Methods and Approaches
The brain and body are capable of remarkable change at all stages in our lifespan. The approaches that I use support individuals to take control of that change with activities targeted to rewiring the brain.
Coached sessions, and the activities you will practice outside these sessions, may involve the following neuro-development activities, which draw on the methods and approaches below:
- Sensory processing
- Proprioceptive training
- Joint mobilisation and muscle activation
- Manual procedures
- Mental rehearsal of movements
- Breath training
- Developing a personal toolkit of strategies to adapt your physiology
- Interactive Metronome
- Safe and Sound Protocol
I am constantly observing and informally assessing what an individual requires, so that I can offer the interventions that are most likely to provide the greatest benefit. More formal assessment involves use of specific tools and techniques that provide more objectivity, such as:
Movement analysis technology that provides visual and numeric data on static and dynamic posture: the FootWork Pro™ foot pressure plate- Screening for indicators of motor planning and sequencing skills, and phases of movement development, including how reflexes are currently expressed
- Measurement of motor planning and sequencing ability, using Interactive Metronome™
By analysing movement and posture I aim to empower people to unravel unhelpful movement patterns, and to establish more effective movement patterns. Together we explore currently available movement options, including distortions and compensations, in 4 dimensions (including timing), and identify opportunities to improve joint mechanics and re-educate the brain so that the body can heal itself.
I always follow a whole-body approach. Often the site of pain or discomfort is not the site of the root cause, but a result of compensations we make in our movement due to less than optimum movements elsewhere in the musculoskeletal system. I assess the whole body and offer stimuli for change, ensuring that the client does not move into pain or discomfort. We will always address how you move first, before considering adding external load for strength: movement with good technique, with joints and muscles sequenced and synchronised correctly, will keep you safe when you increase repetitions or loading.
You may have previously had treatment for a musculoskeletal problem, only for the same problem to return some time after you thought it had been fixed. This may have been due to use of a short-term ‘fix’ for an injury, which may have been appropriate based on your circumstances at the time. Depending on your priorities, the corrective work that you do with me may focus on immediate injury management; it will always be aiming for new patterns of movement to minimise the likelihood of recurrence of injury, and establish an improved personal baseline or ‘normal’. This enables you to resume or continue with the physical activities that are important for you, with raised confidence and self-belief.
Reflex Integration
There are many reasons why a child or adult may not have developed, or may have lost, the mature neuro-sensory-motor patterns needed to enable them to operate high level abilities and skills. At any stage in life, an internal need for protection or survival can limit the development and performance of the physical, cognitive, and interpersonal skills that we all need to achieve our potential.
Neuro-sensory-motor training identifies and responds to disorganised patterns of movement and behaviour to establish, develop, or regain higher level motor and cognitive skills. It addresses coordination, balance, fine and gross motor control, attention and concentration, and motor planning and sequencing. These enable individuals to move and to engage in social, academic or work activities with greater ease and confidence.
Manual bodywork, as well as isometric and isotonic pressure applied to specific parts of the body, and associated self-initiated exercises, all engage with the nervous system to create an internal state of safety that supports growth of mature motor, cognitive, emotional and behavioural habits and skills.
These activities are not only aiming for impact on the tissues (muscle, tendon, joint, skin) that they may appear to be working with, but operate through neural networks that adjust long-term activity of the brain and wider nervous system.
Joint Mechanics
By analysing movement and posture, I aim to empower people to unravel unhelpful movement patterns, and to establish more effective movement patterns. Together we explore currently available movement options, including distortions and compensations, in 4 dimensions (including timing), and identify opportunities to improve joint mechanics and re-educate the brain so that your body can heal itself.
I always follow a whole-body approach. Often the site of pain or discomfort is not the site of the root cause, but a result of compensations we make in our movement due to less than optimum movements elsewhere in the musculoskeletal system. I assess the whole body and offer stimuli for change, ensuring that the client does not move into pain or discomfort. We will always address how you move, before considering adding external load for strength: movement with good technique, with joints and muscles sequenced and synchronised correctly, will keep you safe when you increase repetitions or loading.
You may have previously had treatment for a musculoskeletal problem, only for the same problem to return some time after you thought it had been fixed. This may have been due to use of a short-term ‘fix’ for an injury, which may have been appropriate based on your circumstances at the time. Depending on your priorities, the corrective work that you do with me may focus on immediate injury management; it will always be aiming for new patterns of movement to minimise the likelihood of recurrence of injury, and to establish an improved personal baseline or ‘normal’. This enables you to resume or continue with the physical activities that are important for you, with raised confidence and self-belief.
Breath Training
The way we breathe impacts our general health and well-being when life is going well, as well as when we are physically or emotionally under stress. Exercises that help you to breathe efficiently will help you to thrive.
Effective respiratory function includes components of biochemistry, physiology, and biomechanics. Biochemistry addresses the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood stream, and how effectively they are transferred to and from different parts of the body as required, with the help of a third key gas, nitric oxide. Physiology uses the cadence or rhythm of the breath to influence the nervous system. Biomechanical strategies improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the musculoskeletal work of breathing, led by the diaphragm and supported by the ribcage and neck. Improving breathing therefore requires work with all 3 of these aspects.
Many exercises to improve respiratory function aim towards making the breath more light, slow, and deep, while breathing increasingly through your nose if you don’t already do so. Exercises may involve breath-holding, for a few seconds at a time, and for longer periods as you progress, depending on your goals. Initially you will practise stand-alone exercises at rest; then you will progress to using the same techniques during exertion, and to integrating the techniques into your chosen daily activities. The way we breathe at night not only affects our sleep, but also our general health and well-being during the day, so you will also monitor your breathing at night and make adjustments as needed.
Breath training offers a selection of strategies to support self-regulation as well as your performance in your chosen activities. In order to be able to adjust your breathing as a self-regulation strategy when under stress, or when you want to raise your game, you will identify and practise specific breathing patterns and exercises so that you can select the most appropriate strategy from your personal self-regulation toolkit as needed.
Polyvagal Theory
As a Polyvagal Informed coach, I help individuals to develop strategies to adapt their physiology to find safety, comfort and control to optimise performance and resilience whatever their chosen field of activity. Once we can recognise our current neurophysiological state (for example which part of our autonomic nervous system is dominant, whether we are in ‘fight and flight’, ‘rest and digest’, or ‘shutdown’) we can take action to adjust it to better meet the needs of the moment.
In my coaching approach, this means that I need to be constantly aware of my own physiological state, and to have an awareness of my client’s physiological state, so that I can support them with appropriate compassionate strategies, and guide them towards a bodily state that will optimise change during our time together.
Based on their goals, I support clients to build the flexibility to draw on a personalised toolkit of strategies that allows them to stay connected to the skills they need, and to perform at their best. These strategies are likely to include some of the techniques outlined elsewhere, for example using specific breathwork or sensorimotor techniques. If you have asked me to work with your young child, some of our sessions may explore how you apply your own self-compassion and self-regulation, as a route to support your child.
Pain Management
Pain has an important protective function, and in the short term supports healing. However, pain that persists overprotects us and delays recovery.
Working with clients who are experiencing persisting pain, my aim is to support them to shift from a felt sense of danger to a felt sense of safety. When an individual responds to pain or pain triggers with curiosity rather than concern, the level and recurrence of pain often diminishes. As a pain coach, I assist people to identify the best approaches for them to achieve a felt sense of safety, which allows the brain to cease creating the experience of pain when it understands that it is no longer necessary.
Sometimes, changes in habitual movement patterns using one or more of the other approaches outlined here will also contribute to alleviating pain.
While there is no guarantee that you will become pain-free, with improved conditions for change to happen, the likelihood of experiencing more of life with less or no pain increases.
These conditions involve creating new thinking patterns that work for rather than against your best interests.
The goal isn’t to stop feeling symptoms, it’s to stop fearing them, either when they occur, or in anticipation of possible future recurrence. With the increase in felt sense of safety comes the opportunity to get on with day to day life, returning to the activities you enjoy, released from habitual stress or anxiety.
Swimming
In sports, I specialise in applying all the above to swimming, with adults and children from beginners to high performance competitive and marathon swimmers. As a Swim Mastery coach I use the latest research in body mechanics, the physics of the human body in water, and neuroscience, to focus the swimmers’ attention on specific cues that allow their joints to move safely and effectively.
Safe and efficient movement patterns are the priority. As a swimmer progresses, we work to synchronise the movements of connected body parts, to create whole body movements which allow access to larger muscle groups, resulting in greater speed and efficiency and minimising potential strain on smaller muscles. With these in place, development of muscle strength can be safely built for speed, alongside working with the fundamental speed equation of: Pace = Strokes Per Length x Tempo.
Everyone is unique in what they bring to swimming, physically, mentally, and emotionally. While aiming to achieve the desired positions and movements of effective and efficient stroke technique, what each person does is based on the specifics of the body and brain they were born with, as well as what it has gone through in life until now. I seek to identify the unique characteristics of each swimmer, and draw on all the other approaches outlined to select activities in and out of the water to help them experience improved access to the desired movement pattern, and then fully integrate the movement into their swimming.
I was privileged to work closely with Tracey Baumann, the founder of Swim Mastery, on development of the book The Swim Mastery Way. This book provides a great introduction to the methods I use, and a continuing resource of images and practice activities alongside coached sessions.
This approach helps you harness the best you can from your body, and transfer that into forward momentum in whatever body of water gives you joy to swim in.
Requests for particular approaches
If you have contacted me with a particular interest or request for one of the approaches or tools that I use, your first session with me will likely include an assessment or screening specifically in relation to that method. The outcome of that assessment or screening process will indicate the best route forward for you, which could be to continue solely with that method, to mix it with other approaches, or to work only with other approaches initially, with the option to review the suitability of the approach you had expressed an interest in at a later date.
For example, you may be interested in Interactive Metronome as a tool to improve your motor planning and sequencing or attention and concentration. But it may be best to defer starting with Interactive Metronome until you have made some progress with other aspects of brain functioning, such as exercises that target the cerebellum, or movement repatterning that trains more effective responses to sensory stimuli, or develops reflex responses from primitive to primary or to more mature integrated states that the expression of more effective cognitive, emotional, or motor functions.
Other provider options
Training & Qualifications
- Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Reflex Integration (MNRI)
- Reflex Integration Training
- Anatomy in Motion Accredited Practitioner
- Physical Activity and Lifestyle Strategies for Managing Lower Back Pain (CIMSpa Level 4)
- Posture and Corrective Exercise (CIMSPA Level 4)
- Exercise Referral (CIMSPA Level 3)
- Pain Reprocessing Therapy (Advanced)
- Less Pain Better Performance (NOI Mastersessions)
- Explain Pain (Neuro Orthopaedic Institute)
- Graded Motor Imagery (NOI)
- Oxygen Advantage Advanced Instructor
- SwimMastery High Performance Coach
- Open Water Swimming Coaching (STA)
- Polyvagal Informed Certificate for Wellness and Performance Coaching (Polyvagal Institute)
- Improvement Advisor (Institute for Healthcare Improvement)
- Masters in Education (University of Manchester)
- BSc Psychology with Basic Medical Sciences (University of London)
