Holistic Maintenance

How Often Should I Book In?

How often should I book in and when should I book in again are two questions that I am often asked. Here's what I tell clients (more importantly is the why)

When dealing with a specific injury or issue I recommend a minimum of once a week until you begin to notice progress. Afterwards, spreading to every 2 weeks, every 3 and then onto a maintenance schedule. The exception to this is with Craniosacral Therapy and Spinal Touch Therapy (I'll explain those two a little more below)

Why? Injuries and specific issues often require treatments close together in order to ensure the body, mind and spirit progress along the path of natural healing. Booking once and then carrying on and again just living with the pain can not only set you back to pre-injury condition but can possibly set you further back. Which is much more expensive to deal with when your body finally does say "that's it! You have to deal with me!" Because now we may be addressing a chronic condition.

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Emotionally stuffing symptoms down causes them to go elsewhere, usually surfacing as dis-ease in the body. Emotion is energy and energy needs to flow in order to be released.

Why? Because when we have an injury or pain or emotional upset other aspects of our whole being are also affected. If you ignore the pain, the body and mind continue to compensate until they are beyond their limits to adapt. This can cause other areas to become painful, injured or emotionally distressed. 

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Chronic pain and longstanding issues often need sessions closer together at the start in order to help retrain the body and mind to moving and staying in a holistically healthy  space. Our muscle memory and ego often will draw us back to the posture we held for so long and they need a nudge and reinforcement to encourage them to release that memory and make a new one. In other words, creating a new normal.

Maintenance comes after you are feeling less pain, moving more freely, feel less burdened, notice positive changes beginning to become the normal. Maintenance encourages the body and mind to stay with the changes that have been created.

This is the place where I can answer the question from the beginning...How often should I book? My response is to listen to your body, probably once a month is a good idea but each person is unique and their maintenance may mean every 3 weeks or every 6 weeks depending on their body, mind and spirit and how they are feeling. What I do recommend is some kind of maintenance schedule so the body and mind have no opportunity to slip back into pain and upset. Your holistic well-being is important to take care of and give some priority to.

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Spinal Touch and Craniosacral Therapy don't rely on the same schedule. With Craniosacral Therapy I recommend waiting at least 10 days after each session so that the body has the opportunity to fully experience all aspects of each session. After that, it really depends on how your body/mind have responded and what your goals are.

Spinal Touch is a little different. I recommend the initial 2 days in a row of sessions, miss a day and then have a 3rd session. This creates new muscle memory for the muscles to hold good posture. Some clients require a 4th session three or four days after but that happens infrequently. When to rebook depends on your body. You should carry on your normal activities and maintain good alignment. A slip or fall may knock you off alignment and then just 1 session should bring your spine back. I have had clients go for as long as 5 years in between sessions because their muscles have held the posture that long. Again, maintenance will be unique to you.

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