The first session with Lucy will be up to 1 ½ hours, as she needs to gather as much information as she can about you in order to understand your unique health needs. This will include your full medical history, current medical complaint, detailed information about your diet and lifestyle together with what your goals with regard to your health might be and what you want to achieve from your sessions. Ongoing sessions will be up to 1 hour and might include dietary advice, making up a Bach Flower Remedy, discussing laboratory testing if appropriate, or body work treatment such as a hydrotherapy treatment, breathwork and breathing exercises, therapeutic massage or Reiki.
After your session, Lucy will spend some time writing up your notes and plan and you will be emailed this along with a suggested supplement plan. This might include nutritional supplements, herbal teas and tissue salts. You might also be given advice as to how you might look after your own health between sessions, with diet as well as other areas we might identify are causing your system to be stressed. You might be given some simple breathing or yoga exercises to do daily between sessions.
Naturopathic Dietary Therapy
Naturopaths believe that a person’s health can be greatly influenced by the condition that the digestive system is in, so you should expect your digestion to come up as an area that we will be working on. Indeed, Lucy is extremely excited about the recent advances in the scientific understanding of the gut microbiome as well as the gut-brain axis.
Lucy might ask to analyse your diet as part of working together on a therapeutic plan. As part of your plan Lucy might suggest alternatives or changes to your diet if she thinks they may be affecting your health. For example, she may advise a client with an inflammatory condition on foods that reduce inflammation. In cases of digestive complaint she may advise on which foods are integral to maintaining good bacteria in the gut (prebiotic foods). She is also trained to work with food elimination diets to help identify any food intolerance (often stated as the gold standard in intolerance testing, this does require a great deal of discipline and patience from you).
Over recent years, Lucy has worked with many vegetarians and vegans to ensure they are following a balanced diet and advising on what nutritional supplements may be needed to complete the diet to avoid potential future health risks. These can be really fun, interactive sessions where we analyse the diet through software and then work through a diet report that advises on areas of nutritional need, and what foods could be increased to support this.
Bach Flower Remedies
The Bach Flower Remedies are a system of healing created by Edward Bach for addressing emotions such as fears, cares, anxieties and worries that may be contributing to ill health.
Bach believed that by treating emotional states such as fear and worry then a person will be happer and better in themselves. Improving the emotional state in this way will help balance the triad of health and restore vitality.
Large numbers of people who take Bach Flower Remedies report that they feel more positive, optimistic and happier as a result. Lucy will go through the flower remedies with you if this is a treatment you are interested in and will then make up a remedy for you to take home.
Naturopathic Hydrotherapy
This really should be called thermotherapy as it is the use of water to apply a hot or cold stimulus to the body. Hydrotherapy has a wide range of benefits and can help with pain relief, reducing inflammation, improving circulation and stimulating the immune system. Various aspects of this treatment can be taught to use at home yourself, making it an affordable therapeutic tool for anyone.
There are many different ways in which hydrotherapy can be used in a treatment. One example might be the use of a “hot roll”. This involves using a hot towel roll to gently massage heat onto the skin, not dissimilar to a hot stone massage. During treatment the roll is unwrapped to help maintain the heat. It is a particularly effective treatment for neck and shoulder tension and is often followed with massage.
Constitutional Hydrotherapy is a very effective tool for many health complaints. Treatment is normally carried out over about 5 consecutive weeks. For further information click here.
If your therapeutic plan involves hydrotherapy, you may be asked to bring a bikini top or trunks to your session. Lucy will discuss hydrotherapy with you in detail if this will be part of your protocol.
“At first, Lucy and I talked about what was going on in my life. The conversation resulted in Lucy creating a personalised Bach’s remedies concoction in a large bottle for me to try out and take away. It’s amazing!
Next, I laid down on the massage table for my Reiki session. As I closed my eyes, Lucy worked on me. It felt like I was having a massage but Lucy wasn’t kneading my muscles. It was a strange sensation; quite warm. And it felt like my brain was finally being rewired as it was being encouraged to relax.
By the time, I left Lucy’s office I felt both relaxed and energised. It was a Monday morning as I walked back along the King’s Road but it felt like a Sunday afternoon. This was my first real Reiki experience and it’s definitely not going to be my last. I’m going back for more next month as a feelgood treat to keep my MOT maintained.”
[Posted on the Kings Road Rocks blog, April 2011. www.kingsroadrocks.com]