343 thoughts on “True Physiotherapy – Part One”

1. Kate, I’ve received Esoteric Connective Tissue Therapy sessions with you in the past and they are just remarkable. The gentleness of the movement performed on the body, heals the whole instead of just the strained parts/area.

   I learnt some gentle exercises from you of a shoulder strain and it made a difference following these gentle movements and being with my body throughout to heal it.

   I love connective tissue sessions in general, and to add body movement, is not only powerfully healing but offers a deeper form of healing. The practitioner/professional and patient/client are together as one in this healing.

   More of our physio’s should be offering this to our patients, the healing is deeper and lasts longer than just fixing the physical problem. It feels the responsibility relies on the patient/client to help themselves too instead of expecting to be fixed. There is much more to healing than we realise, much to ponder over.

2. Whatever work we do, it’s important we continue to evolve, with greater awareness we bring more to our work with patients, clients and customers. We’re never at standstill.

3. True physiotherapy is founded on integrating the way we work and live into one harmonious whole. Beautiful.

4. “The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony” – this makes me realise having a pain or restriction in the movement is not just an inconvenience, but is a part of bigger process, and simply fixing them won’t really address how and why of what is happening and true healing.

   1. Fumiyo, I agree. When the body is in pain, it is revealing to us that we have not lived lovingly and it is saying to us, stop! The question is, are we willing to listen and truly heal or are we willing to ignore and let the problem exacerbate – it responds dependent on our choices we make, it is that simple.

5. I love here Kate how you describe how you live and how you work as one and the same, for how we live outside of work surely must have an influence on the quality of our work.

6. ‘What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.’ With our linear mental approach to problem solving we are negating the awesome science where the body is actually designed to self-heal. Understanding that it is our choices that block this healing process opens to doorway to a truly holistic way of treating and healing. Issues within my body have supported me so much to look deeper into what my choices have been, some of them buried. The only way I have got to them is through the signals my body has been giving me. To me, increasingly normal – once upon a time I would have said this is something miraculous and indeed this is how I feel about the healing that has been offered and which I have accepted.

7. What I feel I am reading here is the evolution of physiotherapy. From a sole focus on physical function, compartmentalisation of the body into parts, and the at times imposing way of correcting or forcing the body back to function, there is the wholistic approach of assessing and treating the whole body, the connective tissue, the impact of how we live and move, as well as respect for how the body heals itself. In that we also have the inner being that often operates contra to the natural harmony and gentleness of the body.

8. Our narrow focus on isolated body systems is not the whole answer, when you consider how joined up the whole human body is, it makes sense to take a whole body approach and include the emotions as well as the physical … in this way we are more able to work with and genuinely support the body in what is needed.

9. As a Physiotherapist myself I greatly value the noble profession of Physiotherapy and everything it offers people in the way of support already, however it is good to keep exploring and investigating how we can develop our practice in a way that supports our clients even more as you have done here Kate.

10. Understanding the bodies have a remarkable intelligence and a truly extraordinary ability to actually heal is like finding a Rosetta Stone of awareness within… It makes everything makes sense

11. I have been having a severe back pain for the past few days and it was great in the beginning because it was making me pay more attention, go more gentle and careful in my movement, but today, it has gotten worse and I was just wondering why. “The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony” – so true, and imposition does not work. And now I am wondering whether I was going ahead of my body without giving it space to do what it needed to do, and as you say there are other factors to consider as well.

12. The body’s ability to self heal is pretty amazing, and how this is what it is always working to do: maintaining harmony as its baseline status quo. When we get the ‘I want’ or ‘I should’ out of the way, it does this quite naturally.

13. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” So often when we have aches and pains they are symptoms of an imbalance in our emotional or energetic body and with gentleness in how we treat ourselves our body starts the process of self-healing which can then be supported by the equal gentleness of a physiotherapist.

14. How amazing physiotherapy would be as a practical modality if as standard, students were shown the beneficial effects of gentleness.

    1. That’s beautiful Shami, we have totally under-estimated the power of the quality of our touch and even our voice in medicine and healing.

15. I love your holistic approach to physiotherapy. We can not just look at one part of the body and ignore the rest, including the bodies energetic state and psychological state because it is all connected.

16. I love the way you look at treating the body as a whole and not looking to fix a part, but to see the depth of the problem and how the client themselves is also part of this and the healing process too.

17. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” I went to the physio yesterday and had your blog in my thoughts as I was there. He was a physiotherapist who approached the body in the way you have described here and my body felt great relief that this was a practitioner who respected the body’s ability to heal itself. Thank heaven for practitioners who step away from the superiority complex of their education to bring it to the equality of the intelligence of the body they are working with.

    1. I know that ‘superiority complex’ well. as well as in physios I have seen it in other places, including at times in my own life. It is a hallmark of getting sucked into to thinking we are the ones with all the answers, rather than the humility of knowing we are all part of a far bigger whole, realising that in order to truly serve we need to keep observing and deepening our understanding and awareness, and surrendering to the fact that life will always present us with opportunities to be constantly learning.
       It is a blessing being treated by someone who is dedicated to working in the way Kate Greenaway-Twist is.

18. I love how simple it is to consider the body as a whole – what is going on emotionally for a client as well as physically. To not consider this is to reduce life to what we do which misses so much of the why we do what we do which, as you say, looks at the deeper causes.

19. Recently as a result of a referral, I had a phone conversation with a physiotherapist on the back of which I was emailed a set of exercises to follow. Just looking at the electronic demo made me panic as I could feel how inappropriate it would be for my body. I had to insist on receiving a physical assessment of my body.
    It would be awesome if the basic training for physiotherapists and other health professions covered the depth of understanding and care shared about here.

20. There is a huge difference between focusing on bringing relief to a body and being from an ill-momentum and working with the body and being’s innate intelligence, as such the opportunity to truly address and heal an ill-momentum that in turn offers real support for us to evolve. The fact is that our systems in every sector of our society generally focus on providing relief, which is clearly not working and what you have presented here Kate is precisely what we need, to be open to working with more of the wisdom and intelligence of our body as this impacts every aspect of our lives, and all of us.

21. Bringing these three bodies into one allows the patient / person to become one again… our natural state and the one we are most likely to heal in.

22. Any practitioner will tell you (if they are honest) that when a client walks into their treatment room or clinic they are bringing their whole being with them and everything this means in terms of their emotional and spiritual issues or dilemmas, not just a sore arm or leg or back etc. And yet most Physiotherapists will try and just make it about the physical (because that is what we are trained to do) and will do their best to avoid or ignore the other aspects, even though they are impossible to really ignore or avoid. So no wonder there is stress, tension and exhaustion in practitioners!

23. As for anything in life, the gentle approach may not bring that quick fix so we can carry on as we are. But it does help us shift gears and change how we are living over time so that we don’t get burnt out and ill from our excessive ways.

    1. Yes Leigh I agree. When we begin to honour the true quality of who we are in any aspect of life, what is offered is the truth from which we then know what changes or adjustments are needed or what needs deepening.

24. I really love the first point about not imposing on a clients body but letting the natural healing process do its thing, this is very important for all modalities because at the end of the day the body heals itself and the practitioner is there to assist this and get whatever is in the way of this out of the way.

    1. Our bodies are such complex, intelligent things in their own right, able to regulate, adapt, heal… and equally tell us when something is not working, in dis-ease. We just have to learn to listen!

25. Striving to achieve goals and outcomes in life doesn’t work, be it in physiotherapy, any healing modality, in relationships or in life generally.

    1. There is a huge difference between when we strive to achieve a preconceived picture, and in contrast when we choose to remain open, observe and respond to what is required with each unfolding moment. You only have to consider the difference between the two scenarios to recognise the debilitating limitation of the former.

26. Sounds like an awesome thing to introduce into the world of physiotherapy Kate. We need a wider view of how the body truly works.

27. “Many patients say to me now that they are often more sore for days or weeks after they have had standard physiotherapy treatment than they were before.”- I can certainly attest to experiencing this same thing AFTER physiotherapy when I was beating my body up with multiple sports activities. I always felt like even though the physio’s did a good job, they were kind of trying to put a square peg into a round hole with their approach, and when a patient did not fit into the image they had based on their training, they would pretty much force the method in a way. It comes down to the patient not giving their power away in this instance and allowing themselves to feel what is right for them too in their treatment.

    1. If we don’t consider the patient and what is right for their body – letting their body lead the way – it is true, it is incredibly imposing and would make sense for the body to fight back, only giving the impression of cooperation at the time just to get out of the perceived danger of imposition.

28. Awesome to read of your steady unfolding to knowing that there must be more than treating a single part, and to embrace an understanding of the whole picture. This understanding is transformative when we choose to live from that awareness of the whole.

29. This makes so much sense to me. How can the body truly heal if we are to only look at the physical and treat the body by manipulation to fix it? We think by moving parts of the body into place we’re getting somewhere but what caused or is causing the body to be in pain or discomfort in the first place? Surely there are others factors at play we need to address and consider in the healing and wellbeing of the client.

30. Yes in my Physiotherapy training we did not even get taught basic counselling skills let alone any other training or consideration for looking at the whole person rather than just the physical complaint. As a result many practitioners feel unable to cope with the demands placed on them at work. So we need to consider a different approach to training that includes our amazing physical or manual skills but also considers other aspects of the health and wellbeing of the person.

    1. It makes sense that practioners feel unequipped as they are only given the tools to care for one aspect of a multifaceted being.

    2. Andrew you make a great point here that the physiotherapy modality and its training also doesn’t fully support the practitioners. There are obviously advances to be made for many reasons.

       1. Yes not fully considering the whole being as well as the body in health care is a bit like sending in a heart surgeon to deal with a mental health problem. The basic skills, tools and knowledge are there which is great, but there is still something missing in our understanding of illness and disease that is leaving both our practitioners and patients short of the full medicine they could be enjoying and benefiting from.

31. This is a super interesting insight into physiotherapy! It’s evidently so important to experiment with what works best for patients, customers and even in our working relationships, otherwise if we stick with one method forever or limit ourselves to the training ‘basics’ then we won’t evolve or come up with new ways of improving quality of care.

32. Our bodies do have an extraordinary wisdom… We have to be equally as wise and start to listen to them

33. I agree how the narrow focus, reductionist approach of traditional physiotherapy would be imposing on clients, and I also feel how it might cloud or possibly even deny the responsibility due on the client’s part. But at the same time, I wonder if that is actually where the demand has been – a quick fix that does not ask us to look at ourselves.

    1. That is a great observation Fumiyo – on both counts. It shows what an invaluable educational role a therapist of Kate Greenaway-Twist’s caliber can play for the public, by supporting a greater awareness about our personal relationship with our own health and healing.

34. “how I live, how I work, how I support my patients physically, emotionally and energetically is what I would call True Physiotherapy” hear hear Kate. What you do is not just a job, it is a way you have with people –because of the way you live, and the skills that are applied in that way which brings the truth to physiotherapy.

35. This is such a deeply empowering way to work with people and their bodies, to assist their innate wisdom and that of their bodies to heal and in that allowing the body to ‘dictate’ the pace, allowing for a gorgeous collaboration with therapist and client. I am so glad you shared this Kate, this is how true physiotherapy can be, and it’s great to hear the living proof of it.

36. Your absolute love for the wonderment, the wisdom and the self-healing power of the human body is palpable in this blog, Kate. Thank you for your respect and honour of every human being.

37. When I read your excellent blog again Kate the image that comes to mind is like two parents talking about what’s best for their child without ever consulting the child i.e. the client and the practitioner both wanting the same outcome in a time frame that they have decided is convenient and therefore both colluding in the push or desire to fix something but not ever asking the actual body that is doing the healing what it feels is best!

38. “When I was a young physio, I was not trained in understanding how emotional stresses or poor vitality affected the body, leading to organ dysfunction and physical dysfunction.” To understand how the body is affected by stress is super important, especially when it comes to our physical body and how we move.To have an understanding of how the whole body is compromised when under stress would help physiotherapists see the bigger picture and not just the symptoms that are being presented.

    1. I am wondering is the education of a physiotherapist still the same or is there a change in how they approach the body taking in to consideration how the whole system has an affect on a part and how the body knows how to heal the dysfunction and needs only a gentle guidance and loving support.

39. What do we consider health and therefore healing? Are we talking a fully functional body and therefore return of function alone is celebrated as healing? even if we were talking about function alone, are we talking about every part, every aspect and every dimension functioning in harmony or are we limiting it to a section of body we have honed in on? By limiting our view when approaching Medicine and in fact any support we offer, we are hampering true healing.

40. Kate thank you for sharing your experience, it is vital to see what is going on for someone as a whole, and not just one particular part because everything effects everything and nothing can really be seen in isolation.

41. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” – This statement you made here Kate I can really relate to through my experience with physios back during my years in competitive team and endurance sports. It always seemed to me that the physiotherapists were pushing my body past the point it really wanted to go at the time, and that many times all I really needed was a break from the punishment I was placing my body under with the intense training and sports I was playing. I also distinctly recall feeling more soreness after treatments, although they did a fantastic job analyzing what physical movements were leading to certain pain and adjusting my bio-mechanics to alleviate this. Of course, if they would have asked the tougher questions like “Why do you feel you have to train at such a ridiculous intensity all the time?” or “Do you feel like you may be punishing your body to the point you can not feel any underlying emotional issue that may be there to be healed?” it would have given me a moment of pause to consider why I had been abusing my body like that in the first place!

42. After a period of receiving treatments with the understanding and consideration as offered in this blog, any treatment less than this in comparison feels quite dishonouring of my body and my process of unfolding in life and makes me feel abused in some way.

43. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” So true. I have found that when I clock something not quite right and nominate it and then book an appointment to see a practitioner- be they medical or complementary- healing can start to happen overnight….

44. We should have learned by now, because nature has been showing it to us, that focusing on one part of anything, only helps that part… for a while. But sooner or later we tend to find out that some other area was compromised as a result.

    It is worthwhile stopping and considering that the reason we are struggling with so much in life is because of the way we are relating to life. Looking at life in segments and reducing our awareness and relationship to the whole does not work.

45. Beautifully expressed Kate for when we reduce our body into parts we totally miss the divinity and exquisite interactivity of its wholeness.

46. What a great example you have presented Kate, of less being more.

47. “I know how you should be and move, and this is the technique I will use to fix you” – this method of ‘fixing’ the body is not sustainable in any sense; by not addressing the underlying cause and looking at ways to change this, what’s to guarantee the ‘fix’ will last? And fixing the physical ailment may also leave undealt with stress, emotions or issues, so the ‘fix’ may only be very surface level.

48. As in everything else, working towards an image of how one has to be does not truly helps anyone. It does not help because it does not meet the body you are working with and go together from there, but it seeks to force the body towards a functioning that is alien to it.

49. Connective tissue is the most amazing modality, thank you for sharing your learnings with the world.

50. I was an extreme case of what you are talking about, the fact that it is not so useful to just hone in on the ‘problem’ joints and muscles to loosen or tighten them up without “considering the body as a whole, and certainly doesn’t take into account the emotional status or energetic vitality of the person”.

    I have a severe case of scoliosis with 2 extra side bends and a twist in my spine where my body has tried to compensate. So as you can imagine there are a lot of joints and muscles in my body that can be targeted specifically to loosen or tighten to support me simply to stand up straighter.

    These are the kind of treatments I did seek before coming across Universal Medicine and my start to deepen my understanding and addressing the various general issues I had with my relationship with life, Universe, people, expression and responsibility. I was not even thinking about my scoliosis. But after a while I noticed I had naturally started to be more upright and straight.

    From such a stark experience I don’t see it as just a nice idea to considering the patient’s whole life in any treatment, I would categorically claim that it is absolutely vital for any true support and healing.

51. This approach you have Kate is to bring back equality between practitioners and patients with the trust, understanding and foundation of the body’s innate wisdom.

    1. Yes Adele, this itself is hugely healing. The acceptance that we are very capable of sensing and knowing what is going on for us and the return to our natural care, appreciation and honouring of the wisdom offered to us by our own body, is immensely empowering, on many many levels.

52. As a patient it makes the world of difference when my practitioner knows my body has the ability to heal itself and that there is a way, a timing and a rhythm that is unique to this body. I feel way more supported in my commitment to heal when this aspect is part of our relationship.

53. Since I have come to understand more about my body it has become obvious that when I am sick, tired or emotional I begin to move very differently. At these times my body can feel very heavy and moving is not as easy as it usually is. It doesn’t make sense that the majority of healing professionals, especially those working with the movement of the body, don’t take the patient’s overall condition into consideration; after all everything is energy and therefore how we feel must affect how we move and from the smallest movement to the biggest, every movement matters.

54. I can see how interesting it must be to work in physiotherapy having the knowledge that can potentially ‘fix’ another person who may be in pain or with limited movements. And it is great to read how you could see through all of this and in to the person who you were treating, and could sense that they perhaps actually already had inside of them what is needed to heal, and all you need to do is facilitate this. It takes away the potential for glamour from you and and of being identified by your practise, as it truly becomes about people, the person you are treating and so on. This to me is the mark of a real practitioner.

    1. I completely agree Shami. In any line of work we can become fixated with what we can do, how we can manipulate things and our own views of what things should look like. Yet there is a wonderful quality to have the humility and grace to be open to observe what is actually required in that moment to truly support the unfolding and in this case here healing to take place.

55. The physiotherapy approach that you use is the most natural one, yet the least common. Thanks for sharing it here in this blog for it to be spread and to restore a connected way of treating patients based on a holistic view and deep respect for them. There is much more in the body than what we can see in its shape.

    1. This approach is indeed supportive on a far bigger scale than the usual targeting of eradication of symptoms. It sets the bar for the way to truly look after patients.

56. “how I live, how I work, how I support my patients physically, emotionally and energetically is what I would call True Physiotherapy”. Kate what an amazing reflection of what true work is, it is whole life work, a way of being that carries a true quality in all that we do. Despite knowing this it’s so easy to put life into different boxes, work, home etc.. rather than live truly as everything affects everything else.

57. So Kate! How long before you are running and writing the physio courses so that all our upcoming health practitioners have the extraordinary awareness that you have come to?

58. Thank you Kate for your wise words in sharing that any given outcome that is imposed upon another cannot be a true healing.

59. I have noticed that people often turn up with their issues and all they seem to be interested in is for the symptom to go away. It is relatively easy to use a technique or two to alleviate the symptom.

    But now that thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have personally experienced the difference between the treatments offered which support me to engage with and heal the various patterns and issues that have resulted in the issue, to in contrast treatments that focus on ‘fixing’ the issue, I know that whenever we do the latter, as a therapist we come across as a hero, yet in truth we are short-changing the client in a very big way.

60. I know for me as a Physiotherapist understanding that I am there to support and facilitate the human body to naturally heal in the way it needs to, rather than forcing it to mend or trying to fix it based on my own ideas has made a huge difference to how I practice and has been of great benefit to me and my clients.

61. Many of the bodywork techniques currently practised add insult to injury, if the truth be known.

62. The level of arrogance or is it ignorance – maybe both – with which humanity keeps reducing every aspect of life to a fraction of its glory is astonishing.
    In the area of the human body alone which is the area I have been focusing on, there have been many cases showing that our current ‘intelligence’ does not have the answers. For example what other factors are responsible for ‘placebo’ affects having an effect? And how come some patients buck the trend of the expected path of illness & disease, and their case labeled “spontaneous remission”?
    When so many of us tend to bury our heads in the sand big time, people like Kate Twist are precious points of light to show by example that there is a far more expansive way to approach healing, medicine and our relationship with the whole of life.

63. True Elizabeth. In fact this is a significant understanding that can support the whole of our current medical system.

64. What is shared here is very significant:
    Again and again throughout history humanity has come to a point when it has been assumed that man has all the answers. And again and again we have been shown that the Universe and nature have an order, flow and wisdom that is far grander than the little snapshot we have managed to so proudly gain. Why are we not learning?

65. Treating dysfunction and symptoms without looking at the bigger pictures pertains in all areas of support from a business perspective, education of parenting in the home. Either way one is offered more when they are willing to delve deeper.

66. The way forward for our treatment must be one that considers the energetic being, that understands the emotions and lifestyle choices and the stresses and how they impact on the body, I agree with Kate on this. Physio treatment I have received has been, much like the fitness industry about pushing to get an outcome. It feels we all would benefit from less pushing and more understanding and allowing for the body to heal and to develop.

67. “The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony.” And so it is that any modality that is offered as a tool to truly support the body back to balance must also come with the WHOLE aspect – not leaving any the lesser. Thank you Kate for this beautiful reminder!

68. I love that Kate that the body has an amazing ability to organise itself to heal. We forgo that intelligence for the knowledge of the different professions associated with medical help. We will gain so much if we simply realise we are from intelligence and that intelligence can guide us along with what we know from the world of science. It is a marriage whereas currently the one intelligence has divorced the other, fortunately this can never be so as the body is forever with us waiting for us to listen.

69. I have heard it said that true medicine is treating the whole of the person not just their body or an aspect of the body but the whole. How and why did such a condition come about for the person is a question asked but only on a temporal level. How was the person truly in their being and what is it reflecting about the quality of their life? Perhaps these are questions we do not want to know the answer to because it reveals how sick and deeply irresponsible a lot of people really are.

    1. By refusing to go there and consider such questions, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. The type of reflection you talk about, would provide an understanding that the symptoms we notice have been building for a long time. and this points to the fact that the sensible place to start is the choices that end up as the symptoms.
       Does this show our irresponsibility more acutely? You bet it does. But the result of us not wanting to observe and be honest is humanity being sicker and sicker every day. Either way our choice.

70. You have outlined the future of Physiotherapy Kate, something you definitely need to be sharing very widely so the potential of the profession can be seen.

71. The way you deliver this Kate, it just makes complete sense that the way you walk, talk and carry yourself flows right on and into the quality of treatments you give. If any profession should be all about honouring the body then surely this is it. But what I hear in what you share is that this energetic law applies equally to us all. Whatever job or role we do, the quality we live is what we deliver. If the quality’s not great our body cops the lot and has to deal with the resulting toxins. So it’s clear we are all practitioners administering sessions in every moment – it’s just up to us, whether it is healing or not.

72. This is telling that there is so much more to healing than just fixing physical symptoms. What you share is so important as it considers the whole – and I would not necessarily have thought in the past that how we are emotionally has an impact on our organs, but it does.

73. Very true. This all encompassing way of approaching people: “considering the whole way of being, including emotions and energetic state” is a great marker for how we could and should be relating to one another in a deeply caring and honouring way. This could be taken on board in every single area of life.

    And when we are actually pitching ourselves as supporting people in their healing and well-being, anything less in my books is simply negligence.

74. You raise such an important point here Kate for practitioners regarding allowing people the space to determine what and how they change or even what they want to let go of. Otherwise it is an imposition and change is unlikely to take place.

    1. This is hugely significant. Life and the Universe is forever unfolding and expanding. We cannot possibly imagine we will know everything because we have studied some textbooks and gained some expertise however great we may be in our field. Kate Greenaway’s offers a great example for everyone working in supporting another in life: the utmost care attention and honouring of the unfolding taking place by the individual and offering our expertise to support the process.

75. Love the fact that you are approaching the whole body during a session. We tend to isolate and section the bits that aren’t functioning properly however the body is one organism and should be treated as such.

76. As we all know, everything is energy and so naturally the body must be treated in a way that takes this into consideration, the physical issue and the energetic cause or momentum behind the physical outplay. It is awesome to hear about someone in your field actually wanting to treat the whole body and not just a part.

77. It has become such a knee jerk reaction to try and fix something and find a solution so we can manage and cope with something that is going on with our bodies. But to take the responsibility that we are the creators of our own outcome and that everything we choose has an effect on the body turns this right around. The pride that we live in and all the investment in what we have chosen can get in the way of stopping and seeing the truth. To heal the root cause as does Serge Benhayon and the teachings of Universal Medicine we cut through and arrest what has been at play and have the opportunity to start a fresh.

78. We have been focusing on fixing and regaining function, and for the most part can do this very well. Yet there is far more to healing.

    The overall dynamic in the person’s life within which the issue came about, the re-alignment of many conscious and unconscious aspects of their lives, the deepening call for the care and attention with which they are living and the reawakening awareness that the issue is prompting within them, ALL of this requires honouring.

    If support can be offered for this, great. If not, that is okay too. But Kate Greenaway’s example is important. Let’s not pretend all is done and dusted when we have patched someone up, regained function and sent them home. That would be doing a disservice to our client.

79. What a very beautiful blog. Assisting us all to know that there is another way of physiotherapy, equally for a practitioner and client. It is so profound to hear you share in detail about the ability of our body to heal itself and the energetic space we need to let it do its way…And the ability we have as a client (human person who undergoes treatment for a condition) can equally take this space to do what he or she can to support the body. This takes the pressure and demand off that someone needs to fix it – but rathers places the power and ability to heal back to the client, with then the absolute support you as a professional (physiotherapist in this case) can give.

80. The way Kate shares she is working now (which I have experienced with her, it is very profound) it takes away the arrogance we can have in fixing the other, that we can do so.
    Even the soul lets the body experience the pain as a message that it is moving in a way that is not serving soul’s purpose. It is to support the body by aligning to the deep quality we carry within us.

81. Even when a child has cuts and grazes because they have fallen over, the cuts and grazes need attending to, yes. But the next significant question needs to be, how come you fell in the first place? e.g. what within their physical, mental, psychological, energetic make-up contributed to a lack of presence and co-ordination? If they were distracted from the task at hand what else was going on for them?

    The Universe does not do ‘random’ and nothing happens in isolation to the whole of our life. It is not wise for us to have a medical paradigm that pretends otherwise.

82. Once you experience a physio who lives with integrity, doesn’t have emotions that are projected into the session because they have recognised the importance of every aspect of how they live on the sessions they offer, then you can never accept less than that from any practitioner. Kate Greenaway is an example of one such practitioner.

83. The view that the body has a problem that needs to be fixed will always be very 1 dimensional. However we do absolutely know that there is more going on, but it feels like we are too scared to go there because it doesn’t fit the current model for evidence base. Seeing our patients and all people in our multidimensional layers is really the only way that medicine and healthcare in general is going to move forward. It does however ask us all to take full responsibility for our choices.

    1. I am finding more and more that understanding and working with the fact of our multidimensionality and living in a pool of energy is the only way forward in every aspect of life.
       As far back as Plato and before there has been mention that you simply cannot offer true healing by focusing on one segment of the whole. Not only do we need to embrace this wisdom. And on top of that we also need to start considering that our ‘whole’ could be way more than what we have chosen to settle for!

84. I love this blog. It reminds me of the importance of working with the body and the being of a person and that when we do it supports not just the client but the practitioner as well.

85. Interesting read, thank you for giving us another perspective on our profession.

86. If we only focus on the function and making better an issue in the body by finding a solution then we will never really stop things returning because what has caused these issues have not been truly dealt with and healed. Serge Benhayon presents and teaches a way that looks at the all and going to the root cause of an issue and heal from there first.

    1. I love this way of going to the root you talk about. It is remarkable that it is not in any way focusing on the issue itself, other than the fact that it being the end point of many many steps along the way. The starting point is always the already present grandness of love, harmony and oneness that is our true essence, before we took the first of the many steps away from the truth of every one of our particles. I find the appreciating our life issues in this way to be very inspiring and empowering.

87. Wow what a shift to really consider the body as a whole. I love this sharing and how different your methods of practice are now.

88. “Having a treatment driven by a goal that the practitioner wants the body to achieve is imposing.” It is so unrealistic to expect to be able to force the body into healing something. We cannot fix from the outside, and to think that we can is arrogant and very imposing. True healing allows the encouragement of the natural healing process of the body, and the practitioner’s role is to simply observe the unfolding of this. If we allow the space for healing the body responds and takes care of itself.

89. At the end of the day the body knows best how to heal itself, so imposing on it to achieve some sort of a goal is very imposing and does not see the big picture of overall healing.

90. The other day I saw some people who were learning how to walk again after an injury or surgery and what made me ponder was the way it was done. In one case the physiotherapist was talking very fast about anything and everything whilst it was obvious it was hard for the man to learn to walk. In the other case there was no talking at all but the silence felt unnatural and capping, this made me wonder how the way we are learning to walk will impact how we will walk forever there after. If everything matters than we have to go to these details to see how our bodies get configured to move.

91. The bigger picture is so important in healing, including how the person has lived their life and what situations, emotions, traumas etc may be affecting their body. Also, what part of our true essence do we hold back and how might that impact our body and ability to heal? And what’s happening in the whole body, not just the diseased or injured part? It’s also an amazing point that the body heals itself Kate, therefore we facilitate that innate healing and we do not force the body to heal by imposing our will over it. It knows what to do and we support it to heal itself.

92. We have many very dedicated individuals choosing their profession in the health industry because of – as beautifully put here – ‘their genuine care for people’. I am sure if they too had the understanding that it is not just about improving function and that underneath the tip of the iceberg witnessed there is a far bigger story needing attention, their treatment program would be completely different.

    We need to change the whole paradigm of our current way of approaching the lack of health and well-being. When you look at the bigger picture it is clear that targeting one part without addressing the whole does not work.

93. Kate you brought up a great point here, that the body should be treated as a whole and not individual parts, like many physiotherapists do, because everything is related.

94. The way you support the person to understand that the deeper disharmony in their body will eventually cause the physical problem is absolute gold Kate. You are a physiotherapist that offers true healing.

95. There have been times in my younger days where I could have used such a healer as you Kate as the Physio’s, and Osteopaths I used did not seem to solve the problem but merely put a band aid on it. Looking back now I would never put myself in the situations I did on purpose which caused me to need them, as I now would have never put my body through doing things it was not designed to do.

96. It is funny how often there is a treatment outcome of goal set up, I understand that it is great to measure treatment, but it cannot be known what will come up in the process of treatment. Every client / patient is individual in how they heal and it is the process that often holds the Gold not just the outcome, concerning research and appreciation of the healing taking place.

    1. I love what you have highlighted Samantha. “It cannot be known what will come up in the process of treatment” and “It is the process that often holds the Gold”. This is hugely significant and I am amazed how anyone who has studied and worked with the human body in their profession could possibly think otherwise.

       How can we imagine it is okay to impose our own goal and objective onto the human body, rather than attentively observe and honour what is being shown every step of the way? We are talking individual living human bodies, not a mass of factory-produced robots.

97. Until I attended Universal Medicine events I too felt an unease all through my career as a physiotherapist, a feeling that there had to be more, that there was a way in which the whole body could be honoured in its own intelligence as I worked with it as opposed to on it. What you share here is gold Kate and is the way forward for all practitioners.

98. Thank you for choosing to write about your journey of reflection and deepening understanding as a practitioner. When we start to realise that pretty much all of humanity’s woes, including the reflection offered to us by illness, disease and our physical issues, are due to us imposing our individualised will on life – when we appreciate that we could instead be ensuring that we live in alignment with the impulses of our soul, which would naturally ensure our choices are in the honouring of our bodies and in fact every aspect of ourselves, of others and the whole flow of life we are a part of – we begin to understand that approaching a healing program with a goal and ideal we want to achieve can not be truly supporting the client.

99. I have come to understand as a body worker that it makes no sense to use force or a measured amount of trauma to heal trauma or damage as a result of another force. If we apply only force we are using the same energy that caused the harm in the first place. The only way to truly heal the harm is to introduce a different energy altogether to the body, which from my experience works very well and the human body appreciates this very much because it recognises the energy as more true and harmonious to it than the injurious force.

100. “Having a treatment driven by a goal that the practitioner wants the body to achieve is imposing. It does not allow for the body’s natural healing processes to take place.” – this is something that not only applies to physiotherapy, but also to all other forms of medicine, including Natural Medicine. When a client presents with a condition, as a naturopath, I seek to understand how we can help the body in its process of discarding what it needs to discard, rather than approach it from a veiw of getting rid of the symptoms.

     1. Well said Henrietta. It is high time humanity stopped thinking we have to ‘fight’ things and that advancement equates better ability to manipulate and control. All the issues we face are self-created, and a ‘fix’ may bring ‘relief’ and okay that is useful. Yet the wise move would be to deepen our awareness and understanding about “where did we go wrong to bring about the issues?” and get behind the flow of the Universe which is always working to bring everything into harmony.

        There is a world of difference between getting rid of symptoms and supporting the body in its process of bringing itself back to harmony.

101. The reductionist approach sees things in a linear way that does not allow the flexibility nor the connectivity with the whole. A true holistic approach looks at the whole body approach and not just a part in isolation. However, there is even more to a true holistic approach as it is about mind body and Soul, with the key word here being Soul and not spirit. This distinction is just as important as the distinction between a body part and the whole body, for there are still many who do not know the difference between Soul and spirit. Soul is the encompassing and holding aspect, whilst the spirit is the part that seeks to be separate. True healing will come from the Soul not the spirit, and hence holds multidimensionality which is a deeper step towards healing holistically as opposed to attempting to correct the body with a reductionist approach.

102. It is astonishing that whilst we keep getting feedback from all areas of life that narrow sighted and short term solutions gets us in more trouble than the momentary relief it provides, so much of our society is based on such pursuits. We have even coined the term ‘side-effects’ to excuse away how our focus on fixing one area can cause havoc somewhere else. We have a lot to learn from our wise forefather who prescribed that you can not treat one part of the human being without including and honouring its whole.

103. “The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony.” – when we recognise or appreciate this then it makes it natural to want to work with the body to heal any disease, injury or ailment rather than imposing on it what we think is best just from a theory we’ve learnt…

104. It is ironic that more and more people are showing multi-symptoms when they are unwell, which is clearly showing that it is not about honing in on one issue and imagining that fixing it is what will being health and vitality. Yet all our systems including medicine are getting more and more specialised in a manner that fails to support people as a whole being.
     It is a breath of fresh air that there are practitioners like you Kate who are choosing to buck the trend and return to a truly holistic approach to health and well-being.

105. Kate, you are living the future of physiotherapy now.

     1. Spot on Jane! Kate is leading the way with her livingness and her approach and understanding.

106. Kate that must have been such a wonderful day when you met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. To be presented that the whole body is essential because of the process and how it is made up. That we can’t just focus on one area, that all areas of us needs nurturing.

107. Thank you Kate for sharing the way you work. With the body and being, being treated as a whole it certainly brings a greater sense of feeling and connection to the fact that we are more than our physicality. I know this to be true from my own personal experience of working with you in healing ailments that had long persisted, unaddressed in my body. You have illustrate just how amazing our bodies are, that they do know how to heal themselves, all we need to do is facilitate this natural process as best we can in order to support our body and being to heal as much as possible. A empowering way of working with our bodies and the whole of who we are, that indeed needs to be known and shared with all health professionals in our society.

108. Beautiful and in fact a very ancient way of treating the body – often seen as one of the fathers of medicine, Hippocrates taught that the body was to be treated as a whole

109. ‘What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.’ This is huge in the world of physiotherapy and medicine. I also trained as a physiotherapist over 30 years ago Kate and this is the first time I have read an article about physiotherapy stating this amazing truth. If colleges were to have this as their foundation then the curriculum offered to students and the modalities being taught would change dramatically.

110. I have had the absolute blessing of being treated by the tender hands of Kate Greenaway and I can honestly say the way she works is revolutionary and incredibly supportive and effective as a client and incredibly inspirational as a practitioner and physiotherapist myself. You have so much to share with the world Kate so thank you for writing this much needed blog and I look forward to reading many more.

111. I feel in medicine we have largely overlooked and ignored the enormous elephant in the room when it comes to healing and human beings – that we are multidimensional and therefore far more than just a bag of bones and flesh. So imagine the enormous tension that is created in a practitioner’s body when they are trained and then work in a vastly reduced way considering only the physical body and its dysfunctions? And imagine the tension the client feels when this reductionist approach is applied to their bodies, when their bodies are far more than what is being offered?

     1. The insight you are offering Andrew, is huge, and particularly pertinent in a field of work that claims to support people toward their health and well-being. Treating another or being treated as a fraction of who we in truth are creates tension, disharmony and disease in the body for everyone concerned.

        In fact this leads to another question: Could the ill which is being treated have been itself created by a life in which such a reduced form of expression has become the norm?

112. The whole body approach is very beautiful – often in medical professions we are confronted with illnesses of one part of the body and we are mostly taught to work on just that part, we might go further as in suggesting the patient to stop smoking etc. or start exercising but it does often not go to the deep level you are describing here Kate. I can really see how important it is to address the whole human being and body to heal even a very local issue. For instance with dentistry, the profession i work in, it is important to wonder why someone does not care for themselves deeply instead of just giving the ‘you have to brush more and better’ speech…

113. Medicine has undergone a huge process of reductionism over its history. When we go way back to Hippocrates times, things were more comprehensive in their approach of the whole body even though medicine may well have been labelled as rudimentary compared to today’s technologies. And so despite all the advancements in technology it is clear that we have lost a sense of the holism that is so needed to really address the current plagues of multi-conditions that patients present with these days. How long will it take us to re-trace our steps and embrace the holism of the past, whilst still using all modern equipment and techniques of our present and future?

114. Kate Greenaway is an amazing body work therapist. I can personally vouch for this having been her client and been to her for treatments and support and have also having taken my son for treatments as needed. Her approach is super tender and delicate and yet the results are profound and lasting. To read of Kate’s background and history here as well as her understanding of how important holism is in treatment, confirms to me how much integrity she holds as a therapist. Thank you Kate for this sharing…lookng forwards to re-reading part 2!

115. We need articles like this written by the amazingly dedicated and wonderful healer Kate to remind us that the body does actually have deep within this innate wonderful intelligence.

116. Perhaps for real sustainable change there always needs to be, in complement to the fantastic medical practices that we have, an understanding and practice of how to read the energetic quality of movements in addition to the functional quality of movements.

117. This article needs to be seen and heard by physiotherapists world wide, you bring a clarity and a deep wisdom for what is truly needed – and all need to know this.

118. In my early days as a physio student and then a physio I too felt uneasy and that feeling ‘there has to be more’ Everything you write here Kate resonates with me and it was when I first met Serge Benhayon the truth of what I had been feeling all along was confirmed and that there is indeed a deeper healing on offer to us all.

     1. Beautifully said Jane, and I too can say as a Complementary/Natural Medicine Practitioner, I have often said to myself ‘there has to be more’…this innate calling is there, for we know there is a depth that we can take things to. This depth might feel out of depth to us at times, but yet it is the most familiar way to just be once we realise this and accept it and embrace it in our lives.

119. Far too common for us to settle for “the end justifies the means”, so pain in order to develop strength is okay. In this equation it begs the question just what do we mean by stronger – are we maintaining true honouring, openness, care and sensitivity, or is it a toughness adopted in protection to an abusive imposition?
     I have noticed the mentality that “It didn’t killl me and I am stronger now, so it was good for me.” Oh how wrong we can sometimes be.

120. Gentleness is quite literally changing my life. I used to think gentleness was for wimps and wusses, totally squashing any connection whatsoever to my own sensitivity and gentleness to try to fit in and not stand out. But what I’ve come to realise is that we are all that gentleness, underneath all the other stuff and all the pretending not to be, however extreme the behaviour might be,

121. ‘Having a treatment driven by a goal that the practitioner wants the body to achieve is imposing.’ – What a revelation this is, and how common it is to be imposed upon by practitioners of all kinds of professions and modalities.

122. An important sharing on your journey to True Physiotherapy Kate, one that needed to be told. Thank you.

123. The level of care we provide ourselves and our body, is reflected in the lack of care and the extent of disregard at all levels in our world. We have for too long been championing our ability to force what we want on what we are facing without honouring the harmony and flow of the all The mess in which we find our world and our bodies, is a testament that this is not working.
     Thank you Kate for your diligent dedication to find and re-imprint a different way.

124. Its enlightening and exciting to consider that there is a much more rounded way to treat patients. I always found physio sessions so functional and missing a deeper wisdom. It has always been for me a bit like treatment by numbers, going through the process and being left feeling like something is missing. Physio that considers the whole body and treats with this awareness is the only physio I would now accept as a treatment.

125. If you had the old Kate practitioner and the new Kate practitioner beside each other without a shadow of a doubt the queue would be lined up for the one that considers the All of the person. The one that treats the body and being with an all encompassing way.

     1. I know which line I would be in.

        1. Ditto to that Eva and Natalie!

126. If everybody returned to understanding the body in the way that you have learnt to Kate the world would truly change.

127. The way you approach physiotherapy can be used in the same way in life with everyone, to allow others the space without imposing for their body to come to the natural ability to heal, this is the way of love with people.

128. Yes Kate it would be amazing if you did training in this way as it would really start to change, slowly but surely the way physios interact with their patients and how connecting on this deeper level actually supports a deeper healing. This is very much needed and a blessing for the industry.

     1. There is a world of difference in any industry when there is great connection between the professional person and the client. I am personally prepared to go out of my way to ensure I get that quality in whatever I am purchasing.

129. The decency and respect that I know you offer in your treatment room is second to none and you have a true purpose to bring what ever is needed for your clients. Kate your working commitment and dedication is shown in your every present way of living, it is always full of joy and the pleasure in your life and sessions is outstanding, for you it is one life.

130. The changes in how you support your clients are truly remarkable. And noteworthy that you notice “how I live, how I work, how I support my patients physically, emotionally and energetically is what I would call True Physiotherapy”. So often we reduce the service we offer to the techniques and actions we were trained in, yet what people get is absolutely everything we bring to the table. The fact that the level of quality and care with which we live may not be on our business card, does not take away the fact that we are reflecting it 24/7 and the other person can at a very deep level feel it.

131. Having had a session with you Kate – I can see how you have put this into practice – which is amazing. It really is incredible to see how you can allow the body to do it’s thing and totally surrender to the fact that body work is not about trying to fix something but more as a support.

     1. So true HM! Kate does put this into practise and it is an absolute delight to go to a session with her. The body loves it. Better than a holiday, these session assist to retire the natural delicious harmony to the body and untangle the knots that we have, many time, unconsciously, tied them in.

132. What an amazing turning around you have chosen Kate to become dedicated to connecting to the more of what is going on in our bodies than just the functionality of it. How you are supporting people to connect deeper to the circumstances and that being the end result but going much much deeper than this and presenting we are not just physical beings but we are also energetic beings as well.

133. It is so important to share with other colleagues our understandings of how the quality of living and our approach to our work makes such a difference.

     1. We have a put a lot of emphasis on what is written in textbooks and generally tend to put more value on what is written in text. Yet there is nothing comparable to hands on learning and personal experience, discovering patterns and relationships as well as deepening our understanding about the rhythm flow of life.
        Yes JennyM, especially when we find something truly works and supports people, it is worth sharing it far and wide. Such gems are invaluable and serve everyone.
        Thank you Kate for your sharing.

134. I have been to a few different physiotherapists over the years but never felt that much was achieved, that was, until I went to Kate and experienced a very different way of treating my body which feels like it’s being deeply honoured through the gentle movements that Kate provides and that allows my body to completely surrender to this wonderful healing process. And I feel in my body what Kate expresses here to be true that “Now I consider all these factors and help support the person to understand the deeper disharmony in their body that eventually causes the physical problem. I gently assist the body to enhance its natural healing process and support the person to reconnect to their natural quality of gentleness.” Through this understanding and by becoming aware and taking responsibility for my past choices I have also been given the opportunity to make more gentle self-loving choices and no longer treat my body as just a commodity.

135. A session with you Kate is like a visit to the most awesome and immersive science exhibition in the world. One hour later I am in deep love and awe at the majesty and brilliance of my body.

136. “The body has a remarkable intelligence” – most doctors, physios, consultants would say that it was them that had the remarkable intelligence!

137. It is the same in medicine – when we use money to incentivise doctors, then results get pushed and ranges get stretched – we make health a relative term to fit what we want.

138. Reading what you share Kate feels so wonderfully natural and there is a gorgeous allowing quality to how you now care for your clients. This is in stark contrast to the traditional way of treating the body, which basically is to force the body into submission.

139. I’ve been treated by Kate and what I would observe is that what she shares about the body makes it very easy to be in your body, that is to feel what is going on, tightness, tension, strain etc. It is that embodiment of a sound body she herself has developed, that provides the opportunity for another to also heal and create a sound body, this is physio on a much deeper level than I had experienced before.

140. A problem solving approach – be it in clinical treatment or life in general, is like having blinkers on. From my experience, when I want something fixed it comes from a place of control and security. Instead, I can look at the “problem” in the wider perspective and encompass all of life and then move with it and see how to address what is going on. Often the real problem is not the symptoms presenting but something that lies behind it. Yes, the symptoms need to be addressed too, but if I only address the symptoms I miss out on a deeper true healing.

     1. Absolutely Nikki. If we do not address the underlying issue of any helath problem we will never recieve true healing but only stop the symptoms, which may also only be temporary cure or a precursor to something more serious.

141. So awesome to hear how you have experienced from many years of practice both before and after in the way you treat. I have never been interested in nor keen to try a physio because of what I had seen and heard. When I had my first session with you Kate it was extraordinary to feel my body and being to this level of detail. I love having sessions with you, when are you coming over to the UK?

142. The body has a magnificent way of healing itself, and we need to encourage our body to deeply heal through its own natural rhythm. I love how you have changed the way you approach the body as a whole, and encourage the body to reconnect back to itself, without forcing it in any way.

143. This is so true Kate, our body is incredible at healing itself. Our body also responds to gentleness and given the correct and loving support, without push or force our bodies can deeply heal and we get to witness miracles.

144. It can be so easy as practitioners to try to fix someone, or find a solution so that the client becomes mobile and pain free enough to function again but this is not a true healing. What you write here Kate is re-writing the Physiotherapists training course and offering a much more whole-listic approach to understanding how the body works on many different levels and with the right support can heal itself.

145. Kate as you know I have also found many of the ‘traditionally taught’ Physiotherapy practices are applied with a lot of force, can be painful (for both the client and practitioner if we are honest!) and actually only achieve short term results. I have also studied manual therapy techniques with osteopaths and other body workers and found more of the same really. There seems to be embedded in these approaches a belief that as practitioners we have to fix and straighten out the body with force, rather than understanding the delicate balance the body knows how to restore. So these days I use a more gentle approach with my hands which I know is much more ‘body friendly’ and patients love it (compared to how I used to work) and the results are much longer lasting. It is a beautiful way to work and one that I wish to share with the world also, so thank you for writing this beautiful blog about our beautiful profession.

146. We need to really knock this arrogant outlook that we know what the body needs, and that it is helpful to unilaterally set up a program to bring it to the right image according to our current paradigm.
     I always think of ridiculous situations like putting a bung in our nose to stop our running nose without considering why we have a running nose and what would be the consequences of not letting the liquid run out. Or having a dog that keeps barking and choosing to sedate it so it can’t bark without checking to see why it was barking in the first place.

     Our body, just like the vaster Universe, it belongs to, does not do anything randomly, it is connected to a great order and flow. “It has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony”. Every practitioner of health needs the foundation that is described in this blog. Without such an understanding, it would be like the blind leading the blind.

147. A great sharing on what physio can truly represent, and how gentleness is such an important element of how we live and move, and that how we practice modalities must offer this quality to heal beyond the superficial.

     1. Beautiful said Stephen, and to heal our body we must consider the whole and not just treat the symptoms or parts.

148. Love this sharing Kate I have never had physio but love connective tissue exercises. I think we get confused that force is needed as it looks like we are doing something. Rather than accepting being and living in harmony is much more powerful.

149. This is such a joy to read Kate that there is a much more whole rounded way of working as a Physiotherapist.

150. What you have developed through your gentle way of using the Connective Tissue to help patients heal and the gentle exercises is something that should be shared most definitely Kate.

151. Beautiful true and so informative about seeing the whole of our bodies and not just one physical symptom. I Have found Kate’s sessions so profound healing and amazingly unlocking and truly freeing and honouring of my body taking into account my whole being with a gentleness dedication and sensitivity it had never felt before and now treasures deeply.

152. Kate, this is really beautiful and feels truly healing; ‘I gently assist the body to enhance its natural healing process and support the person to reconnect to their natural quality of gentleness.’

153. What appears to be clear is that physiotherapy discounts the capacity of the body to heal itself if the practitioner work to help restoring its natural harmony. It is all about forcing a new equilibrium that is alien to the body. Functionally, it may look and work better but is this it? But what if something that is functionally better compared to what it was is in the overall picture dysfunctional for the being (and the body) in the medium and long term?

154. As you say Kate, the body has the most extraordinary intelligence: ‘The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony. This includes everything in the body – the organ systems, nervous system and the movement system – the musculoskeletal system.’ It is only when we get in the way, with our desires, emotions, ideals, reactions, that we hinder this intelligence from freely working . . . and this leads to disease.

155. I appreciate very much the genuine care and well-trained skills physiotherapist bring to their clients. In addition, it is the personal development of each practitioner that brings another aspect and quality into the healing session and it is as you say ‘I have undergone such a transformation in myself and my work that the way I am with patients, and how I approach my treatments with them now is a world away from even 15 years ago.’ what makes for the refinement of technique, connection with the client, true depth and another dimension of healing. Being a practitioner when developed as an art is much more than learned skills, it is sharing one´s way of living and being through presence, reflection and expression.

156. As one who has been on the receiving end of your treatments and support Kate I couldn’t agree more. The approach you take is very gentle but so effective and also empowering for the client, it makes us an equal part of the equation and of the healing process. I have learned to become more responsible for my body and how I use it because of this, valuing the preciousness of it and my being. The constant pain I had most of my life has left, leaving me with a much more vital body. Nothing short of miraculous as far as I am concerned.

157. This way of approaching physio is very different to what I have heard it to be and I really appreciate you sharing how you are with yourself and patients. I have never been to a physio as such, but I was always a bit unsure of the sound of them as they were someone you would go to to fix something. I really love how your approach is more about supporting the body not fixing it.

158. We so know what is supportive and what is not, our body tells us but we can override this knowing with giving our power away and deferring to others we have put as more knowledgeable. And it can seem tricky when it seems everyone else is following advice or ‘proven’ practice. So we’re told physio will help or our trainers know better.

     So it’s amazing the understanding you have and what you practice. So needed and the book is great!!!

159. Wanting a body part to behave and respond in a certain way is quite imposing and often done in a way that does not respect its innate wisdom and self-regulatory capabilities.

160. I love the questioning Kate went through and where she sourced that questioning, as it was not based on knowledge but a feeling from her body that physio could mean more than what had been taught. How often do we experience situations where we let our feelings be overridden by the knowledge presented. In physio I would imagine this is particularly strong, and yet the possibilities when connected to the intelligence of the body are magnificent and grand as she has beautifully shared.

161. A holistic approach – to anything – makes incredible sense for we’re always the sum of our parts and much, much more. It can be great to specialise but we always need to consider the whole being when doing so, and not only in the area of human health!

162. When I was in my 20’s I had an accident with my lower back that had me lying flat on my back for at least 4 weeks. And after this accident my back always gave me pain and I have been to see various Physiotherapists for years. I so clearly remember going for Physio once a week and the practitioner would pop my 4/5 lumbar into place and by the next week it would have popped back out again, I would have exercise and all sorts of different treatments but to be honest nothing seemed to stabilize the 4/5 lumbar.
     But since finding Universal Medicine and the UM practitioners the problem of my 4/5 lumbar has seemingly melted away; I do not have a sore back any more. I feel it is because they have never treated just the problem with my 4/5 lumbar; they have treated my whole body and by doing this what ever was happening in the lumbar region has settled and is no longer painful.

163. As health practitioners and carers we can sometimes put function and task before client.
     If we connect more deeply with ourselves, our true intuitive sense speaks, supporting us to understand what is truly going on for the client and how to be with them.

164. The sad reality is that doctors, nurses and other health practitioners are still trained to focus on physiology, biology, maybe psychology: the body’s functionality, studied each in separation from the other. Seldom does it consider the whole intelligence of the body, the inter-relationship of one part with another and vast potential for the body to heal itself. If it did, consultations with GPs and health practitioners would be transformed.

165. This is not only true physio, it is true healing and is the future.

     1. It’s also the past, we somehow lost our way in the middle.

        1. Exactly! We seriously went off the track at some point there.

     2. No technology, no crazy gizmos and no multi-billion dollar research funds and yet it is as you say true healing and the the true future. We have always had the answers.

166. “Having a treatment driven by a goal that the practitioner wants the body to achieve is imposing. It does not allow for the body’s natural healing processes to take place”. During treatments for various parts of my body I have often felt the practitioners need to fix me, and to be honest I usually desperately wanted to be fixed. I handed the power over to someone who I thought knew more than me, sometimes with unpleasant and painful results, but I still kept seeking the fix. To come to understand my body and the wisdom that it continually shares has changed the way I now approach a practitioner; I take all of me, including the wisdom of my body, to the session and then choose to work with the practitioner for the healing that my body is ready for.

     1. It seems ludicrous now, reading your comment Ingrid that we hand our power over to specialists in every field. It’s almost like we can’t wait to get rid of any responsibility we have for anything, be that our health, our finances, or even our parenting. We feel a sense of relief when a ‘specialist’ can advise us about how to behave but unless we discern what energetic source is impulsing them, we are simply putting our hands up for more of the same energy that we are seeking to get out of. It’s like trying to put a kitchen fire out with cooking fat!

     2. And how awesome is it that there are practitioners like Kate Greenaway who support you in deepening your understanding of your body and the wisdom it shares further. I find this way of supporting people is truly honouring and empowering.

167. I’m reading this and I can feel the block that comes in that stops a greater surrender to gentleness. Physio treatment where there is a goal has the body secondary to the outcome, and yet the body is everything and trusting the body to heal with no imposition feels like a mighty fine approach allowing lasting change.

168. This exposes the difference, and complete contrast, between the narrow-mindedness of the intellect, and the all encompassing wisdom of our bodies.

169. It is so important to treat the whole… as a part is not complete without the whole – because it belongs to the whole.

170. ‘…look at the body with a very narrow focus – this reductionist approach may help an acute condition of one joint or body part and a few muscles, but it does not truly support the many patients who have chronic complex physical and emotional problems.”…Working in complementary health care, I can confirm that most people who come these days for an appointment do not come with one single ailment as such, they come with multiple and often complex health issues, often intertwined with emotional issues and interrelated in some strange way and it is not a simple ‘take this and go home’ approach as it involves therapies introduced in stages and working over a period of time to support in bringing their body back to balance. This is where are currently headed in our society, and so it is important that our approach allows for the space to support each of the areas affected, but in a way that allows for the connection and the whole – knowing that a part always plays a part in the whole.

171. Thank you Kate – whenever we apply a scripted or goal oriented approach, it denies the individual. Similarly when we focus on a part rather than the whole then we contribute to the imbalance in the body. This is important to realise, as from here it then allows us to change our approach to one that is truly more holistic. I love how you have presented this in this blog and look forwards to reading part 2 very soon…

172. It makes a lot of sense to work with and support the body in a respectful way rather than impose or attempt to force our ideas and ideals on the body.

173. Emotional issues certainly do have an effect on our physical bodies, it’s huge. People carry a lot of issues in the body due to emotional issues.

174. We need to know what the whole is before we can be w-holistic in our approach of healing. Most concepts and modalities that consider themselves to be holistic are still limited in their view as they try to include more and more parts or aspects of the body and life, but it is only when we start from the whole that we can see every part for what it is in the big picture.

     1. That is so true it needs to be whole-istic or there is a big hole.

        1. Oh my goodness; even when the answer is in the word, we still manage to stray off track. Love this Nicola and Alex. Fun – yet very serious. A good combination!!

     2. I love what you have highlighted Alex. There is a huge difference between starting from the whole and holding what we are witnessing within that wholeness, than on the other hand a piece-meal combination of different aspects of life in the hope that this will give us a holistic understanding.

175. Everything what you write here Kate, I do know from my own education as Physiotherapist. Actually a lot of your support has helped to change my way of exercising with clients. It is competely different as I was trained as a physio. Deeply thanks for this.

176. It is evident that the body has an innate healing ability. Appreciating this fact and working in harmony with it would seem to be absolute common sense.

     1. When we work in harmony with any aspect of nature, including the body, we allow and support the magnificence of the natural flow. When we impose what we think it needs, we reduce the flow with our limited vision.

177. A whole person approach to medicine and healing makes so much sense when I read this article… and a bit of a mockery of the fact that in so many areas of life we do compartmentalise.

178. What I got really clearly from reading this today is that humans have difficulty in surrendering to a greater intelligence and that the mind-set that ‘i know best’ is incredibly limiting. I know this because I do it to, I know the body has a greater intelligence, and often I don’t want to listen to it, and I choose to listen to my mind which often makes decisions that my body has to suffer.

     I saw in this blog how that plays out in traditional physio, that the therapist goes with what it wants/or how they have been trained, and that can limit the intelligence of the body and its own ability to heal.

     1. I love your honesty here Sarah its incredibly healing.

     2. What you flag is so true Sarah. Most of us live in disconnection to our bodies and even when the messages are loud and clear we take pride in finding ways to turn the volume down and disregard what is shown. It is not surprising that therapists who live this way extend it to the way they are working too. In a way what Kate is offering here is a fundamental reflection to all of us in every aspect of our lives.

179. Beautiful Kate. What you share seems like absolute common sense and yet it is revolutionary to see a physiotherapist openly express this way.

     1. Leonne I take what Kate sometimes shares for granted as it makes so much sense, yet so few medical professionals in her position are open and sharing in this way.

180. For the body to truly heal we need to address the underlying energetic root cause of why we have the issue in the first place; without this awareness, no true healing can occur.

     1. Shouldn’t that be written above every doctor’s door?

     2. This understanding ought to be a fundamental tenet of medical training. How far has medicine veered away from its original source (as shown by such teachings as Imhotep and Pythagoras), if this awareness is not the foundation it stands on?

181. Connective tissue is such an important part of our body and I don’t remember ever being taught about it in school, almost as if it was a deliberate omission. The connective tissue exercises and the therapy sessions are so exquisitely gentle and help us to reconnect deep within our own bodies, they are a valuable tool in any healing process.

     1. I recall learning about connective tissue at some stage, but it was taught in such a boring way as if it was just something that happened to cover or connect the more important bits. It is only through my connection with Kate Greenaway and Universal Medicine that I have been re-introduced to and awareness of the exquisiteness and the significance of what we are working with here.

182. Trusting the body’s intelligence and surrendering to the self healing capability of our bodies feels gentle and true. Kaye Greenaway, you are an amazing Physio and I know that by having miraculous results from sessions with you. Thank you for sharing to the world and humanity.

183. We are finding evidence in all aspects of life that looking to fix one area in isolation of considering its relationship with the whole as well as the overall dynamic at play, at best gives us a short-term relief. This ought to be reflected in our medical and health support systems.

     We are thousands of years on from when such an understanding was taught and understood, as confirmed by the quote from Plato: “Just as you ought not to attempt to cure eyes without head or head without body, so you should not treat body without soul.”

184. Kate you have brought to light how we address lots of things in life on a purely functional level, rather than treating or addressing the whole person. The body has an amazing capacity to heal itself and when we tap into and work with it, there is an opportunity for healing on a much deeper level.

185. I was speaking with a young woman who was just starting out with her physio training – how rich that would be Kate, if it were tempered with all you have to share, the experiences you have to offer… an approach that supports all that skill and learning to treat the person as a whole.

186. This is a profound change in the way the body is supported Kate. Not from imposition and the seeking of an outcome that hinders the body’s natural capacity to heal, but from being so deeply attuned to how true support can be applied… I can’t but feel the true ‘working together’ that this entails, and the depth of sensitivity and awareness in the practitioner taking such an approach.
     And that from what you’ve shared just here, there is the foundation for at least the first 3 chapters of a book… More please Kate Greenaway-Twist – where you are coming from is so deeply needed.

187. Seeing someone as just a body that can be fixed, bandaged and sent home really does limit the amount of healing that can be offered to them. Seeing the multidimensionality of humanity means doctors, physios and practitioners can do so much more than offer surface level treatment, and support people on a gigantic scale.

     1. What you have pointed out, Susie, is huge. The depth of service we provide is profoundly limited or expanded by the level of our own relationship with life. “Seeing the multi-dimensionality of humanity” and our understanding and appreciation of what we can each offer through our profession whether it is medicine or in fact any other, ought to be part of our foundational training.

188. Wonderful Kate. As a physiotherapist I agree with everything that you share here. I would also say that patients come to clinic feeling disempowered for they do not realise the potential they have within to heal themselves and so look for the physiotherapist to ‘fix’ them.

     1. That’s a great point Jane. I know I have previously presented myself as someone in need of fixing when going to the doctors or my healing practitioner. When we are made aware of how much power we have to bring about our own healing with the support of our practitioners, it opens up a huge potential, which results in more than the sum of the parts.

189. ‘you need to write about the work you are doing, share it with other practitioners, physios and people who are used to the old style of physio’ Absolutely Kate as the work you are doing is inspiring a whole new approach to health care. We all need to know there is a different way and we all need to know of the amazing outcomes of this different way also, for both practitioner and client.

190. What you share Kate equally applies to other occupations where teaching or training is limited to function or subject knowledge not a deeper understanding of the intelligence of the whole body or person.

191. The way you approach the body Kate feels so expansive – and unimposing. What you have developed is a revolutionary approach to the sensitivity of the body and the complexity of systems that support us in our human life. The integrity and respect that you offer in sessions allows the client to explore their own bodily ailments and truly understand their responsibility for any dis-ease, while exploring a way to heal any hurt.

192. “I gently assist the body to enhance its natural healing process and support the person to reconnect to their natural quality of gentleness.” That feels beautiful Kate as it seems to me not so imposing on the body. I love the idea that my body knows how to heal as it makes me feel more part of the healing process than only laying down and let the physio “do their thing”.

193. This is a whole new level of integrity in practice that I have not heard voiced with any other group or modality. So often practitioners advising patients against drinking for example, are still themselves drinking. Or drink, and then the next day put their hands on clients’ precious bodies to ‘heal’ them through physiotherapy. What you describe here Kate is ground-breaking.

     1. True Lyndy. Most of my life I took it as ‘normal’ that various medical professionals advising me about my health seemed grossly unhealthy in many ways themselves. On hindsight I realise this was due to on one hand my resignation and reduced expectation of true health in people, and on the other hand my lack of understanding of the energetic responsibility of offering a true reflection by our personal example as well as by our words.
        This level of integrity mentioned by Kate is relatively rare, yet thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine it is rapidly growing among those who have become re-aware and re-inspired.

194. Kate I love what you express here, my own previous experience of having been seen by a physiotherapist was very much that on one hand I would convince myself it was doing me good and on the other hand it would feel worse because I would be in more pain for the next few days. It definitely felt like my muscles were being forced to stretch much further than they naturally wanted to go.

     1. Haha – my last experience of working with a physio (which is nearly 10 years ago now) was incredible. My long standing back problem which had plagued me for many years has not been a problem since… in part through the healing, in part from the relationship I developed with my body and the care I take of it now. Funny that the physio was none other than…… Kate Greenaway!

195. This is an amazing article, and I am sure there are so many people who work in physiotherapy who are similar and that know there is more to offer than pure functional improvement.

196. As a Physiotherapist myself I was also trained to view and treat the body in a certain way, however quickly discovered that when faced with the reality of daily practice, these methods did not work in terms of providing a full and lasting healing of the conditions being presented. So I too started to explore other ways of approaching the body and medicine and this has led me to work in a completely different way, in the same way you are describing so well Kate.

197. When I think of reductionism and the body, I think of putting the body in to parts, this is often what you get taught in massage school, which is where I learnt, often the focus is on the elbow, knees, back, but not the rest of the body….It is fabulous to take a fresh look and consider the whole body in assessment and treatment, all parts matter, and they all impact on each other.

198. Kate what you are sharing is phenomenal, all practitioners need to become aware of what you are sharing. The body has its own ability to heal throughout and its not about forcing the healing but about supporting it to heal.

199. What a blessing this is Kate, to have you write about your experience of your traditional Physiotherapy training alongside your understanding of what True Physiotherapy actually is. I am sure there are many Physiotherapists across the world who would be interested in reading your article.

200. It is so beautiful to hear a health professional speak openly and honestly about the shortfalls you found in your profession and what you then did about it. This is how it ought to be; that we honour what we feel and then act on those feelings. I love how you went in search of a truer form of physiotherapy than what you had learned at university.

201. You make a great point Jane, that our bodies need to be given their own time to heal. We cannot expect our bodies to heal overnight when we have spent years treating them with disregard and we cannot expect to change patterns with the flick of a switch that are ingrained in our way of being but with patience and understanding we can change patterns and behaviours which lead to ill health and return to living with our natural vitality and true health.

202. We do not give enough attention to how incredible the natural workings of the physical body are and how we can support ourselves to heal. A friend of mine fell through a glass roof on holiday during her teens and it was not until her late 20’s or 30’s that she discovered a piece of glass in her body the size of a credit card because her body had brought it to the surface to be disguarded which is extraordinary.

203. I can see how problem-solving would be imposing if it didn’t take into consideration all the confounding factors that led to the end result. Giving the body support so it can trigger its own healing mechanisms is a simpler approach from my perspective.

204. It’s so brilliant that you have written this Kate. This is true education and medicine for all of us. What you share makes so much sense because within us we know the truth about our bodies and we know that harmony is what our bodies long for. It is only when we try and rationalise with the mind from the vantage point of right and wrong that one will try and dispute the truth of what has here been shared.

205. ‘As a result, physios mostly look at the body with a very narrow focus – this reductionist approach may help an acute condition of one joint or body part and a few muscles, but it does not truly support the many patients who have chronic complex physical and emotional problems’. Not only physios but most of us in life come at it with a very narrow focus – we isolate parts instead of addressing the whole. there can be no real healing.

206. Approaching patients in the traditional way feels to me as if you’d be saying “there is something wrong with you, you’re broken which only I can fix”. It disempowers the patient and is a great excuse for them to them not take responsibility for their own healing, leaving it up to the physio to fix them. It maintains the inequality of the relationship and continues to feed into the separation and inequality we have created on a humanitarian scale.

207. Your story and history also shows me how you’re dedicated to the person first and ailment next – many might see it the other way.

208. Very interesting, Kate, and what you’ve described makes sense to me. When it’s explained the way you have it seems a very obvious assessment, how long will it be before others – and the profession/industry as a whole – consider the whole body first.

209. Having had numerous hours of physiotherapy for various physical ailments, what came across strongly with some physical therapists was the expectations placed on how long it takes for a condition to get better, as though the body was mis-behaving in some way because the desired or expected outcome had not been met in the how ever number of sessions given. Sometimes on my appointments I felt like making out the condition had improved more than it had just to fit in with the palatable expectations. What Kate is offering here totally knocks that all on its head, as the body knows how to heal itself with the right encouragement, and maybe in some cases less is more.

210. ‘Now I consider all these factors and help support the person to understand the deeper disharmony in their body that eventually causes the physical problem.’ Thank you Kate for sharing how to support true healing in others which is applicable to so many fields.

211. As I read this sentence about the true intelligence of the body – there is a deep stillness within and a instant knowingness, that this is actually true when we live responding to what the body is constantly presenting to us that is not truly serving or supporting it.
     “The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony. This includes everything in the body – the organ systems, nervous system and the movement system – the musculoskeletal system”.

212. I agree Elizabeth. I work in Dentistry and this same principle applies as this is innate to the body and it is universal. Reading ‘The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony.’ has inspired me to work with much more awareness of this fact.

213. There is such a sense of the how the way we live our lives comes into the quality of healing and support we can offer others in whatever our line of work we are in.

214. Do we talk about the same profession here? “All I was focused on was what was the physical problem and how do I fix it.” or this one “I gently assist the body to enhance its natural healing process and support the person to reconnect to their natural quality of gentleness.” I know which one I prefer and how we can continue to support humanity in returning back to their innate quality. True physiotherapy indeed!

     1. I agree! That is what I picked up too and I can see it would support at any age and in a multitude of situations.

215. Reading this I could feel how limiting it is when we just focus on one part and try to manipulate it with the view of fixing it until it does what we want it to. It’s like having tunnel vision when it comes to a situation we are dealing with or an issue we find confronting… this way doesn’t offer a wider view and opportunity to understand the bigger picture.

216. ‘The body has a remarkable intelligence to continually heal and bring itself to a greater level of balance and harmony‘. And in today’s world this is something that I feel we totally underestimate in regard to truly supporting both our own, and others’ health and wellbeing. Great blog Kate.

217. It just so happens that I know you personally Kate and see you for treatments, and can therefore attest to your level of care and understanding. There have been times I’ve definitely wanted a quick fix, a crack here and big big stretch there, but over time, you have facilitated me to actually feel my connective tissue when I do the connective tissue exercises. I have a much better understanding of the inner workings of my body now as my awareness increases.

218. There is such a respect and honouring of the body and its wisdom in your article Kate. The body does know how to heal itself when supported and not imposed upon.

219. Awesome that you could feel that there were serious limitations to ‘normal’ physiotherapy as a young physio and remained open to beginning to seek another way…

220. Kate there cannot be enough appreciation for what you have shared here as it’s a foundational change to how physiotherapy approaches and works with the client. It’s pioneering and yes, you do need to write those books, make DVDs, and teach worldwide. When you truly appreciate the magnitude of what you have developed then sharing this worldwide becomes a natural next step. And this has come from you trusting how you feel and allowing yourself to be the amazing woman you are – more appreciation!

221. Recently I read a blog on the theory of Push/Pull in the body and the body’s response to this. What has been shared here supports the outcomes of the theory. When we choose gentleness the body does not hold back, it is always open to love and responds. Very simple and very loving.

222. ‘True Physiotherapy’ – truly understanding the body to be a unit of physical, emotional and energetic dimension thus, physio (Greek: body, nature) = whole-body-therapy meets and treats a person for their whole being and not just the physical apparatus.

223. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” It looks like current standard physiotherapy is based on addressing the issue of the muscle from the outside i.e. by stretching the muscle extensively but this denies that the body has intrinsic mechanisms to heal from the inside out. I found myself for instance that tensed muscles healed very well with Connective Tissue Exercises which are very small movements that seem to make the muscles remember what it is to be gentle. The pulling and overly stretching did most of the time the opposite for me.

224. This is so important for physios to read. The training given does not necessarily contain education in awareness of the whole body and the vitality of the person. To treat the body as a functioning object does not respect us as people or pay consideration to our choices and way of life that will have contributed to the condition that is being treated.

225. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” This is an amazing account of physiotherapy Kate, and you could take this across to modern medicine too – the body is magnificent in what it can do and I don’t think we often give it enough credit for it’s ability to heal itself, instead we think we need to fix it and mend it, but what if the body itself plays a super important role in this.

226. Absolutely crucial to bring what you discovered together as a whole, and particularly revolutionary is the observation of the person’s emotional status and energetic vitality to inform the pace and type of session required by their whole body.

227. Simply understanding that the body has an amazing capacity to heal itself, given the right circumstances and support, and that we are mistaken as practitioners if we believe that we heal someone else is a game changer for medicine.

     1. Exactly Andrew, how we learn anatomy and physiology should be based on this principle.

228. We do not realise the importance of one’s livingness when we seek treatment but as I reflect over the years before I was introduced to Universal Medicine I can see on some level I was aware of this hence my decision to stop the treatment I was receiving. But what if I had truly listened to within and not gone to them in the first place?… one thing is for sure, I would have saved a lot of money!

229. It’s important we do not criticise or judge health practitioners ( you haven’t Kate) for the actual fact is the reason it is taught that way is because of us, as there is no one out there in the physiotherapist world teaching / lecturing other physiotherapists that there is another way.

     1. True Gyl, in my experience most of health practitioners have chosen their profession because they wish to support people. The insights shared in this article and presented widely by Universal Medicine should really be included as a foundation of any health modality teaching.

        While we are still waiting for that, it is great for us in the general public to call out for what we have noticed is best supports us. And living role models such as Kate Greenaway-Twist are a wonderful reflection for all those practitioners ready to deeper the quality service they are offering.

230. “What was making me uneasy in treating in this standard way, was that it was not taking into account the body’s ability to heal itself.” This innate ability that the body has to heal itself is so often overlooked by conventional medicine and the need of people who just want a quick fix, rather than a willingness to give the body the time and space that it needs to heal itself naturally, given the best support possible. True Physiotherapy is definitely one such modality that has much to offer here.

231. Great revelations Kate! What you have described here is the difference between working on the body to fix it and working with the body knowing that it is capable of healing itself if given the space and care that is required.

232. The ‘fix it’ mentality has deeply permeated our modern, fast-paced world with people commonly seeking the latest pill or treatment to remove whatever illness, injury or disorder without any care or contemplation for the root cause or possible behaviours that lead to the ailment in the first place. I love that you have recognized and exposed that any attempt to fix is in fact deeply imposing on a body that is not only attempting to show someone the ill of their ways but has it’s own natural healing process that needs to be worked with and not overridden by a drive to only remove pain or increase function. The power of a holistic view and treatment approach cannot be denied if true healing is to occur.

233. Amazing Kate. The way you have simply presented this is industry breaking and I am pulled to come and see you. What I also receive from this is exactly how you finished the blog – to be gentle in my movements and the way I am in my body.

234. “I gently assist the body to enhance its natural healing process and support the person to reconnect to their natural quality of gentleness”- This certainly feels a more supportive way to treat the body with musculoskeletal problems instead of imposing ways that force the body to move in a certain way to regain its mobility and flexibility.

235. Gorgeous Kate and I agree with your many patients and colleagues who have suggested you write a book – please write this book for us all.

236. Beautiful Kate – if we are to truly arrest the ill momentum we for the most part seem to be caught up in living in terms of our poor health, we need to stop looking at our body as a machine that ‘breaks’ and then can be ‘fixed’ and move instead to a more holistic (whole – istic) approach that at least considers that every part of our body has the ability to work in synergy with every other part and thus the whole it is a part of.

237. This is so true, that we are not to be ‘fixed’ in any one area, but to consider the whole lifestyle that has contributed to the body expressing dysfunction in that one area.

     1. We have a very clear indication that this is not the way in the multi-symptomatic nature of illness nowadays, and also in cases of cancer, where the problem can recede in the area targeted only to surface somewhere else. We are energetic beings, everything has an energetic root far deeper than the physical end product we can see and target.

238. This is beautiful Kate. I hope the world gets to read this article and the one that follows. I have personally experienced having a session with both a physiotherapist and then yourself (using this deeper approach to healing the body), when I broke my foot last year, and the way you approached the situation I presented with wins hands down! A beautiful healing took place and I abandoned the physiotherapy after 2 sessions as I felt it was imposing on my body.

239. To honour the body intelligence and support it to naturally heal is something that is not always practiced especially when we impose a standard on the body, and this doesn’t just come from medicine or it’s practitioners, it comes from ourselves too; how we want our bodies to move the same on each side for instance, and reading today Kate I feel a huge accepting and allowing of how my body is and I know that it’s about moving to support our bodies to heal as they can, and the true physiotherapy you speak of here is an amazing support for that; it goes beyond mere function to understanding the whole and not just the part and it honours that the body knows above all else. Thank you for sharing with all of us, there is so much for all of us as humanity to know and understand about how we live and move and how this impacts on us, and to have those like yourself who bring our attention to this in a deeply loving way is a gift, and a huge empowerment.

240. From someone who has been fortunate enough to have had some sessions with you, Kate I can whole heartedly say how beautifully supportive, gentle and non-imposing your sessions are. This is such a contrast to past physiotherapy sessions I have had, where I have felt pulled and pummeled.

241. It’s awesome Kate to hear the perspective of a physiotherapist and how you can work with the body on such a universal level, but how at the moment we have a system that focuses on fixing details rather than looking at the deeper veins (so to speak) of what’s going on. A super insightful article, thank you!

242. This sounds like a better way to go when it comes to treating a person or their body. I remember myself and I know a lot of people share of an almost dread when it comes to going to a traditional physio, you know you are in for some pain. Some of the treatments and following exercises were just plain painful and it was all in the name of getting you back to ‘normal’. I have experienced many Connective Tissue treatments and your body drops so deeply settled. No pushing, bending or stretching pain, just a gentle treatment that works better then anything else similar I have tried.

243. I love this approach you share Kate and I can feel how much sense it makes. I have experience treatments where the touch of the practitioner has been so light and yet the effects so strong. The body really does respond to a light touch, and often it is about trusting in ourself as a practitioner that not imposing and keeping it gentle will bring the most profound outcomes.

244. We are all equally such sensitive beings, with super sensitive and responsive bodies that it is only appropriate to treat the client with just the same qualities. It serves the client as much as it serves the practitioner.

245. Reading this was a great reminder that healing does not occur by a driven focus on the ailment. But caring for the body and giving it the space to do it’s own thing and with support from conventional and the Sacred Esoteric healing modalities my body has corrected and cleared many illnesses physical, mental and emotional.

246. Excellent article Kate and one of the things that I found very interesting is how you mentioned the transformation in yourself and on your work over the years – as these are totally related. I had the privilege of having some sessions with you in the past years and I am a testimony of the gentle, delicate and tender way you treat your and the client’s bodies.

247. This is a brilliant report Kate and I agree, it would be fantastic if physiotherapists were trained in this way!
     I can confirm from experience that for example my food choices affect my lower back, when I eat things I don’t tolerate I get lower back pain because of indigestion in my intestines. Or when I am emotional and try to control things my forearms and especially my jaw tenses up, which affects my neck and shoulders. So yes we need to look at everything that is going on with us to find a sound way of living.

248. It seems quite arrogant of us to think that we know better than our body how it wants to rearrange itself in order to heal in its entirety. We may bring a lot of knowledge and skill and can certainly support the body big time but that is what feels correct: to support the body rather than take over the bodies own intelligence and impose our own upon it.

249. When it comes to our bodies we look at them in a functioning way, meaning we want them to work and if they don’t we want something or someone to fix it. But that way we ignore and completely disregard the way our bodies work and what they truly need and that we can actually work with them, according to their rhythm and in a very gentle way.

250. “I know how you should be and move, and this is the technique I will use to fix you” – I know how horrible it feels to receive this. But as a patient/client, how often do we go and seek support while taking full responsibility for our choices? Maybe this is the approach many of us are asking for while refusing to be responsible.

251. Ah – brilliant Kate. What I get from reading your sharing here is that as patients and clients we want this functional fix too. It’s us who put this call out to ‘feel bettter’ and recover soon, instead of standing alongside our body and giving it every chance to surrender and heal. It really confirms to me how the skill of a great practitioner like you is simply to assist people to access their own inbuilt healing super power.

252. To take the body’s natural healing inclination into account in this way allows a space for the person to take responsibility for the way in which their choices are influencing the ability of the body to heal. The physical therapies are needed for sure, as you are showing Kate, but the missing part has been this vital aspect.

     1. Very true Jenny. The person is empowered to take responsibility for the way they choose to live and are offered an understanding how their every day choices affect their body. Although most want a fix they get to feel that they are the ones that determine the way in which the body heals and not the responsibility of the practitioner.

        1. Exactly Caroline, and not just to see how their everyday choices affect them, but to understand exactly why those choices are made. Getting underneath our behaviours and patterns requires a depth of awareness and a level of honesty that allows us to see below the obvious. Doing this, is what creates that space to then make a different choice.

253. We are truly multi-dimensional beings and so to address one part of us in isolation from the rest doesn’t make sense to me either… In my experience our emotional or energetic state has a profound impact on our physical body and vitality and so to look at one without considering the other leaves us without the whole picture of what is going on…

254. It is lovely to hear the wisdom of a body practitioner who appreciates that the body heals best when we treat the whole person and being.

255. As Plato knew way back when, we need to consider the whole body if we are to bring about true healing, rather than a mere fix. Whilst the practitioner can support the healing process they can never impose, as it the individual who needs to heal the patterns they have created. Luckily our bodies know how!

256. This article brings us to a point, a responsibility, as it shares that healing is never about imposing on a body, but instead understanding what is going on with all levels of the person and proposing the possibility that what is needed is to understand the body we live in, what its very real needs are to support it, and the responsibility we have to provide them. So that we then fully support any physical body treatment we choose to access.

257. Wonderful article Kate, and an amazing revelation for those ready to receive a more expansive understanding about the body and how a therapy can truly enhance the whole person. Loved it.

258. Thank you for writing about a topic that is in dire need of revelation and regeneration Kate.

259. The different in the two ways can be felt energetically in the body. What this confirms for me is that to impose, force or push our way to whole health will always meet with resistance and therefore partial healing. To work with, allow and gently encourage will always bring all parts of the body to whole health and re-affirm what is within that is true.

     1. So agree with you Christine! However for a long time that was a foreign concept to me, as I had learned to push my way through life. I have to say that since I stopped pushing and forcing my body to do things but go with its natural flow, it is much more fun to move my body and I enjoy being in my body a lot more, even though it is getting older.

260. What you share here Kate felt healing for me and my body to read as I am sure many others readers felt. In the mere fact that you are honouring the body and its innate healing process and seeing how pushing against the body (even in trying to support it which is what physiotherapy is about) does not truly work. Hence the true physiotherapy you now practise and share here.

     1. A healing and an inspiration for me too Vicky – the body’s intelligence to bring healing and harmony to itself, in all levels and details. I just love the body.

261. This feels delicious to hear someone choosing to see a patient as a patient and not an issue or problem that must be fixed with the arrogance that the professional knows how to fix it. The patient is a person, a being that is far far grander than the issue will ever be and in this way meeting the person offers healing to other issues that could be going on in their life.

     1. Indeed Joshua “the patient is a being that is far far grander than the issue will ever be” and at the minimum every aspect of the human life the patient is living warrants consideration and assessment. And since we are all multi-dimensional beings with the qualities of God as our true expression, we can take it a lot deeper to consider the disharmony felt in the various parts of our body as a result of us living contra to that.

        At the end of the day the practitioner will be able to support the client according to the level of awareness they have lived. This brings a responsibility to practitioners, as our continuing professional development training, to not just focus on learning new skills, but also build an understanding of our multi-dimensional nature and the practical application of that in our own lives, so that we can also hold our clients in that understanding and support.

262. I’ve had a number of sessions with you Kate over the years and have found it difficult when I’ve needed treatment from practitioners who don’t treat with these same understandings. Those sessions felt harsh and jarring and not at all connected to the whole of me. There is a sense of having something ‘done’ to me, rather than being a participant in my own healing with a gentle expert who is simply facilitating the way.

263. For many years I offered bodywork that focused on releasing the tightness in the physical body and increasing flow and mobility. I also personally received treatments. Later techniques included considering how the emotional aspects impact the physical and burying these so that the impact would no longer be registered in the body. Throughout I considered it to be just ‘one of those things’ when the body kept returning to its old habits and patterns, as if it was just something to accept and expect.

     It was not until I came across Universal Medicine, that I started to gain a truly all encompassing and honouring understanding of the whole of the human being, where it makes absolute sense why the body keeps returning to the same picture when the actual underlying issue is still running and is impacting it at the core. This understanding that truly considers and address the ‘whole’ should be the foundation of every health support modality.

264. This is the medicine of the future Kate, to consider all three aspects of the person in complete appreciation of our body’s immense intelligence and superb healing abilities. When we recognize ourselves as the physical, emotional and energetic beings we naturally are, our ability to heal deep seated, complex, chronic and acute conditions, is quite miraculous.

265. ‘…and certainly doesn’t take into account the emotional status or energetic vitality of the person.’ What you are sharing here allows for a shift in consciousness within the medical profession. That disharmony and tension in the body doesn’t fall out of the sky but is a direct consequence of our life style – our choices of how we eat and rest, our expression, the ideals and beliefs we take on and so on. All of these impact the body in subtle and not so subtle ways causing muscular tension and more, and that if allowed to build up cause much more severe symptoms in the longer term.

266. Kate, have you considered training new physiotherapists? Or putting this article into
     a medicine/physio journal/website/health magazine?

267. Thank you Kate as this understanding of approach to healing is so needed.

268. A deeply inspiring blog on the changes you have made in your approach to your work Kate. How empowering to visit a physiotherapist who takes into consideration the whole body and emotional factors that may have caused or added to the problem without wanting to just ‘fix’ a part of the body and its movements.

269. Thank you for sharing Kate, looking forward to reading part 2! I found exactly what you were saying with regular physios who focussed solely on the area of discomfort neglecting the whole of my body and the way I was living and moving. They also very much had the goal of returning my body back to function.

270. It seems to me Kate that you have trusted an innate sense within you that there is a more loving way to approach physiotherapy and healing in the body. I fully agree that such practices must honour and work with the body’s natural ability to heal.

271. This is absolutely awesome Kate, thank you for sharing. It is like we think we can fix a body that is not moving correctly by stretching the muscle but forget to address the human being that is connected to the body with his or her thoughts emotions and feelings that are often playing a big part in originating the body not moving in flow.

272. “As a result, physios mostly look at the body with a very narrow focus – this reductionist approach may help an acute condition of one joint or body part and a few muscles, but it does not truly support the many patients who have chronic complex physical and emotional problems.” This approach is true in medicine too. As an ex-nurse, the whole body isn’t taken into consideration at all. One patient may see many different specialists and departments and may be offered varying treatments – but there is no overall wholistic approach, taking nutrition and lifestyle also into account.

     1. It has become accepted for far too long for us to look at a snapshot of life, establish a relationship and then claim that we have understood everything there is to understand. This narrow mindedness is staggering. There is always more to understand and there is always a bigger picture than the narrow view we have reached so far. Surely this openness to keep observing and finding out more is the basis of science and so also the foundation of all medicine and healthcare professions.

273. A truly holistic approach to physiotherapy and life, your deep care and dedication is felt in all you do Kate and is an inspiration to everyone.

274. “I gently assist the body to enhance its natural healing process and support the person to reconnect to their natural quality of gentleness.” Beautiful. Just reading this I can feel the healing quality in your words.

275. It is interesting to read that the ‘normal’ trained physiotherapist are focused on restoring function instead of looking to the whole picture and in that actually do impose force and movements to the body that do not belong there but for the sake of the result, restoring function, are allowed to be applied. How different is that to what you presenting here to be your practice Kate and which feels so much more honoring to the human body. As what you say, our bodies do have that enormous potential to heal itself but sometimes it need a little support or to be remembered of that fact.

     1. Somewhere along the line humanity has picked up the misguided belief that to control and impose our will on life shows the extent of our evolution. We are shooting ourselves in the foot with this attitude, because while we arrogantly try to impose our will, we miss the immense wisdom and the outplay of divine order right under our nose.

        1. Indeed Golnaz, in fact we are in denial of the amazing beings that we are, divine and capable of bringing magic to our lives and to the world. We can let go of this ill will to control iife and instead surrender to the will of the All.

276. It has never made sense to me how so many medical professions focus just on the part of the body that has the visible problem, as everything in the body is connected in one way or another. Therefore, it makes sense that if one part is affected every other part is impacted on in some way; from a major impact to a minor one. If medical professionals were to begin any treatment with this in mind I am sure that the patient will feel that they are being treated and honoured as a whole person and not just a knee, a heart or a spleen.

     1. I can appreciate that the actual symptom is often the most urgent area to address, i.e.when there is a situation that if left can cause further problems. However surely we understand the body enough to know that the whole of the person needs attention and support when an issue is showing.

        Mind you it seems that we apply this way of just focusing on sections when addressing all aspects of life. No wonder our world is in the state that it is in. So perhaps what we are talking about here is not applicable just to physiotherapy and medicine. It also relates to our reductionist outlook in general.

277. This approach to supporting the body makes so much sense. We are an entire package designed to live as such, it’s kind of artificial intelligence if we deicide to just isolate a ‘section’ and treat without any consideration to cause and ‘ripple’ effect. I truly appreciate the overall gentle approach, I know I respond and heal so much faster when gentleness in word or action is the foundation of any treatment.

     1. We have even coined a term ‘side-effects’ to make it seem okay to target one area and ignore the chaos we may cause somewhere else! Come on, let’s be honest for a moment. Labelling something and bringing into the realms of ‘expected’, does not make it okay.

        We have seen the evidence for eons, in the environment, in life and in our bodies, that treating a part without considering the whole does not work.

        1. There is often a strong tendency to justify the cause and effects of any of our decisions, which removes us further from truth and responsibility, so much so we can manipulate and manoeuvre ourselves away from the initial point. A very convenient way to dilute, distract and deny.

278. Addressing the whole and why we present with the physical ill makes so much sense

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