Hello, I’m Noriko Sakura, I’m working at The Therapy Room in
Cambridge. I’m offering Alexander Technique lessons and hot stone massage. I
like working here, because it is a very convenient place and a very good
atmosphere. When we enter this building it already feels very friendly and comfortable.
There are a lot of therapists here who work together, so we can treat clients
from different directions and so really helping.
In Alexander Technique lessons you can identify and gain
release from harmful habits you have built up over your lifetime and learn to
move freely. Alexander Technique can also help back ache, stiff neck and
shoulders, breathing problems, enhance performance. Alexander Technique is
applied to everyday life to encourage more mindfulness and ease of movement.
Hot stone massage is a combination of essential oils and
smooth stones which have been heated to a comfortable temperature which induces
a feeling of wellbeing and deep relaxation.
My name is Nicola Leighton and I am a massage therapist at
The Therapy Room. I use clinical massage techniques and aromatherapy. I work
with pregnant women to alleviate chronic pain and stress. I have been working
here for the last 3 years.
So, I don’t just work with pregnant women, I love working
with pregnant women, it’s a great stage of life, but I also work with other
people, male, female, all stages of life. Through the techniques that I have I
adapt it to work with them on that particular day. So whether they need to lie
in a different position, whether we need to use different oils or not, because
of who they are and what’s going on in their lives at the time, I can adapt for
them. I find that there are a lot of people in Cambridge who are incredibly
intelligent and live in their heads and having a great massage is a fantastic
way to get back into your body and just love your body a little bit more,
rather than living in your head all the time.
The main things I like about working in The Therapy Rooms in
Cambridge are the location, that’s great. Most people can get here and the
parking is fantastic, no problems there. But also, the really great environment
within the clinic, among the therapists with the team of people that are
supporting you. It feels that you’re never really working on your own. You can
be your own boss, but you’ve got people there to support you and that always
feels very helpful. And it’s a really relaxed place to work, there’s a great
energy and everyone works well together. Yeah, come, come join the team, the
more the merrier. We give each other treatments and that’s always fantastic, so
you can know what your fellow practitioners are doing and we can refer to each
other any clients that we have, so it’s a great place to try and build up a
practice and I highly recommend it.
I’m Dalia Maori, I’m a registered dietician and I’ve worked
at The Therapy Room for 5 years. I specialise in adult and child overweight
chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, skin
conditions, inflammatory bowel diseases and also disordered eating, such as
bulimia, anorexia and orthorexia. So every patient that comes to me in their
initial consultation I will look at recent blood tests, I will go into their
dietary history and their medical history and any pertinent medical conditions
beyond those they’re coming to treatment for.
Usually most conditions will
improve with improved nutrition, exercise and lifestyle changes. Any consultations
moving on from there depend on the condition of the patient. Some people may just
need to be seen a few times, some people need to be seen for quite a long
period of time, depending on their condition.
It overlaps with the argument that ‘oh, healthy eating is
too expensive’, well no it’s not, at all, if you know what you’re doing. If you
go and buy a cabbage, a beetroot and a sack of oats, it doesn’t cost the earth
at all. If you know how to cook legumes as well, you can use a bag that will
feed your family for a number of meals you just need to know what you’re doing.
Which is another thing why home economics needs to come back into schools, big
time. It’s really, really, important people need to know how to make soups and
things, and stews. But 100% it’s better for the environment, it’s far better
for you to be eating local foods. And if you’ve got those vibrant colours
there, the purples, the reds, the oranges, the greens, that’s the nourishment
right there, those are the antioxidants, you don’t have to be having Goji
berries.
I’ll never hand out a generic plan, I’ll discover the
person, what do you like, what do you not like. I’ll always as them to eat,
I’ll start with things that they do like. What we do see over the process is
that their palette changes and so they’re willing to embrace different foods.
So people who thought that they could only have a sweet breakfast start
actually understanding they really enjoy savoury breakfasts. I move people
generally at the speed that they’re able to do, some people are faster than
others at making behavioural changes and it’s all totally ok.
The Therapy Room is a really warm and welcoming environment
for clients and practitioners and it would be wonderful for more practitioners
to join the team and expand the wonderful things we can do for the people
coming in here looking for help and improving their health.
I start the process by gathering information. The first
thing I do is talk with a client and get a feeling of where they are, where the
best place may be to start. Whether that is testing or whether that is
somewhere else, like a more intuitive therapy.
From that point forward, if we’re going to work together I
would ask them to fill out some forms, just so that we can gather some
information that may not come out in the initial conversation. From there based
on that and the conversations and perhaps some questions that I very often send
via email to the client, with those answers I come together with a proposal in
terms of testing, perhaps some initial treatment, perhaps working with another
therapist if needed to start with.
Then from there we go through testing procedure and we look
again at what might be going on. At each stage, we’re honing or refining a
perspective or an observation. So, I would come up with a hypothesis on what I
think would be the best place to start, and then the testing is there to either
confirm or deny that.
Then from there we would start with a treatment program,
which could be and normally is diet exercise, lifestyle changes and some
targeted supplements. That would be introduced together, so I would expect the
client to, as they introduce new things, they would feed back to me via email
and then I can course-correct them as we go along. So, the whole process is
about them finding out for themselves what works best for them. So, there is certainly
a big part of self-empowerment as well as a step-by-step approach in finding
out what works and what doesn’t work.
