm so excited because I'm working with the guys from the Think uh Think Tree Hub, which is from London, the UK. Yeah, it's Kushmer, yeah, yeah. So he's my tutor right now, um, and I'm doing it, getting the level three diploma in Chapman's Reflex Reset. Paul and Nutting method. Uh thank you, Libby, for throwing that in at me. Um, but we are the whole thing is working on the neuro lymphatic because we know that the neural system and the lymphatic system are so closely connected with with communication and the myofascia. So it's actually trying to find a way that we can honor all three systems that are going to affect all of our soft tissue anyway, and bone and joint. So uh, yes, that's a small mindful thing about me that's irrelevant. Uh, but told to me if people want to get like you were talking about the streaming platform, the interviews that's the interviews that you had down there with with uh uh different people that were there.

SPEAKER_06

Uh um, like um yeah, with Eric Dalton, Til Luca, James Zlawski, Whitney Lowe, uh in there, Sue Hitzman. Um, there's one that we did I thought was interesting as well, um, where it was a therapist and we were doing kind of a little bit of self-treatment. So it was one of these telehealth things during COVID that people might want to check out as well. Just again, looking at the the self-treatment, self-care part of things as well. That can be quite a good one. That's with Suki from the the UK. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Are you getting anyone who's like asking if if people want to have anyone particular? Like, are you doing a uh I'd like to have someone talk about such and such and then then sourcing them out?

SPEAKER_01

We always ask people to leave comments and to tell us what they're interested in, because uh particularly in the class situation, um, we'll mention something casually, and the students are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what was that? Um never heard that mentioned before. So we take an awful lot of stuff as a given and because we were brought up with the whole philosophy. Um, so it's really nice to know where maybe there's some gaps in people's knowledge, and you you can you know hone in on that.

SPEAKER_06

Well, that was kind of the uh initial impetus for starting the podcast that myself and Ali talk therapy all the time. I mean, our other family members are always like, oh, here we go again. Um because it it is just what we are absolutely obsessed with. And there's things like that that uh, you know, sometimes we'll be talking about a particular research paper. We did some really good ones recently, um, stuff that kind of either highlights a mechanism or an outcome for manual therapy. Like there was one that I thought that was really good, uh Robert Schleip was involved with, where they were looking at treatment of non-specific low back pain. And they managed to actually do sham treatment, which I always would have thought was a bit of a barrier to research in relation to body work because anytime you put your hands on somebody, if there's any kind of therapeutic intent, there's going to be some change. Like you said, that communication is happening regardless. But they managed to do sham treatment versus myofascial techniques on the low back, and they measured things like the increase in blood flow. So they were able to see a significant increase at the time of treatment, but an even bigger increase an hour later. So they were looking at how freeing up fascia opens up those capillaries, both the blood circulatory capillaries, but also the lymphatic capillaries, that it was measurable. They were able to quantify it. They were saying that there was a gosh, I forgot to remember the figures off the top of my head. I think it was maybe a 30% increase at the time of treatment and then a 50% increase. Yeah, it's it's in our podcast anyway. So where Ali's saying about we talk about stuff in class, and people are going, never heard of that. We're going, maybe the conversations we're having we should actually record so other people can, those who are interested, can uh indulge in those kind of conversations as well. And those are free, like those are on YouTube, they're on Spotify, they're obviously on our uh watch hcd.ie as well. Yeah, but those are free for people to tune into. We do them every two weeks, and it does give you that little bit of an insight into the the nerdy side of what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01

Currently, what are we thinking about? Well, you're always very mechanical and really understanding the mechanism of things. I tend to be quite intuitive and you know, go with you know, what am I feeling is uh current, what's putting your finger on the pulse and kind of feeling for where people are at and what kind of stuff they'll really relate to. So I think it's the combination of the mechanical and the intuitive that uh comes together and we evolve ideas then bouncing off each other. It's quite interesting.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, um, I'm gonna come back to something you said before because it's one of my, you know, where we said there's some I uh they're in the this camp or they're in this camp. One of the big problems that I'm seeing that, and I don't know how we're gonna build over it, is that the research camp versus the non-research camp. So massage hasn't got any research behind it. So therefore it doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_06

I was I was actually talking about this uh on the podcast that's coming out this week where uh I was talking about it in relation to kinesiotape, where one of the um academic uh sites that I subscribe to, um they send out emails, obviously, like new papers coming out all the time. And literally every second week, one week you'll get a research paper saying the evidence for um kinesiology taping for recovery from injury. And the next week there'll be one saying current evidence does not support the use of kinesiology tape, and then the next week it'll be uh kinesiology tape is fantastic for alleviating non-specific low back pain. So you get these conflicting things going along, and the there are some people that are like everything should be evidence-based, which sounds fantastic, but there are things that are hard to test. And I always think don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are techniques that we know work, and yet there may not be supporting research to describe the mechanism by which that works. And if the mechanism is not understood, the the purest research-only type people will go, oh no, we're not, we're ignoring that. And I would say, but there are many different forms of evidence that it's not all about, you know, double-blind uh trials, large-scale, randomized. The effects that you see in clinic is evidence. You know, it started off with a focus on empirical evidence, and then empirical evidence got a bad name. Yeah, and things like meta-analysis all of a sudden was elevated, and people thought, well, meta-analysis is taking this overview, it's looking at loads of different research, it's synthesizing from that and producing new information. But each has its strengths and its weaknesses. So, with the empirical evidence, there is always a certain amount of operator bias.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

But then with the meta-analysis, it's what is the criteria? What is your exclusion and inclusion criteria? That's going to change the outcome of your research. And far too often research is done with an intent. Like always said, there was a lot of research to uh promote to prove the benefits of smoking, you know, in the 50s and 60s. Or the health, the health benefits of smoking. So, depending on how you design your research, you could disprove gravity, you know, this this bizarre stuff that comes out of research. Like my favorite is uh there's no point in stretching. Stretching is a waste of time. Because one of the uh big researches they did was with uh army recruits in the US, and they had one battalion go through basic training and stretch every day, and the other battalion didn't stretch at all. And at the end, they said there was about the same number of injuries, ankle sprains, and things like that. So stretching doesn't work. You're going, but that's not a valid criteria. You're going through boot camp.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Injuries are going to occur. You know, stretching doesn't make you bulletproof, but to say then there's no benefit, and then so many people took that and ran with it, and they'd say everything should be strength trained. Strength, strength, strength, strength. And I would say, they're right about half the time. Weak muscles will benefit from being strength trained. Tight muscles will get worse if you try to strength train them because they're increasing tone and they're already hypertonic. Equally, if you try to stretch a weak muscle, it'll get worse. So stretching isn't the answer to everything either. But I loved uh, I think it was in our first podcast, we talked about uh research by Dr. Helene Langevon in Harvard. She's a one of these well-known fascial researchers, and one of her papers was stunning. It showed that stretching improved the production or increased the production of pro-inflammation resolving enzymes.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_06

So stretching is anti-inflammatory, would be a very simplistic way of stating that. So to then say that there's no evidence to support stretching, you're going, what's your criteria? So depending on your bias, you can structure your research to show something is of benefit or show it's not, depending on your criteria. So if you find those techniques that you're doing that are working well, that are showing positive results for your client, they work. If there's research, even better. But don't stop doing techniques that are working just because there isn't yet research to prove their benefits.

SPEAKER_02

There was a great quote from Leon Chattau that said, lack of proof of efficacy is not the same as proof of lack of efficacy.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And I love it, I I hinge on that because it means so much because it's it's basically saying just because you haven't got it in a double blind, random controlled longitudinal study, doesn't mean it's not got a place, a relevant place in effective treatment management.

SPEAKER_06

And one of the things they talk about is you really only need large-scale trials when benefits are marginal. When benefits are pronounced, you don't need big numbers to prove it. If you've got 10 people who came in with back pain, and at the end of a course of treatments, those 10 people don't have back pain, you don't need 2,000 people to demonstrate efficacy. You had a 100% success rate on a small cohort.

SPEAKER_02

We're talking about n equals one. If you do enough n equal, if you do enough n equals one and you find that n equals one is of 10 of your n equals one, then that is even more validity. Like it's just showing that you've got you've got a research model that you're repetitively going through. So we can do a lot, but it's I'm glad that there's people like you guys out there that that have that same belief. I did a great one of these with Whitney Lowe on uh placebo is not a dirty work for the same reason because placebos there's there's as much evidence that placebo work is working. So, where does that come from?

SPEAKER_06

The same fashion researcher, Helene Langevan, said placebo means self-heal. You can't sell that. So we can see why it'd be a dirty word in some circles.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

There's nothing to market, there's nothing to sell. Whereas I would think that a lot of what we're doing is promoting self-repair, self-recovery, self-healing. So if if placebo can also be harnessed into that process, so much the better. It's just hard to quantify, and that's why I think a lot of researchers don't like it. And then, like I said, if you're trying to sell something, placebo is, you know, it's not that beneficial.

SPEAKER_02

And how many times do you have um a client that will come to see you and they say, I've had back pain, but I knew I was coming to see you today, and it's feeling so much better. So they're already self-healing.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah. Well, we always say that, you know, particularly for people where it's chronic and they get these uh acute reoccurrences every so often, and they'll treat it like a mystery. They'll go, I don't know why this is cleared up. And it is looking at those multiple factors. You know, what are your stress levels like? What is your your your your sleep like? What is your are you getting exercise? Are you getting fresh air? Are you eating uh nutritious food? And the I'm coming in for treatment is part of the the positive thing of oh, I've something to look forward to. That in itself can alleviate a certain amount of their stress, calms the nervous system, and it may drop them below the the threshold of sensitivity. So they're actually experiencing less pain that day.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01

But I think sometimes people can have um uh a lot of stuff that they're not actually aware of, so they can have tension building up in muscles, but it's not at the point of putting pressure on nerves and causing pain. And they tell you, oh, I just turned to pick up my cup of tea, or I just sneezed and my back went out. And it's like, look, this was building for a while. It wasn't just that sneeze that that was just yeah, the straw that broke the camel's back. So it's kind of getting them aware uh back into their own body to feel for when their stress levels are accumulating and things are starting to tighten up, that they know how to counter that and to come in in time before it gets to the point of they can't move because everything has uh tightened up and the uh nervous system is upregulated and the it's uh everything's screaming at them.

SPEAKER_02

And and recognizing the triggers, I suppose. So I'm gonna sit like this because this is my job, or I'm gonna be doing packing, so my shoulders are gonna be exhausted. Providing I am eating well, sleeping well, bloody blah de blah, um, that's not gonna I will maintain my homeostasis as best I can. But the second that I throw in my inflammatory kinins or you know, whatever happens with reduction of serotonin with lack of sleep, whatever it is, so at least if they know, all right, this is this is my this is me in this box, and don't try to add too much of those things. And if that's happening, I go and see you guys because it's my treat, it's my ice cream at the end, my dessert. Um or I factor in some time walking, or factor in a movie, or factor in something else that's gonna nurture them because the stuff that's coming in is non-nurturing, I suppose.

SPEAKER_06

That's interesting, like you're saying about a physical activity, like you know, lifting boxes or packing shelves. What people have to recognize is that stressors are good for us. It's not being able to recover or ongoing stress, accumulative stress, is not good for us, but stressors are actually beneficial. That's why people go to the gym. And equally, I would say pain has been treated as the enemy. Pain is really useful. Pain brings your attention to something so that you hopefully will do something about it. I think the problem for most people is they don't know what to do about it and they just want to stop the pain. They want to switch off the alarm clock. You think about the amount of people who will do their home care while they're symptomatic, and then as soon as their symptoms have gone, they completely forget about doing their home care. Unless it's become habituated. I always say, like, home care should be quick and simple. You should be able to do it in under five minutes, ideally, two to three minutes, and you should build it into part of your daily routine so that it does continue beyond just the trigger of pain. But pain is the good thing. Pain is your friend, so long as it doesn't go on too long, like a stressor.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Such good words. Um, what one of the girls, Tracy said, I love the holistic approach and passion. It's so exciting listening to experience, common sense, intelligence for the individual, individuality of every client. So that's just amazing. There are a few people that have said thank you very much. It was fabulous. Oh, that was the two cans. Um, but there's been a lot of people that have said thank you. Uh, great advice, um, etc. etc. So we've actually managed to knock over an hour very quickly. I want people to understand if they want to get in more information about the streaming platform. What's what's the is it at uh where do we go?

SPEAKER_06

So they can go to our website. Uh our website is hcd.ie, so holistic college dublin hcd, and then irish domains are usually.ie uh they can link through to the streaming service from that. There's a watch uh button in the navbar, or they can just go to watch.hcd.ie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so hc watch.hcd yeah, dot ie. Fantastic. There it is again below us.

SPEAKER_06

So interviews, seminars, micro modules, podcasts, meditation, maybe soon to come, meditation and more stretching classes as well, where we want to do a lot more of the simple rehab that people can do because I think a lot of therapists are a little bit nervous about recommending uh home care. So having kind of targeted simple exercises, even stuff that they can send their clients. I always recommend if you're gonna do home care with your client in clinic at the end of a session, ask them for their phone and video them doing it because then they have the video of them on their phone.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. I do the same thing actually, and then I go one little step further. Is I will at the end of the session, I'll get on and do a zoom, like it just straight away and go, hey Aubrey, it was really good to treat you today. I'm just recapping on the things. Remember, the shoulders were hitching, this is the area we're going to be doing, blah, blah, blah. And then I will upload that and send that to them so that they have that in the clinic reminder because they kind of go, okay, she was I was lying on my side and I was doing this clam or I was doing this stretch. But that's just because I like to be annoying and harass people.

SPEAKER_06

I'm sure the clients greatly appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02

I think that they kind of get a little bit more of a feel connected, and it's taking that connection back home. And that's kind of where my like I still think that there's so much of this and and this that helps repair everything else. Uh Laura just said thoroughly enjoyed all of your valuable information. Thank you, and thank you from Gillian. Thanks again from Libby. Guys, thank you so much for coming on board. It's been an absolute pleasure. People jump on board and get into the platform because um I've known Aubrey for quite a while now. First time I've met Ali, and um, I can see and feel the passion that you two are both adding, and can only be beneficial for all of the um the our therapists, but also the clients and patients that they treat. So thank you so much for coming on board. And uh hopefully I might be lucky enough that you'll invite me to one of your podcasts.

SPEAKER_06

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate you inviting us, Paula. It's great to have an opportunity to catch up with you and to talk to your audience as well.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, thanks so much. All right, everybody, I'm not sure who we'll have next month. I'm hoping that I might be able to grab a couple of sneakies. I'm looking for Robert Schleip or Carla Stecker, but we'll see how we go with those. But anyway, be healthy, happy, healthy, well. Stay hydrated if you're in the northern side and you're hot, and warm up with warm drinks and warm stuff if you're down here in freezing Australia. Thanks everybody. Bye.

SPEAKER_04

Bye.