Forget Me Not Holistic Healing Therapies

💜Choosing Your Therapist Matters

When you’re booking a complementary therapy treatment, it’s perfectly okay to ask about a therapist’s qualifications, insurance, and professional memberships.

As a client, you deserve to know that your therapist has:
💜Completed recognised training.
💜Studied anatomy and physiology to understand the body they’re working with.
💜Professional insurance to protect both you and them.
💜Membership of a recognised professional association, which helps ensure they work to professional standards and follow a code of ethics.

Whether you’re booking reflexology, massage, or any other holistic treatment, these things aren’t just certificates on a wall, they’re there to help keep you safe and ensure you receive the best possible care.

Our bodies are unique, and there are medical conditions, medications, injuries, and contraindications that need to be understood before treatment begins.

Please don’t ever feel awkward about asking a therapist about their qualifications or insurance. A professional therapist will be happy to answer your questions.

Your wellbeing should always come first. 💜

Professional training isn’t about collecting certificates… it’s about having the knowledge to recognise when treatment is appropriate, when it needs adapting, and when a client should be referred elsewhere.. Namaste 💜💜💜

Why Are Holistic Therapies Called “Alternative” When They Were Here First?

The term “alternative therapy” has always struck me as somewhat paradoxical. Many of the treatments grouped under this label today, such as reflexology, massage therapy, Reiki, herbal medicine, and other holistic practices have roots stretching back hundreds or even thousands of years. In some cases, they predate modern medicine by millennia. So why are they referred to as “alternative”?

The answer lies not in their age, but in the perspective from which they are viewed.

Modern Western medicine, often called conventional or allopathic medicine, developed rapidly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as scientific discoveries transformed healthcare. Advances in anatomy, microbiology, pharmacology, surgery, and diagnostic technology created a powerful evidence-based medical system that became the dominant model in many countries.

As this model became established, therapies that fell outside its framework were increasingly classified as “alternative.” The label did not mean these therapies were new; rather, it meant they were alternatives to the prevailing medical system.

Yet many holistic therapies have remarkably deep historical roots.

Massage therapy is one of the oldest healing practices known to humanity. Ancient records from China, India, Egypt, and Greece describe the therapeutic use of touch to relieve pain, improve circulation, and promote wellbeing. Long before the invention of modern pharmaceuticals, massage was a recognised method of supporting health and recovery.

Reflexology is based on the principle that specific points on the feet, hands, and ears correspond to different organs and systems of the body. While modern reflexology was developed in the twentieth century, its concepts are often linked to ancient healing traditions that viewed the body as an interconnected whole.

Reiki, although much more recent in its current form, emerged in Japan in the early twentieth century through the teachings of Mikao Usui. It is founded on the belief that a universal life energy flows through all living things and that practitioners can help restore balance by channeling this energy. While Reiki’s terminology is modern, its underlying concepts resonate with spiritual and energetic healing traditions found across many cultures.

What these therapies share is a holistic philosophy. Rather than focusing solely on symptoms or disease, they seek to address the whole person—body, mind, emotions, and, in some cases, spirit. This perspective contrasts with the reductionist approach that has often characterised conventional medicine, where specific diseases are diagnosed and treated through targeted interventions.

Today, the terminology is gradually changing. Many healthcare providers prefer the term “complementary therapy” rather than “alternative therapy” because these practices are increasingly used alongside conventional medical treatments rather than in place of them. Hospitals, hospices, wellness centres, and integrative health clinics around the world now incorporate therapies such as massage, meditation, acupuncture, and reflexology to support patient wellbeing.

Perhaps the real question is not whether holistic therapies are “alternative,” but alternative to what. From a historical perspective, many of these practices represent humanity’s earliest attempts to understand healing. They were not alternatives; they were the original modalities through which people sought comfort, balance, and health.

The label “alternative” tells us more about the dominance of modern medical systems than it does about the age, value, or significance of holistic therapies themselves.

5 Reasons to try Reflexology.. choose an AoR member https://www.aor.org.uk/custom/far-search/

Some grief does not receive recognition, even though the loss can feel profound.

Psychologists call this disenfranchised grief. It is grief that society as a whole and families or friends  do not fully acknowledge, validate or understand. The pain is real, but the mourner often feels they do not permission to grieve. 

This can happen with:

•⁠  ⁠the loss of a close friend who felt like family
•⁠  ⁠an ex partner or former lover
•⁠  ⁠infertility or pregnancy loss
•⁠  ⁠estrangement from a parent, sibling or child
•⁠  ⁠the loss of a pet
•⁠  ⁠caring for someone with dementia, where you lose them slowly over time
•⁠  ⁠the end of a relationship that mattered deeply
•⁠  ⁠a colleague, therapist, teacher or mentor who shaped your life
•⁠  ⁠grief after abortion
•⁠  ⁠someone you loved in secret

When grief goes unseen, people often minimise it themselves. They tell themselves they should not feel this upset. That others have it worse. That they need to move on quickly.

What helps is to recognise  that grief is shaped by attachment, not by titles or public approval. The depth of your pain reflects the depth of the love.

To legitimise it for yourself:

•⁠  ⁠name the loss honestly
•⁠  ⁠speak about the person or relationship
•⁠  ⁠allow rituals, memory and mourning
•⁠  ⁠resist comparing your grief to anyone else’s
•⁠  ⁠find people who can bear witness without judgement

Grief that is hidden often becomes heavier. 

Grief that is acknowledged and legitimised can be expressed and then becomes more bearable.

"Let leaves be your likes. Let birdsong be your playlist."

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