Closing the Gap to the Future of Health

On the subject of ‘what’s wrong with healthcare’ first reflections may include,… bureaucratization, privatization of the NHS, cutbacks, A & E closure, overworked doctors, in the US the ridiculous struggle of Obamacare.

Thinking of ‘health issues,’ most of us will consider cancer, tumors, accidents, arthritis, flu, meningitis, skin conditions and so forth… less of us will consider depression, self-harm or addiction as a ‘health condition’.

Health however is ‘one for all’: body and mind are inextricably joined. Health issues surfacing are symptoms of something having gone awry - somewhere in our system. It’s only for our Western fragmented mindset that the concept of health is sectioned into ‘medical health’ versus ‘mental health’.

“Clinicians tend to look at how to fix the symptoms only, looking at the effect rather than exploring the cause.  A sleep-, or eating disorder may be domino 57 in a row of 60, to remedy you cannot look at them in isolation, you need to track back and heal at the source.”

Benjamin Fry, founder of Khiron House Trauma Clinic (London / Oxfordshire), speaks from experience.

Hard-hit by the 2009 financial crisis as father of four-soon-five, entrepreneur and psychotherapist, author, TV broadcaster, he found himself facing one issue too many. Shockingly, despite being so well connected, his nervous breakdown was only worsened by the ‘aid’ in sight. 

“Most clinics still today see themselves largely focusing on issues such as substance addition, while that in itself is an adaptive expression of a dysregulated nervous system which was compromised early on. By the time someone reaches for help, the individual has spent a lifetime dealing with adaptive responses to the demands of life.

People say ‘get over it’, ‘stop dwelling in the past’  - but these realities stay present! They are and remain a physical reality! Imagine you had one leg removed as a child  - you still have only one left aged 30… “

The holistic approach to health is as old as mankind. It is Western skepticism linked to a stealthy nuts-and-bolts medical industry that prefers ‘proven facts’ to age old wisdom.

“With regards to mental / behavioural science we are still in the dark ages, but science is now starting to close the gap to health in the future."

"The main breakthrough came in the early ‘90s, when new technology made detailed multilayered brain and full-body scans possible, bringing groundbreaking scientific evidence, offering up possibilities for new holistic approaches based on anatomic facts.” Now we can start connecting the dots as science is proving what some of us knew all along…

“For me Stephen Porges the great polymath and godfather of the movement is my personal favourite. His book The Polyvagal Theory is one of the most important books of the last century,“ says Fry. 

International figures such as Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy), Bessel van der Kolk, Dan Siegel (Mindfulness), are leading the way…

Interestingly enough, they are all based in the United States.

By founding Khiron House Trauma Clinic, Benjamin Fry now brings the practises to the UK / Europe. Patients are offered personal avant-garde cocktail of speech therapies combined with body and touch approaches; nervous system regulation may include diverse practices such as cranio sacral- and equine therapy.

When domino 75 is lying in tatters, the source of the force is carefully tracked back all the way to the very first one that had once upon a time started the chain reaction.

However not only patients benefit  - workshops and seminars in London are open to (therapy) trade as well as general public. Speakers have included Bessel van der Kolk, Dan Siegel, Janina Fisher, Lisa Ferentz.

This May he will greet Allan Schore, pioneer in the field of neuropsychology, integrative trauma theory, and interpersonal biology (etc). In October, Dan Siegel will return to speak, and on goes the list.

“I have had the chance to see what is lying ahead, and my aim is to help speed up closing the gap between [the way we see] health now, and [we will in] the future.” explains Fry, whose eye-opening seminar programme make this knowledge accessible to a wider audience on this side of the Atlantic.

“Hope is the most important ingredient in any recovery …” according to Fry.

And hope, together with knowlegde, experience and the security of scientific proof is what he is so generously sharing. Something can be done and there is something we can do: find out for ourselves.

Information is power, hope heals. Straight from the source, new scientific findings are presented regularly right here on our doorstep in the middle of London. Not just for the 'in-crowd', but anyone who is clued-in enough to want to know. Hence, all of us.

Be curious, empower yourself. See you at the seminars — I loved to hear... Bethel Van der Kolk, Dan Siegel, Allan Schore...  I can't thank you enough for putting these on for us, Benjamin Fry!

Uscha Pohl

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Khiron House - Upcoming Seminars 2016-2017:

Richard Sherry Workshop  22nd-23rd October 2016
Dr Richard Sherry presents a new experiential workshop
Experiential Engagements with Healing Everything

                                
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