BLOG 166: HERE’S 5 SELF-CARE HOLISTIC TREATMENTS I LOVE

A lot of people have asked me recently about the holistic treatments and self-care practices I use to support my health and wellness. I’m planning on doing a whole podcast episode soon on the personal self-care methods I use at home, but this blog post will focus on the treatments I see other people for.

This is quite a personal look at these treatments and how they’ve helped me in managing my health and wellness. I’m a big believer in following your intuition – that inner knowing that can guide us towards what is right for us.

I absolutely advocate for doing your research too, especially when you are considering a new treatment. But ultimately it is that voice in your gut that is your greatest superpower. If it feels right for you and you’ve researched to find a qualified and experienced practitioner in that modality, it will serve you well.

These five holistic treatments are the ones that intuitively feel right for me.

1. ACUPUNCTURE

I’ve been having acupuncture for around nine years now, ever since my eldest daughter, Lucia, was about a year old. I originally went for her – she had a very mucous cough that later turned out to be a reaction to dairy.

I was given a recommendation for a wonderful acupuncturist here in Bath, called Melanie Leeson. I quickly realised that acupuncture would be great for me too, and I’ve been seeing Mel ever since.

Acupuncture is drawn from Traditional Chinese Medicine and involves applying gentle needles into certain areas of the body to assist the flow of energy (qi). Although it can be used to cure various ailments, the real beauty of acupuncture is that it works brilliantly as preventative medicine.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is all about prevention – stopping us from getting sick in the first place instead of focusing on treating symptoms once we’re already unwell. And that’s how I’ve tended to use acupuncture over the years. I try to go once a month, although that can vary.

At the start of a session, I’ll have a really in-depth conversation with Mel about everything that’s been happening with my health since our last session. Mel will also look at my tongue and take my pulse – these are important diagnostic tools in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Mel then applies needles to various areas of my body, depending on what my needs are that month. She always uses her smallest, gentlest needles with me – although I don’t have a fear of needles or anything like that, Mel says I’m very sensitive to the flow of qi. 

I’ll lie with the needles in for around 10-15 minutes. Then Mel takes my pulse and looks at my tongue again. She’ll usually reapply some needles, but just very briefly – for about a breath – until I can feel that burst of energy in those areas.

If you’ve never been quite sure what qi (also called prana in yoga) feels like, have acupuncture and you’ll know straight away. You can really feel it very quickly.

I often come away from treatments with some herbs to take between sessions, usually in capsule form.

My most recent appointment was slightly different. As some of you might know, I’ve recently been diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), an extremely severe form of PMS. So, I’ve been focusing on my sacral area lately and Mel did a sacral womb massage for me. It was an amazing treatment.

2. CHIROPRACTIC

This is another treatment I’ve had for a long time now – at least ten years. I started seeing a chiropractor called Shaana van Aardenne in Bath when I was pregnant with Lucia.

At the time, I was looking for someone to take a holistic approach to help my changing body navigate through pregnancy. Someone from the Bath Homebirth Group recommended Shaana. She’s a family chiropractor and takes a very gentle approach. She’s all about working with the body on a deep soul level.

Shaana also does a lot of work with babies, so I took both of my daughters to see her when they were tiny. I highly recommend taking newborns to a holistic family chiropractor as soon as you can – babies go through a lot during birth, especially vaginal birth, and can really benefit from cranial treatment. It helps with everything from sleep to feeding to general comfort after the trauma of birth.

The girls still see her every couple of months and my husband, Bruce, goes to her as well, so she treats our whole family.

She does lots of different manipulations to release tension in the body. Most are quite gentle – she usually only does one or two of the bigger adjustments I call “bone clicks”. 

3. EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUE (EFT)

In early 2019, I started to feel very drawn towards EFT, which involves gently tapping over meridian lines on the face, head, neck, and chest to release emotional blocks. 

I reached out to Rowenna Beaumont, who is a specialist in EFT, and did my level one training with her. Doing full days of one-to-one EFT with her was utterly transformative and I’ve had several sessions with her since then.

More recently, I’ve been working with Poppy Delbridge, the founder of Rapid Tapping. Her approach is slightly different from traditional EFT but uses similar principles. She invited me to join her “Sorority of Alchemists” – an amazing group of women who meet twice a week for half an hour. Poppy leads us through all sorts of manifestation and mindset work, with lots of EFT.

I love this technique and it has become an important part of my life. I use it with people taking my new Be Your Own Brand course as part of Soul Purpose Business – we’re doing a lot of work on releasing mind and money blocks and upscaling mindset, so EFT is wonderful for that.

Another great thing about EFT is that you can do it at home for free. I’m aware that some of the things I’m talking about here require time and money. Many of us have times in our lives when it just isn’t viable to do those treatments.

This was certainly the case for me in the past. Through the hard work of building my business, I’m now in a position to be able to do these treatments more often, and they’ve always been a priority for me. But I’m aware that I’m lucky and privileged to be in this blessed position, so I always try to recommend things that are more accessible – both in terms of money and location, since not everyone lives in an area where there are holistic practitioners who align with their aims.

EFT is definitely one of the more accessible treatments and Poppy Delbridge has plenty of free resources on her social media channels to help you get started. 

4. SOMATIC EXPERIENCING

This is something I first did around five years ago with Elise Parsons, who is based in Bath. I found it an amazingly transformative form of talking therapy. More traditional counselling just didn’t feel right for me on an intuitive level, but somatic experiencing is all about releasing emotions and experiences that are stored in our bodies.

I believe that we can all benefit from some form of talking therapy. I find Gabby Bernstein’s explanation of this especially helpful. She says there’s a difference between Trauma and trauma. “Big T Trauma” is those major traumatic events like war, famine, abuse, etc. But we all have “small t trauma” – those things that we go through in our lives that we might not pay that much attention to at the time but build up in our bodies.

Somatic experiencing aims to go into and release that trauma. It focuses on the physical sensations in our bodies, such as postural and behavioural patterns, and then works to understand and release these.

I’ve recently felt called to work with Elise again in light of my PMDD diagnosis. I’m diving deep into healing around hormones, the sacral area, and the womb space – areas where we all hold a lot of emotion. I feel that somatic experiencing will help me do some wonderful release work around those areas.

5. SOUND HEALING

Towards the end of 2021, I felt strongly called to learn to play the crystal bowls and bring sound healing into my teaching and my life. I found Ewelina Bubanja, owner of the Crystalline Sound Institute and a real leader in this field.

At the start of this year, I did my training with Ewelina as an Alchemy Crystal Bowl Practitioner. It was such a wonderful and interesting course, which also brought up a lot of womb and sacral stuff for me on a personal level.

Crystal bowls are just one form of sound healing, but one I really love and feel drawn to. And this is another area where you can find plenty of free resources. For example, Holly Husler has plenty of resources available via her website and social media channels. 

You can also find out more about sound healing and how it can integrate with Yoga/Face Yoga by listening to Holly’s episode with me on the Face Yoga Expert Podcast.

Since doing my training, I’ve been integrating sound healing into a lot of my work. The Be Your Own Brand course I mentioned earlier includes work on balancing the chakras to support business growth and manifestation, so I use crystal bowls as part of that work.

Of course, sound healing is also a wonderful complement to Face Yoga, so I’m running some live workshops soon that will include crystal bowls. My Zoom workshop on Saturday 17^th September will end with a sound bath and I’m also doing an in-person workshop in Bath at Yoga Bodhi on Sunday 11^th September where I’ll be playing the crystal bowls.