Counselling & Shiatsu

Category: alternative health

  • Supportive Shiatsu for a positive 2020

    Supportive Shiatsu for a positive 2020

    There is always a focus in early January to push the new year, new you drive. It seems a funny time of year to start crazy exercising regimes and crash diets.

    Over indulging at Christmas is a strong motivation but deep winter is a time for quiet and rest. With deep winter reflection and meditation comes the energy to push through new growth in the Spring and blossom in the Summer.

    Setting resolutions of what we leave behind in the old year and what we look to achieve in the new is really positive right now. Spring is the time to flesh out and explore the details of our plans. Right now is about just sitting with our thoughts and letting them quietly germinate in the soil.

    Shiatsu can help keep you get in touch with the seasons and find your own rhythm. With rhythm comes fluidity, of mind and body. Easing of physical symptoms and lightness of thoughts and emotions.

    The treatments are intuitive and tailored to the client’s exact needs, whatever they may be. This means you can just relax and know what you need is what you’re going to get. This deep relaxation can generate better energy levels, better sleep patterns and a calmer mind.

    Shiatsu can help you connect with what is important to you. It can provide drive and focus to allow resolutions to be followed through and plans to come to fruition.

    Shiatsu, in my experience, is beneficial for pain in general. It’s helped clients with joint pain and back pain, digestive and menstrual pain. I have helped clients to gain more mobility and flexibility in their joints, knees, necks, hips.

    Shiatsu can help support the physical body and can also help ease mental and emotion strain. Living with physical complaints can affect the mental and emotional balance quite heavily.

    So for 2020 how about some space for quiet reflection, regaining one’s balance and taking control of one physical and emotional wellbeing. Bring on the Shiatsu.

    Getting started is easy, book in an initial session! We can discuss general health and wellbeing and you get 45 minutes of peaceful and relaxing hands on treatment. At the end I’ll give you an idea of how many sessions, and how regularly, you may need to begin to see a difference.

    You can email me at amyhinkswright@yahoo.co.uk or call me or 07791 070837.

    If this is the year to make some changes but you’re not sure how then try a Shiatsu.

    Xx

  • Shiatsu for Christmas?

    Shiatsu for Christmas?

    Not long now until Christmas is upon us.

    I love this time of year, the mid winter celebration makes me feel connected to the season as well as warm and fuzzy.

    A few days ago we took the time, as a family, to head out to the woods in search of holly and ivy. We came back after a blustery and cheek warming walk with fir branches and berry-festooned holly.

    I love bringing these natural decorations into the house, along with the real Christmas tree we lovingly care for throughout the year. It is another way to connect to the season.

    I do have some time off from Shiatsu and will be back from the 6th January. In the meanwhile here’s some tips to boost your energy for the festivities:

    1. Drink fresh ginger tea – warms the kidneys – they help everything else work

    2. Take some time out for meditation and reflection – quiet rest is the way to go at this time of year

    3. Wear a scarf! Chills in the neck will result in sore necks and shoulders but also will zap the body of vital resource

    See you in the new year xx

  • Shiatsu for Christmas? Exeter, Devon

    Gift vouchers available in any denomination so you don’t have to ask for/ but a whole session – although of course you can!

    Right now still plenty of time to post out the vouchers but they can also be emailed if preferred.

    Get in touch at amyhinkswright@yahoo.co.uk or call 07791 070837.

    What a way to get treated or treat someone for Christmas – a supportive, relaxing, and possibly transformational, present.

  • Shiatsu in the Autum Time, Exeter, Devon

    Autumn is truly upon us. Here in Exeter the South West weather is in full motion. It’s wet and windy and we and building for a wild storm tomorrow.

    To me Autumn is a special time of the year, where we can begin to slow down after the social excitement of the Summer months. The colours seem to fill the soul with a warmth and cosy joy. The craving for stews and slow cooked foods begins.

    Shiatsu treatments in Autumn are about warmth and flow but also about the connection to the Earth. Often they are treatments with a certain amount of work focused on grounding the client. Shiatsu can help us understand what we want to let go off. Like the trees and plants dropping their leaves and fruits. It can also helps us understand what is important to us and what we want to hold onto.

    I am back to Shiatsu on Monday and looking forward to a week full of supportive and nurturing treatments. I am pretty full this week but have

    spaces for the week after.

    Have a great weekend everyone and stay safe in the storm.

    Xx

  • Personal Care Shiatsu Course, Exeter, Devon

    Excited to offering a course focussing on how Shiatsu can support you and those around you.

    It is important to look after our own health and Shiatsu has some great tricks and tips to help do this.

    It is a lovely thing to receive but it is also a very enjoyable thing to give. This course will give you a good basic idea of how to give Shiatsu to your friends and family.

    The course is only for a few participants so there is plenty of time for everyone to get lots of hands on work.

    Details of the course can be found here

    Xx

  • Shiatsu and Praising Yourself, Exeter, Devon

    Yesterday I was reminded of how important it is to really recognise and praise our own achievements.

    It is so easy to focus our energies on what more we would like to achieve and what we feel we haven’t managed previously.

    There have been lots of shifts and changes happening to my family and the people around me.

    Watching others achieve or get knock backs has brought up previous experiences and events in my life.

    I realised that I spent more time mulling over the events I felt were negative.

    So I got out a piece of paper today and wrote what I was proud of in my life, what I feel I have done well, the positive habits and behaviours I now have. Well it turned out to be quite a long list! Especially as it stands alone, I don’t need to compare it to other people’s achievements, it doesn’t seem possible when it is a piece of paper not thoughts spinning around my head.

    It’s a funny thing being in your forties, as I am. It is definitely a time of reflection and it is easy to focus on the negatives or feel like you could have achieved more.

    Shiatsu is a positive and proactive way to manage both health and lifestyle. It allows shifts of energy to take place in the body, easing physical issues and lightening emotional and mental strain.

    Shiatsu can build the self confidence of a client. They can begin to believe that changes are possible and once those changes have happened they can become permanent.

    It is a joy and privilege to help clients make positve changes in their lives. To feel like they can take control of their situation again.

    Often clients have had a long journey to get to where they are. Shiatsu is a space to take stock of how far a client has come. It focuses on the positives and looks to provide the energy and motivation to continue forward.

    I suggest everyone has a go at writing a list today. Enough feeling we need to achieve more and more focusing on the achievements.

    Xx

  • Shiatsu, Holidays and Chickenpox

    I am working this week, whilst balancing nursing duties to my two chickenpox-ridden boys. The life juggling just continues doesn’t it!

    I spent all last night between two hot, itchy boys, both wanting mummy cuddles for comfort. It took me back to the early days when they need you so much. Lovely to be getting extra snuggles but would like some unbroken sleep now please, and I’ve only done two nights!

    Caring for them has reminded me that nurture role comes quite naturally for me. Being a mother has deepened and expanded my Shiatsu practice. It’s a similar attitude that I approach my work with as the one I approach my mother role with.

    Shiatsu for me is about listening clearly to a client. What is it that they would like to change? Heal a physical health issue, drop past patterns of behavior or habits, shift their mental and emotional responses?

    Shiatsu uses hands-on work to create change for the client. Approaching their concerns through the body first, not thinking it through, not trying to create solutions immediately, just feeling and listening first.

    I try hard to hold an open space for my children, to hear what they would like, how they are feeling. Easy when they are poorly, ‘I feel itchy, I need a cuddle for comfort.’ Less hard when busy lives are happening and so little time to stop.

    My Shiatsu practice is a clear space where there is time and support for what needs to be said. This space for my practice reminds me to have it for my kids, and I am learning to have it more and more for myself.

    This week I will be treasuring the time I am getting with the kids. It’s a chance to reconnect and listen to their needs. It is also a chance to remember the early days and possibly the last time they will be so small. It feels like childhood illnesses always have an aspect of change to them. The kids seem to take a big developmental leap forward afterwards.

    What is nice for the kids is that they will be off school this week and then next week is half term. They will get two weeks off. I’m hoping the worst of it will be over by the holiday and we can enjoy a good break, more time together.

    I am back on monday 28th and have spaces that week. I love coming back from time off, refreshed and ready to get back to giving Shiatsu.

    Right now I’m off to read to my boys and make the most of the space chickenpox has created for us!

    Xx

  • Shiatsu and Mental Wellbeing

    Shiatsu and Mental Wellbeing

    Today is mental health day, which is great, highlighting this often hidden health issue. As a society we are getting better at acknowledging mental health issues and how important it is to support them. There is still a long way to go but great to see how many mentions of world mental hlath day I have seen today.

    Using touch Shiatsu can help support a client’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects. How great not to have to try and dissect and analyse your feelings or concerns, simply to feel how you are when you are held by the practitioners touch.

    The Shiatsu approach can bypass the mind, where we can get caught up in trying to understand and remedy our issues. Shiatsu is a chance to be still and feel in our bodies what affect how lives are having on us.

    Shiatsu looks to find balance in the body, when there is balance there is relief and release of physical tension. With the release of the physical tension also comes release of mental and emotional tensions.

    A Shiatsu treatment is a safe and secure space where a client can be however they want to be. A client can be anxious, stressed, nervous, frightened even. A session can still be a success no matter how the client is, they can leave feeling emotionally supported and with a lighter mental load.

    Just having a space where you can be whatever and however you want can help a client. Often it can be hard to express to those close to us how we are mentally and emotionally. We don’t want to burden our parents, partners, friends. A Shiatsu treatment is exactly the right place to voice how you feel and what is happening for you. Some clients feels they are no longer managing on their own, they have the support of Shiatsu and a therapist.

    It is such a privilege to be able to support and facilitate clients as they make positive changes to their health, be it physical, emotional or mental. It is great to watch people regain their confidence and self belief, to have some sense of control of their situation rather than feeling their situation or condition controls them.

    So anyone is welcome and supported in my practice. Anything g can be discuused or not discussed. Everyone can be the way they need to be.

    Happy however you are day.

    Xx

  • Shiatsu and Sleep Disorders, Insomnia, Night Fears – Exeter, Devon

    Shiatsu and Sleep Disorders, Insomnia, Night Fears – Exeter, Devon

    Being a parent and having been through those early years I am aware of the affect of sleep deprivation. I also have some sense of how unsettling it is to lose your own personal sleep rhythm. I have experienced simply surving through the day time, work, home responsibilities, thinking straight, staying awake! Lack of sleep or other sldeep disorders are not funny.

    When I have worked clients with sleep disorders, such as insomnia or night fears, there is often a sense that the body is unsettled. Often the client feels like they are on alert at all times.

    Generally there is an emotional or mental strain behind the lack of sleep; caring for another, stress or anxiety, personal trauma. This isn’t always the case, there is generally always an imbalance of some sort though.

    Shiatsu is essentially energy work and looks to create balance and calmness in the body. This balance can ease the alertness and stress the body and minds feels and can allow the client to relax more. With that relaxation and release can come better sleep patterns.

    To really get positive, healthy sleep habits a number of Shiatsu treatments may be required. Each session will build on the previous ones, helping the body to become used to the suggested new habits of calmness and relaxation.

    Clients express that they often slept weall the night if the Shiatsu treatment and that they sleep more after each treatment. Night fears have become less frequent for one client, who is more able to wake from them if they do happen.

    Shiatsu has been shown to help with sleep disorders. To find out more about Shiatsu and myself have a look on the pages on this site or head to my Facebook Page

    Here’s to a good nights sleep tonight.

    Xx

  • Life Lesson number 3,456,250! Be Persistent.

    I love having supervision sessions as part of my Shiatsu practice. They are a chance for me to gain perspective on my Shiatsu and also to chat with another practitioner.

    This session the practitioner I have supervision with was talking about a workshop she had, had to cancel as there was no uptake. My feedback was that I had seen the initial workshop information but hadn’t seen any reminders, it so it had slipped my mind.

    This got me thinking. How many times I have thought ‘Well no-one is interested in my offer or social media post so I’ll just leave it.’ I should be thinking ‘People have busy lives so let’s remindthem, if they are interested what a great reminder, if they’re not I’m not taking up loads of their time.’

    Maybe this is obvious to lots of you guys reading this, but this was a new perspective for me. A realisation that it’s not necessarily that people aren’t interested and it’s okay to push a bit.

    Look your not going to suddenly see a whole influx of aggressive blogs and posts from me! It’s really just a mind shift, not to drop things, to give them at least one extra push.

    Today I am off to deliver 1000 postcards to houses in Exwick, houses of people on my doorstep. People who may not have heard of Shiatsu or may not realise that this sort of thing is available in this area. Instead of worrying about what people might think of the postcard I’m going to think let’s just get it out there.

    Perseverance is my lesson for today, not only in my practice but also in daily life. If I lose my confidence and belief in something I’m going to try at least one more time. Maybe that extra time things will come together and I’ll see a great result.

    Have a good day everyone.

    Xx