Traditional bodywork therapies have been fundamental to my own, my family's, and my patients' health and healing

I and my work have been profoundly influenced by bodywork therapists

In my personal life, I've benefited from various kinds of bodywork from when I was a young woman. I've sort help for my own fascial and musculoskeletal vulnerabilities from osteopaths, practitioners of Alexander Technique and Feldenkreis, and over the past 15 years, from an extraordinary physiotherapist who is also trained in the Vojte method (an Eastern European modality fundamentally concerned with reflex locomotion and patterns of movement, now more widely adapted as dynamic neuromuscular stabilisation in interventions for cerebral palsy) and osteopathy.

I've also been interested, professionally, in various forms of somatic therapy for trauma.

It's true to say that my life has been profoundly and positively shaped by my kind and caring bodywork therapists, who've help me learn more aligned movement patterns which better protect my muscles, joints, and spine. My bodywork therapists have understand that movement and fascial dysfunction in one part of the body affects movement in other parts of the body. They've understand the mind-body-spirit connection, which has been important to me. Throughout my life, I've explored what made sense in my own body - or sometimes, for the body of my child. I've always known that this is an area of health in which our Complementary and Alternative Medicine Therapists were leading the way clinically - but that the evidence-base was sparse.

I visited a bodywork therapist for a couple of years in the mid-1980s as a freshly qualified doctor enduring internship in a busy metropolitan hospital. At that time, the concept of bodywork therapy was fringe. I had staggered out of adolescence into young adulthood as a doctor with significant life-skill gaps, beset by self-doubt. Maybe this is the nature of young adulthood for many of us. I was very grateful to find myself in the hands of a kind, large-bodied, white-haired body therapist.

To be honest, I think the ingredient that brought me most healing was simply that she cared about me. But she offered her own quirky blend of healing massage, breath work, energy medicine, and various psychotherapeutic techniques. She was proud of her overseas qualification in bodywork from some natural therapy college, though I was skeptical.

But this kind woman had the most intelligent, sensitive, respectful touch I've ever experienced in a bodywork therapist (and I've since had hundreds of therapeutic massages - another kind of bodywork). In those years I also occasionally saw a registered psychologist who integrated bodywork - sound and movement - into her practice.

I have referred my patients to osteopaths all my professional life, before osteopathy was mainstreamed

I left the hospital and after two years in indigenous health, opened a small general practice in West End, Brisbane, where I referred patients with musculoskeletal problems to a very competent local osteopath. (I fretted that the repetitive manipulations of chiropractic created joint micro-trauma without empowering the patient to address their own dysfunctional movement patterns, and for this reason I still don't refer adult patients to chiropractors.)

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, I continued to refer to osteopaths rather than to physiotherapists, since I found that the osteopaths achieved better outcomes with my patients. throughout the whole of my professional life as a GP, I despaired that many patients with back and neck pain (even as they saw physiotherapists) were developing narcotic dependence when I believed they would respond well to osteopathic treatments for postural malalignment and functional compromise. I despaired that many patients endured chronic headaches and migraines also as a result of postural malalignment and functional compromise but were often heavily medicated, convinced by the medicalized paradigm that they had no control over their symptoms.

I've used a range of bodywork therapy modalities for my own healing and health

By the 2010s physiotherapists were adopting techniques more aligned with bodywork, but prior to that I preferred bodyworkers for treatment of my loved ones when they were facing musculoskeletal challenges. I cherished Ruthy Alon's book about Feldenkreis for many years, though I've discarded it now. I even took my long-suffering mother to a Feldenkreis therapist once, though with little benefit. I referred an elderly cousin to a Bowen therapist, who said it changed her life. I saw an Alexander Therapist a few times myself, though I found that lady's understanding of the body's complexities rather dated.

"That is definitely not normal," the Alexander Therapist declared, pointing at my chest. (I looked down at my poor accused rib-cage in astonishment. My thoracic and lumbar spine display the signs of mild scoliosis and postural dysfunctions, with a modest accompanying torticollis and a very mild plagiocephaly. You could say, I suppose, that I am not normal - except I would propose that to call my body's musculoskeletal vulnerabilities abnormal lacks perspective.

I would expect that these structural changes were set in place in the earliest months of my life (if I didn't already have a genetic predisposition), and it's true that they impact subtly upon the appearance of my ribs, but I am able-bodied, pain-free, and my rib-cage is definitely normal, if not quite perfect in symmetry!

In the mid-2000s my daughter started to suffer chronic headaches from computer use in high school, and a local physiotherapist hadn't been able to help. I met a remarkable physiotherapist in a community choir, who told me she'd spent years dissecting and teaching in the anatomy department at The University of Queensland, and even more years visiting Prague regularly to learn Vojta Technique. This physiotherapist offered an interesting blend of Vojta Therapy, osteopathy, and conventional physiotherapy. She had a formidable knowledge of functional anatomy and the importance of activating the primitive or neonatal reflexes to heal movement patterns in an adult body. My daughter's headaches faded with the physiotherapists sensitive manual therapy and re-setting of neural pathways of posture and function.

My son, now a professional volleyballer but back then a passionate teenage athlete, began to see this physiotherapists' partner, a sports physiotherapist who has worked using the same techniques with various Olympic teams. My son deeply internalized this work with his body's primitive neurological reflexes, and still does the exercises he started as an adolescent every day, the 'ball bounce', the 'buddha belly', the 'dog pee', the 'cockroach', the 'sphinx' …. He lists them for me affectionately in a text from Europe.

When my own underlying postural dysfunctions flared into chronic headaches with computer overuse both in the clinic and for my research in the late 2000's, I began to see this same physiotherapist too, and visited regularly over a period of years. I often hear her voice or feel her hands working sensitively, confidently, with my body and breath as I move - powerful healing somatic memories. I've done a little yoga over the years, too, although I've not found yoga sensitive to the tissue limitations of my own brave but imperfect, even wounded, musculoskeletal system. I love it when a massage therapist incorporates some reflexology. I've participated in classes in Tai Chi and Qigong at various times in my life.

I have also been deeply influenced by mindful movement practices and feminist philosophies of embodiment

The bodywork practice which has brought me the most joy, friendship and fitness since 2009 is known as NIA. NIA is a contemporary dance and movement practice which celebrates 'the body's way', 'dancing for joy', a social and inspiring body-mind practice. NIA is where I practice mindful movement and postural alignment, hour by hour, week by week, simply by dancing with friends. Be a sensation scientist, the teachers say to us, listen to your body, feel inside your postural alignment, feel your skeleton, feel your tissues, feel your joy. Your body's way. Mindful movement. Joyful movement. Long ago, I borrowed the concept of micromovements for my breastfeeding work from my NIA teachers.

I've also been deeply influenced by feminist theories of embodiment - female philosophers preoccupied with the way women have learnt to disembody from our sensations and our experience. I have adored the work of the French feminist philosophers, Helena Cixous, Lucy Irigary, and Julia Kristeva.

Bodywork is embedded in my body awareness and I try to move consciously. I consider mindful movement an elemental kind of connection to the present. I mention all of this only to let you know that my work with breastfeeding is deeply informed by my personal and professional experiences with a wide range of bodywork practices. Bodywork is at the heart of my physical, professional, and emotional life. I am deeply interested in mechanical pressures and bodily function and structure, the interaction between fascia, muscle, tendon, ligament and bone. I have worked for years with what I call evolutionary bodywork as a baby breastfeeds for her mother's body. Out of this, I developed the gestalt method of fit and hold, for healing when problems arise. Bodywork is at the heart of Possums Breastfeeding and Lactation.

In the same way that my own profession has failed, in my life-time, to priories the clinical support of breastfeeding, we have failed to understand that musculoskeletal dysfunction, with associated neural patterns of movement, cause pain and suffering, and are amenable to skilled bodywork rather than pharmaceuticals. I watched this begin to change in the 2000s, as the osteopaths brought in from the United States quietly upskilled the new breed of Australian musculoskeletal physicians. But we still have a long way to go.