About me
I’ve been fascinated by the human body; how it moves, how it feels, what damages and repairs it, how it heals, what creates and sustains well-being, for as long as I can remember, and this fascination and thirst for knowledge has continually expanded. I’ve always considered the body as an holistic system; the parts cannot be separated from the whole, each system of the body affects and relies on the health of the other. I began training in holistic therapies in 1998, and sports therapy soon after. I was fortunate enough to be one of the last few sports therapists to be trained by Gareth Davies, an incredible therapist who greatly encouraged us to develop our own intuition as well as technique, and to focus on the whole person, not just the injury. He confidently recommended me to my first clinic and clients (some of whom I’m still fortunate enough to have on my books today!)
Over the years my practice has evolved with regular continued professional development in many specific areas of sports and remedial therapy, coupled with my insatiable appetite for reading, learning, researching and practising.
In 2018 I began training to become a somatic movement teacher with Tanya Fitzpatrick @Alignsomatics, after discovering and practicing the method on a blissful yoga retreat in Italy (Somatics is a method of lasting pain relief, see my Somatics page for more information, you’ll be glad you did!) I experienced amazing benefits (better posture, better movement and muscular pain relief being just a few) and knew I’d found something special I had to train in. I qualified as a level 3 somatic movement teacher in 2022. Somatics has offered me a way to enable clients to treat their own pain, offering a lasting solution to chronic issues.
With over 25 years experience, and an integrated skill-set of movement and bodywork, I treat each individual holistically, which means that I incorporate all that I’ve learned and experienced into prescribing a tailored treatment for that particular person.
Samantha Coe; I.H.B.C; I.I.H.H.T; I.T.E.C; I.I.S.T
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
- Albert Einstein
My Journey
Through being in professional practice for over 20 years, the issue I see at the physical root cause of most aches, pains and soft tissue problems is a lack of or restriction of mobility.
What exactly is mobility? We often think of mobility as simply our ability to move, or perhaps how flexible we are. If we think a little deeper we might say that it’s our ability to move our joints well, or how agile and active we are, or our ability to function well enough in our everyday lives. These explanations are not wrong, just incomplete.
Mobility is the capacity of a joint to move through its full range of motion freely and with control. Mobility is affected by strength, flexibility, soft tissues (tendons, ligaments, fascia, nerves), joint capsules, musculoskeletal abnormalities, injuries, posture, disease, age, mental/emotional issues, motor control and, in fact, many more factors concerning our lifestyle and environment . Mobility is somewhat of an umbrella term encompassing all of these other factors.
Most of the people I treat are not athletes, they may train in the gym or play sports, but the majority of their time is spent at work and home. Consequently, I find my focus is not on mobility strength training (although this is crucial for athletes and serious sports enthusiasts), I am interested rather, in improving mobility to ease pain and discomfort, broadening people’s ability to move freely in their everyday lives and aiding longevity of life. Enhancing the longevity of our lives to keep healthy for as long as possible includes maintaining correct posture and musculoskeletal control of our bodies. Check out ‘the myth of aging’ for some enlightening thought on this!
During my younger years I tried and enjoyed many dynamic sports and activities, remaining largely injury free. I religiously warmed up, kept good form whilst training, cooled down, stretched, saw a sport’s therapist regularly and discovered yoga, which increased my flexibility and introduced me to conscious relaxation. Then in my 30’s, I was suddenly struck with sciatic pain. The pain shot through my right hip, buttock and leg leaving a continuous deep, dull ache. I was constantly uncomfortable and the symptoms switched from the right side to the left and back again several times.
I was confused, I was relatively healthy and I thought I’d been doing everything right! What had happened to cause these symptoms? I began to read as much as I could about pain and movement, this lead me to trying many different therapies and movement practices, to name a few; Tai Chi, Qi gong, pilates, too many styles of yoga to mention, the Feldenkrais method, chiropractic, osteopathy, reiki, McTimmoney chiropractic, physiotherapy, the Bowen technique, myofascial release, auricular acupuncture, Thai yoga massage and shiatsu. After 18 months my sciatic pain had gone, I have no idea why because I tried so many things, but although I gleaned much information and valuable experience from all of these methods, and some I continue with today, the one that clearly stood out to me was the Feldenkrais method. It was the one I’d had least experience of, but those experiences were different somehow; slow, subtle, mindful movements creating a big freedom of joint movement.
As the pain faded however, my usual, familiar patterns of work, exercise and rest returned and I didn’t give Feldenkrais another thought. Then, as I approached my 40s, I found that my focus concerning self-care was now much more about keeping my body as pain free and mobile as possible. The contemplation of one’s own mortality is an invigorating thing! So, how to do this? From further research into Feldenkrais, I came across the work of Thomas Hanna PhD and discovered the world of Somatics. This was a massive ‘lightbulb’ moment for me; Somatics answered so many questions I’d had unanswered for many years and led on to much research about how our brain moves our body, and how we can actually change bodily dysfunctions, instead of just relieving them for a period of time. Further research has led me to the pioneering work of Noelle Perez, Jean Couch and Kathleen Porter, who have observed and tested their butts off looking into natural postural alignment...it’s not what we thought it was folks! Now with the advent of an unprecedented massive clinical interest and research effort into the properties and actions of fascial tissue, the world of manual therapies, neurological function and movement are quickly merging as fast as new findings on these subjects are emerging.
Research into the human body remains my great passion and focus; discovering more about how working with Somatics, functional movement and the fascial and connective tissue system can help my clients at home and in my practice is very exciting! New research into how we function and what we can do to optimise our health and longevity is being generated at an amazing speed. We have to adapt our current thinking, and we therapists must adapt how we work, to allow for these new discoveries so that our friends, clients and we ourselves get the most out of these wonderful vessels, previously considered a compartmentalised machine, we call the body.
I am a registered member and insured with the Federation of Holistic Therapists.
