HEALING HANDS AND
UNDERSTANDING, LISTENING EAR
Introduction
Barbara's journey through her therapeutic career was never constrained, it was individual, even idiosyncratic. She followed no overall programme set by some outside body but picked and chose from the various approaches she came across. She preferred her therapy sessions to be a partnership between therapist and client. Through each of the various new ideas and techniques she experimented with she sought to empower her clients, putting them in charge of their own recovery and development. Her voluntary work in the Creative Living Centre was a major activity throughout her time as an active therapist (c1990 - 2018) and is described in a separate page. This page describes some of the other activities through which she expressed her commitments and developed her working practices. Everything she learned was channelled back into her work both in her home studio and the Creative Living Centre.
Barbara's was always aware that the knotted muscles she relaxed through her touch could be a consequence of the emotional life of those she was helping. Assessment of the needs of a client included an awareness of the life events that may lie behind the symptoms presented. Conversations in the massage room could be as important as the massage itself. Eileen Craig’s lovely tribute expresses the feelings of many of her clients:
I will never forget Barbara and shall be ever grateful for her kind, caring, gentle soul helping me through many challenging times with her healing hands and understanding listening ear. Her caring farewell was always ' Go Well' I wish her the same now. Rest In Peace"
Others talked of her 'calming, soothing voice'.
Barbara entered her new career with a vigorous, can-do approach. She became an advocate for complementary therapies, supporting others and devising and implementing research to demonstrate their effectiveness. She was always looking for opportunities for her own professional development and new contexts in which she could work. When necessary, she was willing to use her administrative skills to support approaches she valued. She was intellectually curious, keeping up to date with developments in 'bodywork'. This continued even after she was no longer able to practice: she was still exploring new ways of understanding the body-mind connection in the months before her death.
Massage Studio 17 Parksway
We had converted a garage for her parents to stay as they became more infirm. It was little used as a bedroom and more often as her office. It was just big enough to include a massage couch instead of a bed and ideally placed near the front door of the house for clients to come in and out easily. By the time she left College, Barbara already had a small client base for a private practice to operate from this room. It continued in use until she gave up her licence to practise massage. Here she could continue to use her existing skills and experiment with new ones. Clients came through word of mouth and through her other activities, especially the Creative Living Centre. Later people attracted to the Self-Heal ideas of Meier Schneider were welcome both for work on their bodies and their vision. Combined with the garden for the vision exercises, this base proved ideal.
ASSOCIATION OF COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES (ACT)
In 1996, Barbara brought local complementary therapists in Bury together in an organisation called ACT. She was its first chair and remained active in it until at least 2011. I am not sure when the organisation ceased. Its constitution describes it as a group of therapists who wanted to develop an informal network of complementary practitioners in the Bury Area. The picture shows members of ACT at a social event at 17 Parksway.
Its aims were:
- To develop a network of complementary therapists in the Bury area.
- To make available a directory of people prepared to give talks and demonstrations to groups.
- To promote and explore wider access to these therapies for the local population.
- To facilitate information transfer and support between members of the network.
- To keep informed of new development in the field of complementary therapies, and for each therapist to update their skills and continue their training.
Barbara listed their achievements:
As a group we have worked in many different settings giving therapies, these include working in a doctor’s surgery for a three year period, working with the breast care cancer group, in the Jinnah Centre working with the elderly, family centres including Red Centre to support those with disabilities , Women’s Groups and at festivals to introduce people to the benefits with tasters and information.
On a personal level the ACT offers peer support to individual therapists. We meet monthly, have exchange days and social gatherings and have been on retreats as well as sharing information about our different therapies in informal training sessions
The Huntley Mount Project and MYMOP
One offshoot of the relationships ACT had created was a funded project that sought to demonstrate the efficacy of complementary therapies. Barbara led this worked in association with a GP at Huntley Mount Medical Centre. A small number of therapies were offered to patients complementing conventional treatments. Their effectiveness was assessed using the MYMOP system (Measure Yourself Medical Outcomes Profile). This video explains the method.
Barbara helped the patients to record the severity of their symptoms on a simple scoring system before treatment commenced and at intervals during treatment. Improvements in these scores were aggregated over the patient cohort to demonstrate the effectiveness of treatment.
Barbara got funding for the project, managed the participation of therapists, participated in the administration of the questionnaires and processed the results using the guidelines provided by the academics who devised and promoted the project.
THE SCHOOL FOR SELF-HEALING
IN SAN FRANCISCO
AND SELF-HEAL UK
In the late 1990s Barbara attended a course in London led by Meier Schneider Director of the School for Self Healing to introduce the work of his School. She was very impressed.
Over the next decade she attended a series of courses in San Francisco. She qualified to lead individual and group sessions in 'natural vision improvement' and 'self-healing through movement'.
She made many friends amongst her fellow students and her tutors and became particularly close to two British students: Lynne Alexander and Dennis Donnelly. She also built a close and supportiver relationship with Meier himself.
Over the years she supported a number of individuals from across the North of England who were specifically looking for a self-heal practitioner whether for vision improvement or to increase their mobility. Whenever she thought it appropriate she used self-heal methods with her massage clients. Her exercise classes at the Creative Living Centre also made use of this training.
Meier Schneider offers his courses wherever in the World opportunities arise. Barbara provided him with a base in Manchester, using her studio for individual clients and the Creative Living Centre for some group sessions. He made a number of visits. To manage the finances of these ventures, she set up and managed a new company 'Self-Heal UK'. His tribute to Barbara shows how successful her engagement with him was:
Barbara was one of the best student-practitioners of the Self-Healing work in England. She supported our work in a big way. She helped our School in San Francisco and promoted our work in her own town, Manchester. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met, always had a calm demeanour and helped many people with her love and kindness, in spite of struggling with health conditions herself. She helped thousands of people to have a better life. Her death is a big loss to the world. I personally will always remember her fondly with great admiration and love.
Once again, her friendships endured. For example, we met Melissa Moody in Derbyshire late in the last decade. Here is her tribute after Barbara's death:
Barbara was a dear friend. We met in the early 2000s at the School for Self-Healing in San Francisco through Meir Schneider’s work. She was an excellent practitioner of Meir Schneider’s work. We stayed in touch, and saw each other from time to time in San Francisco, over the decades. She was pivotal in assisting me to get more movement and opening in my right hip. She was a beautiful person and dear friend. I will miss her.
Lynne Alexander lived and worked in Chester. She came to a number of the Self-Heal UK events and Barbara and I visited her in Chester a few times whilst we still lived in Bury. She rememberd Barbara fondly.
Barbara was such a good and lovely lady and a very good friend to me. I did miss her a lot after she moved ...
COURSES TO HELP MANAGE FATIGUE
RELATED TO ME/CFS
Dennis Donnelly kept in touch with Barbara and became a friend to both of us. His practice was based in Liverpool. in the mid 2010s he approached Barbara to participate with him in designing and delivering a course to enable people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and similar conditions to have more active lives. The first and most successful course was held in Liverpool with clients identified by Dennis. Once again Barbara contributed both as a therapist and as administrator. She organised a similar course in Manchester shortly afterwards. Two of those on the Liverpool course remembered her after her death, first Julie Van Vuren and then Lorraine Whitehead:
Barbara was a lovely, kind, warm person who just wanted to help others all she could.
Such a lovely lady who brightened my day when I needed it. I will go light a candle for her. I remember her sending me to sleep when we were doing guided relaxation on the floor, the best couple of minutes nap ever.
This was the last new initiative she was involved in, undertaken as her levels of energy were beginning to dip. It is a real loss to the post-covid World that she did not have the energy to develop it further in the era of long Covid.
Even after she had given up activities as a therapist, Barbara continued to be fascinated by the ideas that supported bodywork. She took a particular interest in recent work under the heading of Somatics.