About Rodger

I am an experienced Somatic Therapist and Trauma Therapist with over 36 year’s experience as a Chartered Physiotherapist.

In addition to my solid roots in conventional medicine and years as a manual therapist and bodyworker, I have trained extensively in wide ranging therapies including Somatic Experiencing, Myofascial Release, Craniosacral Therapy, EMDR and NeuroAffective Touch. My lived experience allows me to explore further and deeper into complex health issues.

Where it began

I trained as a physiotherapist and have been in practice in Wokingham since the 1990s. Physiotherapy gave me a deep knowledge of the body and a respect for medical thinking, and I still work within it. My undergraduate and postgraduate training also took place in hospital and community mental health settings, which is why I look at the whole person.

Over the years I kept meeting people whose pain, fatigue, tension and diseases did not fit the usual picture. The scans were clear or the treatment had stopped helping, and yet the body was still saying something.

I began to study how trauma, (especially early developmental trauma), attachment adaptations and long-held defence patterns live in the body and. I trained in approaches that work with the nervous system and with touch, and I brought them back into my practice alongside my physiotherapy.I now have a much greater understanding of how stress and trauma create frank disease like chronic inflammatory conditions, migraines, type II diabetes and much more.

I also bring a long background of 2 decades in martial arts and Zen practice. They taught me how to stay steady and present with someone when things are difficult, which is much of this work.

Highlights

BSc(Physio) MCSP MHCPC MAACP SEP EMDR CST NATP
HCPC-registered Chartered Physiotherapist,
Member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (MCSP)
Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and NeuroAffective Touch Practitioner (NATP), and an assistant, supervisor and session provider in NeuroAffective Touch
Trained in EMDR and craniosacral therapy, with postgraduate study in neurodevelopmental psychology
36+ years experience

Lived experience

I have my own experience of living with autoimmune illness and chronic pain, and of finding a way through it. Through my early years I underwent multiple surgeries before I reached the age of 10. Medicine saved my life.

In adult life I suffered a condition called Relapsing Pericarditis – it nearly ended my life. I kept relapsing to the point I understood that conventional medicine wasn’t going to heal me – so I sought otherways of healing and recovery. It took me 8 years of deep work and searching to figure out how to heal. Long before things like somatic work were really available as they are today. I am completely pain free and no longer have that debilitating swelling around the heart

I have my own various experiences with grief and other childhood wounds

I do not assume your path will look like mine, but I understand what it is to live in a body that does not feel like home.

In Safe hands

I have worked as a Chartered Physiotherapist for over 36 years, with touch, movement and manual therapy and therapeutic relationship at the centre of my practice. I am trained and licenced to assess and diagnose, and to spot anything that needs onward medical referral, which I arrange. I have strong working relationships with consultants and the wider medical community, so your care is joined up and nothing is missed.

Most importantly, I believe that developing the ability to experience safety in out being is vital for the healing process can be near impossible. I also recognise that the relationship and space may not feel safe. I find it saddening when therapists say that “This a safe space”. It very often doesn’t feel safe to be entering a therapy space – however much we try to create that. How arrogant of me to suggest it feels safe to you. In trauma – often the work is finding ways to respect the defence processes, the armouring in the body and there is the work.

The therapeutic relationship is one based on trust, safety, empathy and compassion. It is my job to earn your trust so that I may have the privelege of helping you heal.

How I see the mind, body and person in healing

I do not see the body as a machine that sometimes breaks, or the mind as a separate matter. Experience is held in both.

When someone has been through something overwhelming, or grew up without enough safety, the body adapts. Those adaptations make sense at the time. Years later they can look like pain, fatigue, tension, or a feeling of being cut off from yourself and other people.

The autonomic nervous system, whilst definitely not the whole picture, is a huge link between mind, emotion, the gut, immunity, inflammation, autoimmune disease and more. Trauma affects the whole person and there is more than just a traumatised nervous system to work with.

My work is to help the whole person find that it has other choices, at a pace that feels safe, and with your agreement at every step.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my approach different from talk therapy?

Talk therapy is hugely important for people. I include this as part of a whole package of care. A question however… “When did you last feel an emotion in your brain?” The answer is never. It may be processed in part in the brain but it is felt in the body. The body also feeds information to the brain. The brain is not the centre control point of everything. IN emotions, in pain, in anything. We must help people manage the internal world not just the thought.

Somatic Experiencing® and NeuroAffective Touch include conversation, meaning and relationship, so there is a psychotherapeutic element, and the body is part of the work as well.

I am an HCPC-registered, psychologically informed Chartered Physiotherapist and somatic trauma therapist with postgraduate study in neurodevelopmental psychology.

How long have I been practising?

Over 36 years, in physiotherapy and in somatic and body-based trauma approaches.