Hello and isn’t it a relief that Spring is here and 2025 has officially started now the flowers and sun are out even if its still pretty chilly:)
I’ve been struggling for a while to find a clinic in Exeter that I can facilitate both my clients in wheelchairs as well as those with good mobility and I’ve found a new one that’s just opened in Sowton on the Honiton Road, EX1 4RU. There is a Domino’s and a Subway at the front, a car park round the back and a few disabled spaces outside the Good-Life Clinic entrance when you drive around past the gym to the far side of the building.
I’ll be there on Mondays at the moment and may start doing Thursday’s as well in the summer depending on how things go in Torbay/Totnes and Exeter.
So please call or text me on 07956 409300 if you’d like an appointment for actual effective hands-on therapy rather than just a sheet of exercises and experience Laser and Red Light treatments to speed up healing of injuries or painful areas.
Mike 🙂

Although ZenPhysio has been a good brand name, I’m making it more specific to my location as the majority of my home visits are now in Torbay and Totnes with some clients even going back as far as my first clinic in Torquay near the harbour in 2003.

I’m still keeping a Monday in Exeter to see my clients from the M.S. Centre where I was working in for 20yrs. Home visits where I live though, makes more sense and is what I enjoy, although I dont mind an occassional clinic day. If people need or want equipment like active/passive bikes however, I still refer them back to The MS Centre in Exeter or WestBank in Exminster.

I’m doing a lot more in-depth bodywork including a combination of Massage, Bowen Technique, Zero Balancing and CranioSacral including stimulating the intestines/bowels to work better and allowing release from the structures of the body.

The Thor LX2 laser system I’m using also is amazing for accelerated healing which is going very well especially for fractures and sprains, bursitis and arthritis and clients love Infrared for their lower backs.

So for Torquay Physiotherapy, Paignton Physiotherapy, Totnes Physiotherapy, Totnes Neurophysio, Physio Home Visits in Torquay, Paignton, Totnes, I’m just making it a bit clearer with Torbay and Totnes Physiotherapy.

It’s expensive getting home visits these days with some physios charging £80-90 to visit a care home, nursing home, or persons’ home, so £50 per 45 minute visit is very good value and a special for TTPhysiotherapy for the next few months.

Thanks to Devon Creative for the new logo 🙂

I have had to switch around clinics in Exeter and Torbay. This has led me to consolidate my days in Exeter to just Mondays, but in two clinics, one for good/quite mobile (Heavitree Chiropractic) and one for good disabled access.

Sadly, I couldn’t move My Living Options clinic to another day, so Exminster Westbank is my new Monday afternoon clinic. It is ten minutes from my old clinic at the MS Centre and has a gym and a lift up to the assessment/treatment room and they are a very proactive centre who offer transport and many other activities for locals in need. It is also closer to my base in Totnes.

Torbay and Teign Chiropractic were keen to have me for a full day on Wednesday to see their clients and it’s a good place to work.

These changes will lead to slightly less travelling and more time to work on new projects and still provide useful sessions for those I already know in Exeter and new people in Totnes and Torbay.

After 20 years at the MS Centre in Exeter, I am now focusing my attention closer to home in Totnes. I am starting a new clinic in Totnes with a great group of like-minded practitioners with space for training, talks, classes, new health promoting technologies as well as 5 or 6 treatment rooms (HealthSource.uk).

ExeterNeuroPhysio.co.uk will still be around as I will keep a room in Exeter at Heavitree on Mondays and am looking for a decent place on thursdays with good access for wheelchairs/buggies with parking attached (if you know of any, let me know). I could well be doing home visits whilst I search for a perfect space. I’d love to establish or join a complementary/medical multi-disciplinery centre in Exeter and have some excellent practitioners (counsellors/ bodyworkers/ hypno /homeopathy etc) who are interested, so watch this space.

Sadly the beautiful old listed MS Centre has been for sale for some time now and I’m not sure how their plans will work out.

Torbay and Totnes Neurophysio (TT Neurophysio.com) – I’m doing home visits in and around Torbay and Totnes as well as getting the new clinic going for general physio, neurophysio, deep bodywork and am looking at doing more end of life care, as its deep, profound and there is a lot of it about sadly.

For the past few months I’ve also been working at a chiropractic clinic in Torquay on wednesdays as it was getting quieter in the MS Centre.

I’m still doing Breathwork ‘tasters’ in Totnes and will continue to do them monthly as people get so much from them. Last time a lady experienced ‘Unconditional Love’ during her first breathwork experience. Talk about hitting the jackpot!

Mike has been keeping busy since the lockdowns of 2020/21 as a lot less people were coming to the centre with the fear of catching covid.
Things have pretty much returned to normal now in the centre but Mike cut his time at the centre down to Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from July 2022. He has been organising events in 2022 at the Kenton Victory Hall every 8 weeks with the next being on 19th November 2022 from 1.30 – 4.30 where you can come along and sample a 30 min session with Mike for a suggested donation of £10 but there are many other great therapists offer tasters from reflexology to acupuncture to readings and all sorts for everyone.

He has also been running Breathwork workshops where he discusses his experience with Dr Stan Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork, Leonard Orr’s Rebirthing and Wim Hof’s amazing cold and breath holding and connected breathing. These generally involve an intro chat followed by a 30 minute experience of the breathwork with a relaxation intro and music to help the Breathing experience. He has run 4 of these so far in 2022 and will be doing more in the near future.

There is a lack of healthcare at the moment, a lack of staff and many who have left due to the stress of the covid years. So physio also is very hard to access with long waiting times so if you would like a zoom consult for 40 minutes at a cost of £45 then with his 20 years experience he can talk through your problem(s) and offer professional advice, likely with stretches, exercises and support/reassurance.

With Mike’s well honed hands-on skills he is currently exploring PEMF (a Dr friend offered Mike the use of the amazing Hofmag system for a month or so (PEMF as used for elite athletes and racehorses), and sound therapies such as biofield tuning with another practitioner as his understanding of light (such as with the LX2 Thor laser system) and sound can also play an important role in well being.

Since Boris shut most everything down on 20th March 2020, the M.S. Centre in Exeter shut down the week after which has left me twiddling my thumbs and left a lot of people with M.S. without their Hyperbaric Oxygen and Physio to keep them energised, flexible and exercised.

I did go in and record a video of me demonstrating the Monday Exercise Class and I am still trying to figure out how to get it loaded up onto video (youtube on here), hopefully, by the time you read this it will be done.

After initially doing a ton of paperwork to join an agency to get work in the NHS and later finding out that there wasn’t any work! I finally got around to working on writing my book about M.S. and doing a lot of research.

The book will be on Kindle and will cover, my experience at the M.S. Centre over the last 15 years and the common things I have found, also some basics about M.S. in my view, some basic exercises for strengthening , stretches to reduce stiffness and increase flexibility and mobility.  I’ve also put in some stuff on diet, supplementation, breathing techniques, toxicity and references to other really good books on the brain that I’ve come across that all overlap with aspects of what I recommend.

Enough about me! What should we all be doing during the lockdown to improve our immune system?

There are 3 things that I try do every day:

First, I do The Wim Hof Method starting with taking 30-40 deep breaths and then a long hold (for my big lungs, 2.5 to 3.5 mins), then another 30 breaths and a long hold out (1.5 to 2.5 mins for me). I know some people who have practiced this for 6 months can do 4 minute holds easily.  Sometimes I do exercises whilst holding breath which builds a lot of strength as muscles act differently without as much oxygen.  Then I get in the shower and put it on maximum cold for 1-2 mins after I have warmed up and washed.  This burst of cold strengthens your immune system, reduces inflammation, improves vagal tone and is great psychologically to do something you really don’t want to do early in the morning (this is not advised if you suffer with spasms). The free 3-part video. Wim on Covid-19

I am also getting back into Falun Gong which is a version of Chi Gong, a Chinese energy cultivation exercise.  I did run a class teaching this about ten years ago after being taught by a Chinese lady who had been put in a forced labour camp for 1.5 years for doing Falun Gong in China!.  It can take as little as 5 minutes if you do the first exercise or can take 30 minutes if you do the full 6 exercises including meditation at the end.  It can also be done in sitting.  It is amazing what regular practice of this does for your energy levels and feeling of well-being. A link to the full video is here (gives explanations & exercises in detail for you to learn and perfect – for free).

Thirdly I do a meditation separately using the Muse2 headband which is a fancy, Star Trek like device which you put around your forehead that reads your brain waves (beta, alpha, theta, gamma and delta), and gives you positive feedback when you get into Alpha or slower brainwaves.  This gives a profound feeling of peace as does the Light and Sound meditation that I do with a group (online at the moment via Zoom and whatsapp) occasionally.

Hopefully I will bring both a Falun Gong and group meditation to Exeter before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, in this extraordinary time, remember there are many ways to boost your immune system.  Go out, get some fresh air, communicate with people you haven’t connected with for a while and take this time to do something positive (if you have an enforced couple of months off like myself).

Happy exercising !

Michael.

The Brain

I’ve been listening to several books on audible over the past few months, particularly Steven Kotler’s ‘Stealing Fire‘ and ‘Mapping Cloud 9‘ which are both excellent, particularly in looking at what is going on in what parts of the brain according to imaging and an understanding of the neurochemisty as well as the neuroanatomy, which on scans show which parts are lighting up and which parts are dumbing down in certain states, such as in mystical states, being in the zone, in the flow state or in states of profound healing.

Also Dr Joe Dispenza’s ‘Evolve Your Brain’ is a great listen but is very long and detailed but in a good way. I had to replay several chapters, several times but it is great for getting a better idea of neuro, imaging, neurotransmitters, and plenty on meditation and useful practices.

I am constantly on the lookout for ways to improve the brain’s function because of my clients over the past 14 years with MS with fatigue and brain-fog. It is my feeling that the functional medicine approach is the closest in looking at ways of treating autoimmune diseases, with diet, detoxing, chelating, supplementing and other strategies.

Also, as I have been working with people with Strokes and Parkinson’s since 2000 it would be great to see how the neuroprotective CBD compounds and the new regimes with NADh plus co enzyme q-10 could help reduce brain damage and speed a better recovery from neuropathology.

The Mind

After qualifying as a Clinical Hypnotherapist in 2019 I feel that I have certainly learnt a lot more about the mind and how when we change our inner dialogue and replace negatively interpreted memories with neutral or even positive ones, how much better we can feel and see the world.

I have also stepped up my meditations, and here include some of my favourite masters, Mooji and Sadhguru’s simple meditation from his website.

Stress is the most obvious thing that makes us feel bad and if we are unwell it just aggravates our symptoms – I have seen this many times in MS, so I see meditation and stress reducing strategies as crucial in symptom reduction.

Multiple Sclerosis

I am writing a book about what I have been doing for and learnt from my clients at the South West MS Therapies Centre for over a decade.

There have been so many books, diets, strategies, TED talks, interventions to help MS and the symptoms over the years, and I have followed them all with interest. I have come across another one just the other day which looks worth a look. See Dr Pompa and Palmer Kippola who has just released a new book ‘Beat Auto-Immune‘ that is from the Functional Medicine approach.

I have many plans as usual for the New Year and wish you all well (-:

After a year of hard work, lots of reading, free case studies, lots of learning and typing up of notes taken each month in a weekend intensive with a great group (5 others) and lots of Zoom meetings, finally I passed the exams and am now a Clinical Hypnotherapist!!!

We learnt so many tools especially diving into Parts therapy and Regression, but also the Fork in the Path, Coping to Mastery and a bunch of other ways of working with people to help them integrate unresolved emotional stuff that often lies at the bottom their ‘bad’ habits that they have gotten into and want to change. In one case study, a woman who had constant pain agreed to a very simple suggestion in Parts therapy and she had no pain for 2 weeks afterwards (and then she injured her leg)! It is amazing that the mind can agree to turn off pain that has been around for so long, so easily!

Also I had a great weekend in Totnes with Johnathon Fitzgordon of New York looking at his approach to viewing posture to relieve tension on the psoas muscle and lower back. After a 2 hour session on Friday one chap told me he was able to walk without pain in his lower back for more than an hour around the hill of Totnes which he was shocked and amazed by.

It will certainly change how I look at peoples postures and advise people with back pain, and I loved the ‘Psoas Release Party’ – felt amazing afterwards.

I definately recommend everyone to follow Johnathon or have a look at his material to create an amazing change for themselves and others.

Mike x

In my experience real, lasting, lifelong transformational change is a rarity.

Which is quite a statement when you think of the industry that is built around helping people achieve change.

I’ve experienced many therapies, workshops, courses and coaching sessions myself and always felt a wonderful sense of achievement and renewed vigour after each one.  But looking back today I can’t honestly say that many courses I did, let’s say ten years ago, have transformed my life long-term.

These therapies did of course  ultimately lead me to the path I now walk and eventually to become a Higher Brain Living practitioner.  So I can’t for a moment say they didn’t help me get to where I am in my life right now.

But it has taken a long time to get here.  Far longer than I would have hoped for and I have seen may people along the way give up or settle, losing the will to even want to make a change.

And of course that is life, we all have challenges that arise, that we need to face and these challenges can feel over-bearing and grind you down.  We only have to look at anxiety and depression statistics to see that carrying our stress for a long time is very, very real.

So what am I getting at here?

Well, my journey has taken me a long time to get here.  Far longer than I would have liked when I set out on it.

Now that I am here however, and with the benefit of experiencing a variety of therapies, I completely identify with Higher Brain Living and the dramatic and swift effect it can have on helping to facilitate change.

Even better than that – lifelong transformational change.

A Shortcut to Lifelong Transformational Change?

The key reason I decided to become a Higher Brain Living practitioner is because I saw how Higher Brain Living can act as a shortcut to, if you will, re-wire the brain.

Imagine if YOU had the tools to re-wire your own brain.  How would that look to you?  What would you achieve without any self-imposed subconscious limits?

I really urge you to take 10 minutes here to really think about these pressing questions.  Sit and allow yourself to imagine and see what you come up with – I’d love to hear your responses.

I can help you on your own journey of lifelong transformational change.  Get in touch with me today to find out more and take the first step on your own journey of change.

My Wish For You

 

Namaste.

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It’s been a really exciting time for me recently as I’ve been working on some new and really interesting ideas, particularly in the area of transformational change.

I’ve been looking at ways of bringing together the key elements of all the different therapies I have trained in to create a unique strategy designed to help shortcut results for my clients – transformational change.

When I say shortcut, of course I don’t mean cheating – because life experience I’m sure has taught most of us that cheating always comes back to bite you in the end!

What I mean is simply that I am working on creating a course that takes the key elements of therapies I have personally found, and that my clients have found, to be potentially most beneficial in creating transformational change in yourself.  By combining these elements we can make the best of everything from many therapies for what could mean even bigger results, in a much shorter time frame.

That’s my plan anyway!

So for now I am very interested to hear from YOU.

What would you like to see in my next course and how would you prefer it delivered to help you get the results you yearn for?  How do you learn most effectively?

At the moment I am pondering a day long workshop format vs an ongoing weekly practice – kind of like going to your weekly Yoga class.  But this would be designed for the mind, body and spirit to work together in helping you achieve your goals.

What would really interest you?

What are YOUR goals…?

When I say I want to help you develop your own skills and strategies to achieve your own goals, I really do mean that.  It’s what I do and I see the true value in this every day.

But perhaps what I mean by ‘goals’ and the modern, common meaning of goals are slightly misaligned.

Let me explain.

When I work with my clients I like to focus on transformational change.  The kind of stuff that takes you from where you are, to where you currently can only dream of being.

But how do you do this?

Well a lot of it is to do with analysing critical areas of your life to determine where you are vs where you want to be.  Setting a ‘goal’ in this way helps you to map out your path.

Add in techniques from other therapies I have learnt, including Higher Brain Living, and you have a complete mind, body, spirit approach to help you achieve the success in whichever area of your life you wish to focus on.

And the real beauty is that this can be rinsed and repeated for any area of your life, at any time.

My Wish For You

 

Namaste.

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