Positive Health Online

It has been a great year for our therapy in 2019. Lots of new students have joined us, some previous graduates have come for updates and we have expanded into the USA! On top of that, one of our existing practitioners won the Complementary Health Professionals (CHP) “Therapist of the Year" Award. To help celebrate all of these great achievements, I asked our new American practitioner, Cindy Kelly MCHP, and our Award winner, Clare Hudson MCHP, to share some of their experiences working with this amazing light touch therapy. For those of you that have not read our previous articles in Positive Health Magazine on how this light touch, non-invasive therapy works for musculoskeletal and neurological conditions, please do look back at our article history, or check out our website at www.neuroskeletal.org  where you will also find the contact details for the therapists mentioned.

Clare Hudson

Firstly, I will share some great case studies from our award winner, Clare who runs her practice in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. Clare (pictured in her therapy room with her winner's certificate from CHP), qualified in 2005 and has treated a wide range of conditions with NSRT. She sees mostly clients with back pain, migraine, shoulder pain and neck pain or stiffness. It was difficult for her to choose which case studies to share with me for this article but one of her most memorable treatments where she had almost miraculous results was on a 5 year boy. He had had a traumatic birth, having been wedged in his mother’s pelvis and during the emergency caesarean section, the doctors ‘tugged hard’ to get the baby out. He was born healthy and everything was fine, although his left foot was inverted. As time went by, the mother noticed that her son’s jaw was misaligned which was more obvious when he smiled but more problematic was the inverted foot. He often fell over whilst walking and when trying to run, he would trip over the foot. The day after his NSRT treatment, his mother saw that the foot and lower leg had straightened! However, it only lasted a couple of days in the new position before reverting to the former inverted position. After the 2nd treatment, Jack’s foot actually worsened for a few days before again straightening for 2 days. By the 4th treatment, the mother noticed a big difference in the way Jack was standing. His leg was a lot straighter, as was his jaw. It actually took nine treatments for Jack’s foot to stay straight permanently and the reason is that he needed to also build up the calf muscle on the left leg, which the change in walking position allowed. It was amazing that NSRT had worked so wonderfully on this young boy, without any need for any splint or foot brace, or surgery.

Clare also reported the great results she has had with a 41 year old man, who works as a builder. He presented with lower back pain around L4-5 and being self-employed, was concerned about the time away from work he was taking due to his back issues. As we always do a full postural analysis, Clare also observed restriction in neck rotation. He experienced sensations during the treatment as many people do such as tingling, pulsing, shifting and heat. After the third treatment the pain had reduced to nothing more than the occasional twinge and the stiff neck had eased. At this point, Clare was able to treat his muscles with massage to alleviate any residual muscle tightness. He had also noticed that his swing had changed when playing golf due to his improved alignment! After this session, his back pain practically disappeared and has since recommended many people to Clare for treatment.

Cindy Kelly with Carole Preen

In August 2019, our first USA graduate received her diploma. Cindy Kelly (pictured with Carole Preen - tutor) runs her practice, CLK Healing Hands, in Hyde Park, Chicago, which as well as NSRT includes a range of specialist massage treatments and she is a licensed massage therapist. Most of the people who learn NSRT have trained in massage; this is not essential, but you do need to have studied anatomy, physiology and pathology at level 3 or higher as a prerequisite. Although Cindy has only been practising as a qualified NSRT practitioner for 4 months, she undertook a large number of case studies during her training and had a great deal of interesting and exciting results to share.

One client came following surgery on her knee. She also presented with a left sided facial paralysis. As she was putting her shoes on after the first session, Cindy noticed a change in her speech and asked her client to look at her whilst she spoke. Cindy saw to her amazement that the client was now using the left side of her mouth to talk. On the third session whilst working on the face points, the client felt her face muscles contracting for the first time in 35 years! The client has requested bi-weekly treatments to try and quicken the changes and her family and friends are all amazed at the difference.

Another interesting case was a client who presented with left hip pain that made it impossible for her to sleep. She needed a hip replacement but was trying to put it off. Because of her imbalance when walking from the hip pain, she started having knee and shoulder issues. After the first session of NSRT her hip pain had decreased and her knees felt much easier. By the third session, all the pain had gone. She was able to sleep now on her left side without discomfort. Her orthopaedic surgeon suggested she get her joint replacement surgery in the New Year as her bone is degenerating, so the surgery is scheduled for January 2020, but currently she is in no pain!

Cindy has also worked successfully on a client with rotator cuff issues relating to an old injury. The client was quite sceptical about this therapy at first, as most people are, but was willing to give it a try. Before the NSRT session she could not raise her right arm up past her waist. When she got up off the treatment couch she actually used her arm to push herself up off the table and after realizing this, she was shocked! She then raised both arms up above her head freely and needless to say, she is now a complete convert and recommends Cindy to everyone she knows. Cindy will be working with Carole to introduce NSRT training to the USA and this is something we hope to set into motion within the next year.

Even when people come to me for training though my school Natural Therapeutics, I get students to work on clients with real problems whilst they are learning the technique. Recently, Mirco was training with me and he had great results even after the first treatment he had ever given with NSRT. Two days after the treatment, the client sent a text saying "My neck is feeling fabulous. I don't understand how your therapy works but it does!"

As a practitioner, I have many similar stories that I can share and it is so great for me to be able to support my graduates and celebrate their successes in this article. I can share a couple of my more recent treatment results. One of the most common conditions we see in practice is sciatica and for us, this is one of the easiest conditions to treat, especially where the underlying cause is a postural misalignment that is causing impingement on the sciatic nerve from gluteal muscle tightness. I recently treated a middle-aged man who had been suffering with referred pain down both legs for years. He also presented with mid-thoracic pain and I noticed quite a few issues during the postural assessment. Not all clients contact you to let you know how their treatment has gone, but in this case, I saw his sister-in-law a short while after who had recommended me and she commented how amazed the family were. Apparently, they had never been in a position where he had not been complaining about his referred leg pain and it had completely gone after just one treatment! Cindy Kelly actually reported a similar recent result when sending across her case studies to be included in this article. She has been treating a runner who had sciatic pain that was so intense that she could no longer partake in her beloved sport. After two sessions of NSRT, she is pain free and has gone back to training for marathons.

I have also been seeing a middle-aged gentleman who presented with lower back pain. Again, he had been recommended to me by a former client and that is one of the great things about practising this therapy – we never need to advertise as our clients are our best form of advertising. Over the years, I have seen entire families, or an entire group of friends who play golf together, or employees at a particular workplace. Word goes around and everyone knows someone who could use our help with this therapy. As anticipated, after two sessions his back pain has greatly reduced to the point where he is able to function normally again. He will come for a further session in the New Year and I may incorporate massage treatment. Usually, we do not like to mix therapies but we will do whatever is best for the individual client. The NSRT treats the underlying problem and then we may need to give massage therapy to deal with any long term issues in the muscles, to release old adhesions and release fascia that has become stuck. The type of massage we employ is not the ‘fluff and buff’ you would get at a spa session, but is remedial deep tissue work using a range of techniques, including myofascial release, trigger point therapy and acupressure work. This means that it can be uncomfortable at times as we work gently but deeply into the muscle and we will often ask you to take deep breaths when releasing. If we do use massage and NSRT in the same session, we will always do the massage first as after the NSRT your body needs to be left alone. Indeed, after NSRT we always advise our clients not to do any form of exercise for 48 hours as the body needs time to make its adjustments. This is one of the reasons the therapy is so successful in that it is your body making the changes, without need for physical manipulation and it treats the whole body every time, dealing with compensatory effects.

Further Information

If you would like to find out about training in NSRT, the full course details are found on my website: www.naturaltherapeutics.co.uk/courses . I also offer a range of diploma courses and quality online CPD. If you would like to find out about receiving a treatment yourself, please go to the Neuroskeletal Re-alignment Therapy page at www.neuroskeletal.org.uk/find-a-therapist  to find your nearest practitioner.