The Fibromyalgia Project

"What started as a self funded curiosity project in 2016 has turned into an ongoing quest to help people with Fibromyalgia. 

Mainstream science was showing FMS was a result of an over loaded and highly sensitised nervous system and the emerging science of Functional Neurology was proving uniquely capable of  managing this complex issue. 

We now see many people with Fibromyalgia to help settle their nervous system and improve their daily energy."

Chris Newton.

How Can We Help Your Fibromyalgia?

First a Little Background

Fibromyalgia pain and/or exhaustion seems to flare to the most minimal of everyday things. Doing the laundry, driving a car and going food shopping are all everyday tasks and FMS classic triggers.

These activities, however, may not trigger you at all some days. Why is that? Why is there no pattern? If there was a pattern you could make adjustments for it and reduce your flare ups... right? So rather than working on pain, which is notoriously hard to change in all people (Fibromyalgia or not), I decided instead to look at helping people improve their daily energy resources. 

Why help people with their energy resource?

Well the up and down rollercoaster ride of Fibromyalgia flare ups may be less of an issue of pain and more of an issue of "resource". Ask yourself this: On days that you wake with more energy, do you have less flare ups and  live a more active life (that day!)? Whilst on days when you have less energy, is the opposite is true? So rather than focus on pain, why not focus on building up and evening out your resources so that more days are "Good" days? 

Now I completely see your argument that energy is low because pain is flared up. And for years this was my view too. Until I realised the bigger picture. Think of it this way...

What has every medical practitioner and therapist focussed on with you to date, and had minimal impact/results from doing so? My guess is they focussed all their efforts on "Your Pain". I can say that because no client with FMS has every told me otherwise. And as they say... the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If we can learn anything from your experience it might be this - "Treating your pain, isn't significantly going to change; your pain". So if the one thing we know for sure is that addressing your pain is unlikely to work, then we shouldn't expect otherwise. Let's instead try something new. Let's build your daily energy. 

That's what we aim to do with our work here. 

How We Can Help?

There are two methods we currently use to help people with Fibromyalgia that can result in longterm improvements. These are: Functional Neurology and Education/Coaching.

Functional Neurology aims to help the nervous system desensitise by helping it become more reflexively organised. A disorganised nervous system, one that over-reacts to minor stimulus, tends to leave muscles in a permanent state of alertness, as if they never have a chance to fully switch off. This is a massive drain on your daily energy reserves. Through non-invasive testing and treatment of these muscle reflexes we can help to reorganise and relieve this tense state and increase energy as a byproduct. 

Just imagine how much less energy you'd be burning up if your muscles didn't feel tense and exhausted all day, every day. That's the aim of this part of our work. 

Education/Coaching is useful to help you see order within the chaos that is Fibromyalgia. Very often, a simple conversation about how things truly work in the body can hold the key to a change in your health. 

You may have experienced medical practitioners and therapists blaming every new pain you develop on your Fibro, but this is pure laziness on their part. Pain is essentially a conversation that your unconscious mind is having with your conscious mind. Every sensation has meaning and not all pain "means" the same thing. Much of pain is a byproduct of the inactivity-overactivity cycle that people get into when their energy fluctuates (whether they have fibro or not). Learning about this can have dramatic effects on physical and mental heath. So we dedicate much of our time to helping your learn the language of your symptoms to help demystify what's going on for you. 

We draw much of our education from our training with the leading pain education researchers at Explain Pain and help you understand your symptoms of pain and/or exhaustion with simple and accessible resources, coaching and advice. 

Why Choose Muscle Therapies?

You don't often find people, like Chris, who are so devoted to understanding persistent pain. Chris self funded over 100 treatments just to broaden his knowledge and test his what he was learning about FMS, which has given him an insight like few others - Some of those original patients are pictured in the header image above.

For over a decade he has been a senior tutor for the UK's leading sports massage school - NLSSM School of Soft Tissue Therapy, where he still helps to develop the curriculum and the careers of newly qualified therapists.

Chris is regularly asked to present at national conferences, educating his peers on his favourite subject; the management of Fibromyalgia and other chronic pain syndromes.

Muscle Therapies offers a Free Initial Assessment for anyone with FMS, so please feel free to book one for yourself today...

Pricing: £75 per appointment