Designed2Move has been providing active rehabilitation to individuals, case managers, solicitors, insurers and employers since 2011. I have been going out there and doing what I love to do, helping and inspiring others to rediscover their potential and joy in life after injury or illness, and along the way improved my own health & well being and job satisfaction too.

In 2016 “I” has become “we” as I have been starting to build a team of talented professionals who have the same aspirations so we can provide our rehabilitation service to more people around the UK. Please go to the section of the website that most suits you – individual private clients, case managers (and solicitors and insurers) and employers and get in touch to find out how we can help you.

You are designed to move. It may not always feel like it, and you may not be altogether sure whether it is always good for you, but our bodies are incredible machines that thrive on movement. I have just been catching up on the first of the Royal Institution lectures – “Meet Your Brain”. This is the kind of science that makes me fascinated by the human being, the human body and the human mind and how they all interact together. When I headed out from University as a newly qualified physio, I thought I had learnt all I needed to start my career and do a good job. So, it was a bit of a shock to realise that really most of us graduates of any type of medical training have only just scratched the surface of understanding the human being, and basically are doing ok if we can stick to the adage of “do no harm”. If we can actually do some good and help someone then that was a bonus!

Many years on, I continue to learn more and more, and in fact the more I learn the more I realise there is to know and therefore the less I seem to really understand, and the more there seems to be to find out about! (I think it is called conscious incompetence, but, just to reassure you, I think I have a good dose of competence too now after all these years!) but one thing I always hear myself telling my clients is “Our bodies are designed to move” – hence the company name and the underlying philosophy behind what I am aiming to do. It is easy to get overwhelmed with all the information we are swamped with in this increasingly technological world (I am simultaneously downloading the Carnival of the Animals to my son’s new iPod – an amazing creative human endeavour), and in the field of physiotherapy people are always looking for that latest technique, the newest breakthrough treatment to get rid of pain or restore function.

With so many things though we are in danger of chucking the baby out with the bath water. Physiotherapy started out as being about being “a treatment discipline ancillary to medicine that uses physical methods such as active or passive exercises, gymnastics, weight lifting, heat treatment, massage, ultrasound … and hydrotherapy. Physiotherapists aim to restore the maximum possible degree of function to any disabled part of the body and are also much concerned the patient motivation” (Collins Dictionary of Medicine 1992 – when I started my training!). While many of us still use these techniques, we occasionally lose sight of the value of the simplicity of some of these approaches – the value of active exercise and just getting moving again is often forgotten.

So, when I tell my clients their bodies were designed to move, we know it is because one of our brain’s major functions is motor co-ordination of our nervous and muscular systems to enable us to literally move about and interact with other people, animals and our environment.

And why am I here and bothering to talk about it? Because for me, for a few years, day to day work led me to question why I do what I do, and why I wanted to be a physio in the first place. Not least I realised that almost daily I have been advising people to get moving more, take more exercise, especially to get out and walk because it is easy, accessible and cheap. I have been extolling the virtues and physical benefits of moving our bodies regularly, and the knock on positive effects on one’s mental well being. And then I wondered what happened to the active career I had hoped for when I started out, and pondered the irony of the advice I was doling out while spending increasing amounts of time sat behind a desk… Then I set about finding a new way to work to bring great physiotherapy to those who need it most.

Designed2Move is about getting back to the basics and doing it well.