I have spent my life forging practical connections between western physical therapy and east asian therapies such as Chinese Medicine and Shiatsu. For me the bridge between the two lies in how movement patterns develop. In the 1980’s I specialised in working with babies and observed a strong relationship between the way movement develops in the first year or so of life and the traditional meridians of Chinese medicine. Many researchers into human development believe that these first stages of movement development form the foundation for the growth of personality, postural patterns and even life patterns. So by working with movement, you can not only repattern the way in which people use their body but create a more general flexibility where emotional, relationship and life patterns can re-adjust themselves to create ease rather than conflict. For me this is the meaning of the Chinese word Qi. By working in the physical domain you can affect the whole psycho-social aspect of a person. My work is called Movement Shiatsu (when incorporated into east-asian therapies) and Developmental Process Therapy when used within western physical therapies.
Now I run the Postgraduate Programme at the School for Experiential Education and teach postgraduate courses, which many types of physical therapists attend, in Switzerland, Spain, Holland, Germany, Austria, Greece, Italy, Israel, Canada, Australia and the UK.
As well as my background in Shiatsu, I trained in Developmental Movement Therapy and in Voice Based Psychotherapy using voicework from the tradition of Alfred Wolfson and Roy Hart. I studied Chinese Herbal Medicine with Ted Kaptchuk, Body-Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Feldenkrais Method with Moshe Feldenkrais. For five years, I was a trainer for the Gestalt Trust’s psychotherapy training programme in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In 1987 I founded the School for Experiential Education as a centre for learning Movement based therapies.
I have had a varied career in parallel with my therapeutic work: I was a teacher in Islington Schools during the 70’s then taught in London University while studying for a PhD in theoretical physics. I next got a job teaching media techniques in the Central School of Speech and Drama and then as a researcher in Brunel University.
In 1985 I started to synthesise all the strands of my work into a form of therapy, which focused on helping people to explore themselves and process issues through the body.
My central belief is that we, as individuals, are not wise enough to know what is best for another person. Therefore, I don’t try to understand what to do by diagnosis and theory. Instead, I focus on helping people to feel into themselves through their body sensations, and trust their natural life process to do the therapeutic work. My work is now more like education than therapy. Since I believe the meridians to be the pathways along which the mind learns to inhabit the body in childhood, they provide one of the best ways of helping a person’s awareness to reach hidden and blockaded parts of the self. The meridians are the guides, teaching us about ourselves through the body.
I have written many articles exploring this approach, some of which are available online. At present I am in the middle of writing a book about it.