HEALTH
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Psychotherapy and Counselling

It may be centuries since warriors last wore armour, but our bodies can be equally imprisoned behind an invisible shield, formed in response to emotional wounding. Psychotherapy and Counselling work on both mind and body to reduce stress and anxiety using touch, breath and talk to dissolve this barrier and to release the body's internal energy. This kind of work returns muscles and bones to their proper alignment and releases emotions, thereby helping to put you in touch with how you really feel. Health Touch is here to support you in your life - you don't have to do it alone!

• Psychotherapy and Counselling
• Reichian therapy
• Biodynamic massage
• Post traumatic therapy
• Shamanic counselling
• Cranial massage
• Fast phobia cure
• 21 Tips for Clients in Therapy

Psychotherapy and Counselling

The basic principles of this Psychotherapy and Counselling are humanistic and recognise your own self-healing capacity. It is especially useful if you need help when your life situation becomes too difficult or if you want to deepen your self-understanding and expand your vital capacities. Methods used may include listening, talking, interpretation, bodywork, visualisation, Gestalt or Reichian therapy and bodywork, breathing and movement. You will never be asked to do anything you do not want to do. The work is integrative and attempts to bring together several of these approaches. Regular weekly sessions are recommended.

Reichian Therapy

Developed by the Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, this therapy is the forerunner of many of today's body oriented therapies. It aims to relieve learned patterns of negative behaviour and chronic muscular tension using breath, sound and movement freeing natural orgone energy.

Reichian Therapy recognises the interwoven nature of mind and body. It can create profound character transformation and somatic wellbeing, reducing both physical and psychological symptoms. With Reichian Therapy you can become the instrument of positive change in your life, finding new levels of emotional health, revitalised life energy and authenticity in your relationships.

As we grow and struggle with adversity, we develop repetitive coping strategies to avoid difficult feelings and impossible situations. These strategies may once have allowed us to survive but now as adults hinder our development and enjoyment of life. They can alienate others, keep us from our true feelings, needs and desires, inhibiting our ability to actualize who we really are. Our creativity and success in the world is therefore minimized and problems of depression, anxiety, phobias, insomnia, emptiness, loneliness, eating disorders, and addiction can rule our existence. These patterns have their roots in chronic character styles which have developed throughout our lifetime. As these behaviour patterns are confronted, the character defences are dislodged and the muscle armour melted, allowing the discovery of our true, naturally sexual and spiritual nature.

Biodynamic Massage

This form of massage combines talk and touch, targeting the mind as well as the muscles. Biodynamic Massage is concerned with the process of making connections in and between mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of yourself. It is truly an integrative therapy, working both at the physiological level of skin, muscle and bone and on the more subtle energy flows in the body. Biodynamic Massage also looks at the connections between physical symptoms and emotional states.

In the first session time is taken to discuss your life situation and medical history. Biodynamic Massage works on the origins and effects of stress in your life, promoting deep relaxation, improved circulation, increased energy and well being. You are likely to feel some benefit after one session, but a sustained change is only made possible by regular sessions over a period of weeks or months.

Post Traumatic Stress Therapy

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) can develop after exposure to traumatic experience. Effective Post Traumatic Stress Therapy involves both talk and bodywork. It can help you both to remember and psychologically resolve the traumatic situation. It can also restore lost physical reflexes and rebalance your nervous system. Post Traumatic Stress therapy can take from a few sessions to several years.

Shamanic Counselling

Shamanic Counselling, operating at the interface of shamanism and psychotherapy acknowledging a perception of the world that recognises no separation between mind and matter. This approach to life upholds the importance of personal choice, authenticity, accepting responsibility for one's actions, acknowledging human beings as unique and whole, exploring subjective experience and seeking a meaningful life through personal growth.

During a session traditional psychotherapy techniques may be used alongside shamanic journeying and work with energy. As a client your needs in regards to your entire being and within the context of your environment and circumstances will be addressed.

Cranial Massage

Cranial massage therapy uses an extremely gentle quality of touch to assist the body in its healing process. Cranial Massage is a deeply relaxing therapy and aims at treating the whole person. It can therefore help with almost any condition from the physical to the emotional. Cranial Massage is also very effective in promoting general improvements in health and energy, balancing and integrating the whole person on many levels and reintegrating following illness, accident or injury. It is often combines with Violet Fire.

Fast Phobia Cure

"A Phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. In most cases, the phobia involves a sense of endangerment or a fear of harm". Phobias are fairly common affecting more than 10% of the UK population. NLP Fast Phobia Cure is the antidote to all kinds of phobias ranging from little annoying ones to enormous phobias that seriously impede normal life. The Fast Phobia Cure can be used for all kinds of phobias relating to:-

• The natural environment-fear of lightning, water, storms
• Animal-fear of snakes, rodents, spiders, dogs.
• Medical-fear of seeing blood, receiving injections, visiting a doctor
• Situational-fear of bridges, leaving the home, driving.

One of the great benefits of the Fast Phobia Cure is that the practitioner does not need to know any details about the incidents, greatly relieving the discomfort often involved in the re-telling. It is a comfortable and easy technique that gives immediate results.

21 Tips for Clients in Therapy

1. Take the first few minutes when you arrive to catch your breath, collect your thoughts and prepare for your session.

2. Forget the Clock: Show up on time but let me be in charge of ending the session on time. You've got enough to think about during the session, I can be responsible for wrapping up.

3. Make it Part of Your Life:Therapy works best when you take what you've learned and apply it to the rest of your week. Between sessions, notice areas in your life you'd like to explore.

4. Journal: Use a journal to reflect on your sessions and jot down things you notice about yourself during the week. It doesn't have to be the "Dear Diary" of your youth, just a place to record a few thoughts or feelings. It may help to bring it to the session with you.

5. Business First: Take care of payment and scheduling questions at the start of the session. Nothing's more awkward than ending a session with a big revelation or emotional breakthrough followed by three minutes of cheque writing and calendar navigation. Get all those logistical issues out of the way at the beginning.

6. Relationship Next: Following those business items, issues regarding the relationship with me (if there are any) come next. This could be anything - you're thinking about termination, you felt angry after the last session, you're worried what I think of you, you had a dream about me, etc. These relationship issues take top priority because they will impact all other areas of your therapy.

7. What do I Want? How do I Feel? These two questions are home base for you when you feel stuck. If you find yourself lost and don't know what to talk about, revisit these questions and you're bound to find material to discuss.

8. Ask Anything: You may sometimes censor your questions because you believe asking is against the rules. You're allowed to ask whatever you want, let me explain the boundaries. Want to know a personal detail, professional opinion or an explanation for something I said or did? Go ahead and ask. You might not get a straight answer, but you will get a reason why not, and you might learn something about yourself in the process.

9. State of the Union: Check on your status any time during your therapy. How are we working together? How well do we understand each other? Is therapy helping or hurting at this point? This is ideally a two-way discussion, with both of us sharing our thoughts.

10. Try New Things: Therapy is a great place for thinkers to try feeling, listeners to practice talking, passive people to be assertive etc. Want to rehearse confrontation? Practice asking someone out? Let yourself cry in front of someone? Therapy is a great place for this.

11. Learn to Fish: A lot of people want advice. Therapy is more about helping you come to your own conclusions than having me make decisions for you. This benefits you in the long run but may seem disappointing at the time.

12. Ask Why: Let your inner 3-year old out and ask why you behave/think/feel as you do. Why do I hate my boss so much? Why am I so anxious before sessions? Why does something about me bother you?

13. Challenge Jargon: If I says something you don't understand – please ask me to explain.

14. Say the Odd Thought: Therapy is one place where strange thoughts are acceptable. In fact, the odder the better. Have a sudden impulse? Say it. Flash to a certain memory. Talk about it. The phrase some things are better left unsaid doesn't apply here so speak freely and you might learn something interesting.

15. Be Aware: Not just who I am, but who you imagine me to be. And how you imagine I feel about you. Talk about your relationship with me in detail to see how your projections influence this and other relationships.

16. Go Deeper:If you find yourself running through mundane details of your week or hitting awkward silences, maybe there's a deeper issue you're avoiding. Ask what it is you're not talking about and talk about it. Discuss what you're discovering about yourself. Take the time to explore who you are, what you feel and why you do what you do. Push beyond "it is what it is" or "whatever" and tackle some deeper questions. Try: "I wonder why I ___" or: "Deep down, I really feel ___".

17. Don't fear the End: From the beginning, talk about when you'll know you're ready to leave therapy. Rather than cut and run let therapy be one experience of a truly good ending.

18. Dream On: Bring in dreams daydreams and fantasies especially those about therapy. People often have more of this material when they're in therapy. This can be incredibly rich to explore.

19. Keep the Energy in the Room: Thoughts, feelings and questions about the therapy are best discussed first with me. When you run everything by your friends first, it diffuses the energy of the encounter and sidesteps an opportunity for the therapist to understand you better.

20. Allow Change: Some people ask for change but feel uncomfortable when it actually happens. Accept that if you're seeking change, things will probably change, and it might require more change than you thought. An eating disorder, a sexual problem, interpersonal conflicts, an addiction these may require a major life overhaul, not just a little tweak.

21. Engage and Enjoy: Therapy is like enrolling in a course where you are the subject matter. If you're curious, teachable and motivated to do some work, it can be one of the most challenging and rewarding courses you ever take.

Adapted from and with permission of Dr. Ryan Howes for Health Touch

BREATHING
"There is a way of breathing,
That's a shame and a suffocation
And there's another way of expiring,
A love breath,
That lets you open infinitely."

Rumi

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Body Psychotherapy and Counselling
Putney Massage & Wellbeing Clinic
London SW15 UK