Holistic Therapies for Mind, Body and Soul at The Lymington Chiropractic Clinic
Holistic Reflexology, Massage and Craniosacral Therapies with Holistic Healing Therapies expert Jacqueline Dark of Swakeleys Massage and Reflexology are available here in Lymington.
Jacqueline offers a range of holistic therapies to enhance your well-being and quality of life. Her unique and personalised therapies provide complete relaxation. Targeted therapies for specific conditions are also available.
What are holistic therapies and who can they benefit?
Holistic therapies take their name from the Greek word Holos, meaning whole and consider emotional well-being to be equally as important as physical health. Jacqueline’s therapies are designed to balance the mind, body and soul.
Anyone looking to ease day-to-day stresses and tensions can benefit from holistic therapies in our warm, calm and comforting environment.
Jacqueline also specialises in Women’s Health and has a comprehensive menu of therapies for women from fertility, pregnancy, post-natal and menopause.
The icing on the cake is Jacqueline’s Signature Treatment. Created for you on the day this bespoke treatment incorporates all of Jacqueline’s holistic therapies for a truly, uniquely relaxing experience. More details at the end of this blog post.
What can I expect from a Holistic Massage?
Using a combination of Swedish massage, aromatherapy and other holistic techniques Jacqueline can help you forget all the tensions of the day and feel yourself again. She offers a wonderfully relaxing, yet deep massage, with flowing movements working deeply into areas of tension. Working on all the systems of the body, she can loosen tensions, increase blood supply, calm the heart rate, increase lymph flow, increase detoxification, calm the nervous system and slow and deepen breathing.
How does Holistic Massage differ from Deep Tissue and Sports Injury Massage?
Holistic massage concentrates on the mind-body connection and promotes deep relaxation. It uses Swedish massage techniques which uses a light to moderate pressure.
Whereas our Sports Therapist Gareth Watkins and Massage Therapist Hannah Day work on specific muscle groups and to target relief of specific symptoms such as knots. Deep Tissue and Sports Injury Massage are more suitable for those who are looking for rehabilitation from injury, relief from strain through sporting or physical activities or particular muscular issues.
Both types of massage can support the work of our chiropractors, and your practitioner will be glad to advise you.
What is Holistic Reflexology?
Reflexology therapy is a wonderful way to relax and relieve the stresses and strains of a busy life. Working solely on the feet, using aromatherapy based balms, this is one of the most relaxing treatments for the mind that there is.
It is now thought that 75-80% of illness is caused by stress. Reflexology is a non-intrusive complementary health therapy, based on the idea that different points on the feet, lower-leg, hands, face, or ears correspond with other body areas.
What is Facial Reflexology?
Facial Reflexology is a beautifully relaxing treatment working entirely on your face. Using the hands, crystals and Gua Sha tools to relax the body yet stimulate the facial cells as well as healing the body.
You will lie fully clothed on our wonderful, warmed couch, covered in blankets, completely relaxed and comfortable. Jacqueline will work with warm healing hands, in combination with the cooling crystals, the combination of the warmth and coolness feel amazing. The treatment will be completed with a mini scalp massage.
Areas of your face are connected to different parts of your body via the nervous system. It is believed that stimulating or calming these reflexes can enhance the body’s own natural healing processes.
Therapies for Women’s Health
Jacqueline has undergone extensive training with top professionals in many therapies relating to pre-natal and post-natal, pregnancy and fertility, to help women with hormonal balancing, menstrual conditions, digestive health, stress and anxiety as well as muscular and emotional challenges. She also has a huge passion for Aromatherapy and the effects essential oils and massage has on the mind, body and soul. She has undergone specialist training in essential oils to enable her to use this additional tool in all her maternity and fertility treatments.
Pre/Post Natal Reflexology
Some of the benefits of Pregnancy Reflexology are:
- Helping with symptoms of fatigue especially noticed in first and third trimesters, reflexology can provide deep relaxation, relieve stress and improve sleep, which helps that exhausted feeling.
- During pregnancy hormones and a growing baby can slow down and upset digestion and increase water retention. Reflexology can help the body to move things along relieving constipation and bloating as well as reducing swollen legs and ankles.
- Muscular discomfort is common in pregnancy with pains such as neck and shoulder pain, back ache, sciatica and pelvic girdle pain. As your feet and legs get tired reflexology can also help revive your legs and enable them to feel lighter and more comfortable.
Reflexology can also be used post-37-weeks to prime for labour. Although there are no guarantees that priming for labour techniques will get things moving, as with any other medical intervention or therapy, but Jacqueline has seen good results with using these methods to help the onset of labour. Although this is still a very relaxing treatment, she uses more friction-based techniques to naturally work alongside the body to encourage the onset of labour.
For best results and to get a cumulative effect from the Reflexology Jacqueline recommends between 1 -3 sessions around your due date.
Reflexology Supporting Fertility
Fertility Reflexology involves truly wonderful treatments to help you along your fertility journey. Jacqueline has had extensive training in Reflexology for Fertility and has been awarded Sally Earlams “Certificate in Competency”. She has also trained in Reproflexology with Barbara Scott, enabling her to work with couples and assist her clients should they choose IVF.
Jacqueline combines the amazing techniques she learned with Sally and Barbara along with her in-depth knowledge of Essential Oils to enhance the Reflexology Fertility treatment. Fertility Reflexology can help to improve your fertility by positively directing the flow of energy where it is needed. Reflexology involves manipulating pressure points in the feet or hands to positively affect a corresponding area of the body. In essence, energy pathways are unblocked, allowing the energy to flow as it should.
Reflexology Supporting Menopause
Trained in advanced reflexology with Barbara Scott (Association of Reproflexology), Jacqueline is able to support women through their menopausal experience.
As an aromatherapist, she also has advanced training in aromatherapy supporting menopause and uses this knowledge and beautiful essential oils to enhance your treatments.
We all experience peri menopause/menopause uniquely and every one of us will have varying symptoms that can affect our everyday well-being. The transition through peri menopause to menopause can be a very difficult one. There is a lot more information available now and slowly people are opening up about the difficulties and challenges they are experiencing, which is fantastic. The more we talk and share the more it helps us all.
Post-natal Massage (postpartum)
Post-natal Massage is classed as 6 – 8 weeks after birth and the optimum time to have your first massage after labour is one or three days after, however, this is not always possible.
Regular massage during the postnatal period is greatly beneficial to all new mums. Postnatal massage addresses physical discomforts, as well as your emotional state. Body, mind, and soul are nurtured and rejuvenated. Post-natal massage can be carried out any time following birth and delivery providing massage is not contra-indicated to the mother.
For a normal birth, massage can be received as early as is wanted but will depend on the individual. If a mother has undergone a C-section, the mother must get approval from a health care professional before receiving a post-natal massage and sometimes this may not be granted until after her 6-week check-up. Careful, supportive massage will help the mum’s body recover from labour, and give huge emotional support, sometimes even, it can help with the bonding relationship between mother and baby.
Massage of the abdomen is included if you are comfortable with this, using specific techniques to enhance the benefits below. Jacqueline also has additional C Section scar tissue training and can use these techniques to help with the recovery of your surgery.
What is Craniosacral Therapy?
Craniosacral Therapy (CST) is a hands-on therapy, where the touch is gentle, non-invasive and usually subtle. It is a powerful therapy that affects the central nervous system to assist in improving function in the whole body.
We are aiming to treat the craniosacral system. This is the term Dr Upledger originally coined to describe the structures that produce and enable a rhythm he observed while assisting in a spinal surgery. (He was trying to hold a structure called the dural tube still while a colleague operated, but he couldn’t as it was moving all by itself!
He eventually called this rhythm the craniosacral rhythm and saw it as being created within the craniosacral system: structures that enable this are the meningeal membranes that surround and support the brain and spinal cord, the bones of the head to which they attach and the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds and protects the brain.
Ideally, this fascia and structures are all well aligned, the fluid can flow round the brain and spinal cord easily and the rest of the body is not having any less-than-optimal impact on this system (the fascia and nerves affect this system as much as they influence the rest of the body) but, life happens, from in utero onwards, and this system may not be as well aligned and flowing as it could be.
Using our ‘listening hands’, tuned to the feeling of the craniosacral rhythm, we feel how well the rhythm is reflecting out to the rest of the body and what we may be able to do to improve its function. This may mean simply encouraging it, as if you are gently flushing more fluid through a slightly sticky pipe, or it could mean using gentle techniques to unwind kinks in the body’s fascia – sort of like straightening out a sleeve or sock that isn’t on quite squarely!
An important part of our approach (that is completely born out in practice), is that it is the person’s body that knows exactly what to do in order to straighten out the above-mentioned kink itself, and all we are really doing is listening to what it needs and helping it to do it! So, we do not try and figure out what is wrong and then try to fix it. This can mean that the area we treat is sometimes different from the area in which symptoms are experienced, as our bodies can be very clever in how they adapt to stresses and strains.
Patients find Craniosacral Therapy effective for a wide range of problems associated with discomfort, pain and dysfunction. Interestingly, this approach also appears to complement and stimulate the body’s natural healing processes, so CST is increasingly used as a preventive health measure to keep us on the straight and not so narrow!
This description is taken direct from The Upledger Institute website where Jacqueline completed all her training.
Signature Treatment – the ultimate in relaxation
This is one of Jacqueline’s most popular treatments, once you have experienced 120 minutes of bliss, most people re-book time and time again.
This is a beautifully calming and relaxing treatment working on all the systems of the body to de-stress and soothe the mind, body and soul. A more uplifting massage can be created for those who wish to be energised through the use of a stimulating blend of oils and a more uplifting massage/reflexology treatment.
Working holistically, Jacqueline will tailor make this treatment for you and your body/mind’s needs incorporating Massage, Aromatherapy, Angelic Reiki, Reflexology and Crystals.
This treatment really is all about you and what you need that day.
Let Jacqueline soothe away all that stress and tension, revitalise your circulatory system, strengthen your immune system, deal with your aches and pains and muscular tension and heal where you are needing to be healed.
When do you get the chance to just lie there and do nothing for 90 or 120 minutes whilst someone eases away what no longer serves you?
After your consultation and Jacqueline has prepared your aromatherapy blend of essential oils, you will get settled upon massage couch, lying in fresh laundered soft towels, above a heated blanket. Soft music playing and wonderful essential oils burning in the diffuser with the gentle flickering of the candle and healing crystals nearby. Jacqueline will start with your full body aromatherapy massage.
Pure Bliss.
Holistic Therapy Appointments available at The Lymington Chiropractic Clinic
Jacqueline is currently in clinic on Tuesdays in our Treatment Room 4 with her range of holistic therapies: reflexology, massage and craniosacral therapies.
BOOK ONLINE, call 01590 679560 or pop into reception where Jay and Sally will be glad to assist you.