Launching the Trust Method
So here it is. My natural health offering, The TRUST Method.
Us medical scientists love an acronym and when I was attempting to come up with one (and failed miserably - big thank you to you Emily for helping me!), I wanted it to try and capture everything I offer in a word that had a simple meaning.
TRUST is that word. It stands for
Test - Resource - Understand - Sustain
Touch
Trust in relation to the workings and smooth running of this incredible appartus in which we're housed - the body, in my experience is about relying on it's signs and symptoms. The body's language is sensation, feeling and emotion. That's it. Very simple. And therefore very easy to trust.
Healthcare made a huge leap in 1804 when Friedrich Sertürner extracted morphine from opium, launching the first ever medicine. Since then scientists like myself in universities, biotech, pharma and nutraceuticals have compartmentalised the body and its workings into smaller and smaller parts in the attempt to solve this dysfunction or that, improve this pathway or that. The mantra has been, diagnose, hypothesise, investigate and solve. Absolutely brilliant, fascinating and hugely necessary. Thank goodness for pain killers, for anaesthesia, for ashtma inhalers, epipens, antibiotics, and the list goes on.
But let us not forget the body's sign language of symptoms and feelings. In holistic healthcare, we look at the whole body. If someone is presenting to me with migraines - it's not just that they are experiencing excrutiating pain in their head, there's a whole host of other factors playing out - research tells me that their brain chemistry is different to that of a non-migraine brain. We also know there are particular foods and environmental intolerances/allergies at play that we need to ID. Science also shows us that gut microbiome dysfunction, metal toxicity and mineral depletion contribute to migraines. So lab tests are critical to find out what's really going on and develop an individualised plan accordingly.
Once we have a science-based benchline, how can we RESOURCE ourselves? How can we continue to follow that thread of the body's signs and sensations and do something about them? By deeply listening, by slowing down, becoming quiet and giving the body an opportunity to show us it's unwindings. Breathwork, otherwise known as pranayama is such a wonderful tool to calm the mind and come into the awareness of the body, to feel for ourselves the inflammation of the dura membrane (membrane covering the brain tissues which becomes inflammed during migraines) and nourish it with the breath, softening, release and letting go of tension.
Resourcing yourself in this way provides you with such an incredible wellness tool. Breathwork, meditation and gentle yoga gives the body that beautiful opportunity to express itself as only it knows how. As Socrates said "Know thyself".
Sometimes clients come to me who've tried everything. Different medications, holistic approaches, retreats, etc. and they're still unwell. In these instances, the TRUST Method turns to ancestral patterning.
We all have a family heritage. Like us, our parents, grandparents and great grandparents, etc. experienced great joy and great pain. To be alive is to experience it all. The highs and the lows. However, sometimes, we have experiences that tip us over the edge. These are experiences that the nervous system can’t handle. It responds by producing hormones which allow us to flee, to fight, to freeze or dissociate. All these responses are completely natural, but sometimes we get triggered repeatedly and a pattern forms changing the way our DNA behaves – this is epigenetics – an external stimulus causing a change in the behaviour of our DNA either switching a metabolic process on or off.
A lot of research has been conducted in epigenetics and how patterns are passed down through the lineage. For example, in Iran, 30% of children born have the same PTSD symptoms as their parents/grandparents, yet they’ve never experienced a gunshot. Similarly we see patterns in Europeans following WW1 & 2. Through ancestral craniosacral therapy and group ancestral healing sessions, I work with clients to understand the epigenetic patterns that may have been passed down and collapse the trauma in the family lineage.
How we SUSTAIN the body with nourishment is vitally important to how it performs. If you had a new Porsche, you wouldn't put Tesco's oil in it! You'd put the highest grade oil for the optimal running of the car. However, we tend to throw all sorts down our gullets and expect our bodies not to get infected with bugs, not to get lumps and bumps, aches, pains, rashes, inflammation, or chronic diseases! Hmm?!
As dear Hypocrates said, "Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food". He had a point... and a very good one at that. We can't expect the body to heal by treating it the same way. There's much truth in Albert Einstein's definition - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity! Being precise about how we change our nutrition is what it's all about, and lab tests will show us nutrient depletions, toxicities, pathogens, enzyme deficits from which The TRUST Method develops individualised plans to overcome the underlying causes of conditions.
And last, but by no-means least... la creme de la creme.... Touch. Craniosacral therapists are trained to connect with the body with only 5grams of weight. We notice the blockages in the anatomy and physiology causing subsequent physical and emotional conditions. Its not like reiki, but it is very like cranial osteopathy. In fact craniosacral therapy follows the principles of osteopathy.
Clients come to heal physical pain, whether musculoskeletal, migraines, or gut pain; they come due to overwhelm and anxiety and the craniosacral therapy relieves the stress, providing the nervous system with greater coping capacity, very much like body-based therapy. They come following chemo, surgery, birth to support the healing of the body. Many come because they love it... personally, I was drawn to it because I'd never felt so deeply rested and relaxed as when walking out of a cranio session.
The TRUST Method puts clients first, developing science-based holistic protocols to optimise wellbeing and get to the underlying cause of conditions. We leave no stone unturned.