Creating A Healing Path
Who are the workshops for?
These online workshops offer a compassionate integrative approach for managing and changing pain, fatigue & anxiety, nurturing wellbeing and supporting healing. The workshops are suitable for people with any condition associated with pain/fatigue/anxiety, including chronic/persistent pain, fatigue, ME/CFS, long covid, PoTS, anxiety and chronic stress. Persistent pain is part of many conditions, including: fibromyalgia, low back pain, headaches, migraines, neck pain, osteoarthritis, and perimenopause/menopause. Fatigue is also part of many conditions including fibromyalgia, perimenopause/menopause, ME/CFS, PoTS, long covid and neurological conditions.
There are some questions that can help guide if the workshops might be for you (if you answer yes to one or more the workshops may be helpful for you):
- Would you like to know what nervous system regulation means & how this can help you?
- Would you like to understand pain/fatigue/anxiety better?
- Would you like to create a tool box of practices to manage & change pain/fatigue/anxiety, to support your healing & navigation of life?
- Would you like to increase trust in your body & yourself more?
- Do you relate to yourself with self-criticism, frustration, impatience, or anger?
- Would you like to increase self-compassion?
- Would you like to connect to more freedom and ease in your body?
- Would you like to increase self-awareness?
- Would you like to sleep better?
- Would you like to decrease stress?
- Do you feel like there is something wrong with you and that you need fixing?
- Would you like to feel an increased sense of belonging & feel more connected to others?
- Would you like to feel more settled in uncertainty?
What are the 'Creating Healing Path' workshops?
Creating A Healing Path is an 8 week online workshop series for people with any condition associated with persistent pain/fatigue/anxiety. As with everything Ann offers the workshops rest on the firm foundation of compassion and they are trauma-informed (as with all of Ann’s offerings). They combine knowledge and skills from physiotherapy, compassion & compassionate mind training (part of compassion focused therapy), trauma-informed yoga, embodiment/somatics, NLP, coaching, and acceptance and commitment therapy.
Each workshop is 2 hours (with a short break) and is a combination of theory, discussion/reflections and experiential practices. The experiential practices are a mix of breath practices, meditations, gentle yoga/gentle movement practices, embodiment/somatic practices, compassion, and reflections.
Each of the 8 workshops has a theme, for example nervous system regulation, connecting to trust in the body, and connecting to freedom and ease in the body. Some things, like compassion, nervous system regulation & somatics/embodiment are weaved throughout the whole workshop series. The final workshop brings everything together, where you can create your own individualised healing path framework.
The workshops are taught by Ann Parkinson who is a neurological & pain specialist physiotherapist, and integrative somatic practitioner, with many years of clinical experience. She also has lived experience of pain, fatigue & anxiety (the latter two due to ME/CFS & PoTS) so she understands things from a personal perspective too. Ann has over 13 years experience of working in the specialist area of persistent pain and over 15 years of working in neurology, she transferred the latter to working with people with ME/CFS, long covid and PoTS about 3 years ago. She also has many years of somatic & coaching experience and has often worked with people with chronic stress and anxiety. She is a qualified yoga teacher and is APPI pilates trained and used to run physio-pilates classes that integrated yoga. Ann has integrated yoga into all of her work for many years, has had a daily yoga practice for over 13 years and daily compassion practice for around 6 years. You can find out more about Ann, including some of the courses she has completed, by clicking the button below.
'Learn to Become Compassionately Present In Your Body'
- A free 15 minute call prior to booking (an opportunity for you to ask questions and find our more about the workshops, and for us to meet before the first workshop)
- 8 x 2 hour online workshops (live each week, with a short break)
- An email summary each week to support your learning. This includes resources for you to practice between sessions (resources include video and audio recordings of practices used in each session and additional ones, written resources and links to further information)
- A safe small group environment where everyone is learning & practicing together
- A WhatsApp group for group sharing & support between workshop sessions
- A template to use for creating your own individualised healing path (practices and developing a way of being that supports healing) for your ongoing healing journey
- A half hour 1:1 online/phone appointment with Ann after the workshops have finished so you can ask any further questions you may have, to help tailor your practices to you more if this is needed & to help with integration of your learning.
The pilot run of the workshops was May-June 2023 and there were so many benefits for people. The outcome measure that was used before and after the workshops showed many benefits including: increases in understanding of people’s own nervous system, increased self-compassion, increased sense of trust in the body & self in general, increased sense of belonging, increased understanding of values, being more able to engage in what’s meaningful, and feeling more settled in uncertainty. People also reported that their management of the condition(s) they were living with had improved and they felt that they had more tools & strategies to help with managing pain and other symptoms. People felt better able to connect to freedom and ease in their body even within symptom flares.
Some common words about the workshops from the people who have attended: compassionate safe space, powerful, soothing, reassuring, supportive, calming, grounding, nurturing, increasing awareness, non-judgemental, acceptance of who I am/I’m ok as I am/there’s nothing wrong with me, informative, engaging, create hope, freedom, ease, knowledge consolidation, letting go, increased clarity, abundance of resources.
To read the testimonials click the button below (they have the heading Creating A Healing Path Workshop testimonial
Is it time for you to rest, restore and heal?
These workshops run 2 times a year (with a possible additional run), the next run will start when there are enough people on the interested list. The cost of this 8 week workshop series is £400, with an early bird discount the cost is £360. If finances would prevent you from doing these workshops please get in touch to discuss the possible payment options.
If you would like to do the Creating A Healing Path 8 week series please get in touch to be added to the interested list by emailing info@unityphysio.co.uk or calling Ann on 07871240188. Once the date is set you can book your free 15 minute call, after this you can book your place should you wish to do so.
Physiotherapy for Persistent Pain
Physiotherapy for ME/CFS & Long Covid
Wellness Coaching
Wellness Workshops