About My Bodyworks and How I Can Help you
Hi I'm Nat Nicholson!
I’m a Neuromuscular Movement and Manual Therapist, Women’s Wellness Rehabilitation and Energy Alignment Practitioner.
My Journey Down the Neuro Rabbit Hole
In 2011, I left the world of dance after a fabulous 12 years of touring the world as a company stage manager to have my equally fabulous daughter. A fascination in the movement of the human body along with my own body’s journey through pregnancy led me into qualifying as a Sports and Remedial Massage Therapist from the esteemed North London School of Sports Massage a year later.
Shortly after qualifying, I became frustrated with working with the musculoskeletal system and treating the symptoms, and having been introduced to the importance of the nervous system in assessing and treating the body by one of my mentors, I instantly fell down the neuro rabbit hole to a world of curious exploration and continual learning development.
What is it that I do?
Some people call it magic, others witchcraft!
My approach is a blend of the the innovative tools and techniques which my journey has taken me, into a brain based, muscle testing and movement approach to helping people MOVE BEYOND PAIN.
My work is based on finding the origins of my clients’ pain. I mainly work with chronic pain, the kind you wake up with and think “where the hell did that come from?” I love the conundrum of finding out why the body is doing what it is doing and causing pain in the meantime. Acute pain is often more obvious and there are plenty of people out there to help people with that already.
The way I work with clients means that we work collaboratively, putting the pieces of the puzzle together, working out from the body’s history why it has chosen to move in a particular way, to keep you safe. The brain always chooses the most optimal way to move and work from the resources it has available at the time. If these resources have been depleted over time by injury, surgery, compensation patterns or stress, then the brain will divert its resources to keep you going, often causing pain in the meantime.
We use muscle testing to determine what messages the nervous system is sending out to the systems of the body, in order to correct the coding and reset the neural pathways to more optimised movement.
My passion for specialising in Women’s Health began with my own return to recovery after having my daughter. I hadn’t realised the HUGE disruption that pregnancy and birthing had had on my body until I began to hurt everywhere and question if this was my new normal now that I was a mum. I learned that it was common, but definitely not something I had to live. Having begun my my search of answers in the world of women’s wellness with international specialist Jenny Burrell, I continued my studies with education in scarwork, compensatory movement patterns, biomechanics, integrated core function and support for the physiological and emotional systems of the body . It is this whole system approach that I believe is missing from helping people and especially women return to full recovery and that I continue to build on in supporting my own clients.
My work is influenced by my continued training in:
- Neurokinetic Therapy I,II,III (David Weinstock)
- Immaculate Dissection (Dr Kathy Dooley)
- Anatomy in Motion – AiM (Gary Ward)
- Dynamic Neuromuscular Assessment (Joseph Schwartz)
- Adaptable Polarity (Jordan Shane Terry)
- Energy Alignment Method (Yvette Taylor)
- Primal Movement Chains (Dr Perry Nickelston)
- Burrell Education (Jenny Burrell)
- Core Fascial Release (Noah Karrasch)
- Brain Based Musculoskeletal Approach (Adam Wolf)
- Protect the Human (Marissa Macias)
…along with many other passionate explorers of humans, along the way. I am deeply grateful and honoured to have been mentored by such great innovators in their fields.
About my Approach to working with the body
The Brain & Nervous System
Welcome to the BRAIN.
Central computer, chief decision maker and protector of life. Everything that happens in the body comes down to the brain.
Using its information highway, the NERVOUS SYSTEM, information gets delivered to the brain, it decides the best course of action, and sends out the relevant responses to the body's systems and structures.
Injuries and particularly surgeries cause glitches in the system so removing these is paramount to your system working optimally. Scars are a big cause of malfunction in the body and, alongside breathing (our brain's feedback monitor to how our nervous system feels), are a key component of my work with clients.
Keeping the Container Safe
As the BRAIN'S main role is SURVIVAL, if it perceives a THREAT to the system from any of the incoming information, it recruits all its resources to keeping you ALIVE - clever, eh? But, in doing so, it will forego performance and function, until the threat has passed.
PAIN is an OUTPUT from the BRAIN, created in response to a PERCEIVED THREAT from the incoming INPUTS.
When we desenstize this threat to the sytem, the body can get back to PEFORMING and FUNCTIONING well.
If you are in PAIN, what INTERNAL and EXTERNAL INFORMATION is coming into your BRAIN, that is it interpreting as a threat?
My Treatment Philosophy
At My Bodyworks, I treat and work with my clients with this philosophy in mind.
Keeping your brain in a state of NON THREAT is important to treating and progressing you.
Assessing where your nervous system is at before, during and after treatment is as important as the treatment itself.
By being aware of the many inputs that your brain is responding to, we can test out your systems to see which inputs are priority for treatment in helping your body return, safely, to pain free movement, optimal function and performance.
REMOVE THREAT, IMPROVE PERFORMANCE