Jan Trewartha, founder and director of The Fascia Hub, the British Fascia Symposium, and Body in Harmony Training (focusing on light touch work, especially working with scars and adhesions) came to deliver a workshop for the ABMT 9th November 2024. Her knowledge is extensive and a powerful complement to the working knowledge of Biodynamic Massage. We have a lot to learn from her work and experience.


Jan has been in healthcare since 1979, originally training as a State Registered Nurse in the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC), working at grass roots level with patients on the wards and spending time in the operating theatre; a superb if non-deliberate foundation for her future career.  
 
In 1988 Jan took time out to go travelling for three years, where her life was to dramatically change direction. Trained by a blind massage therapist to really ‘feel’ the body led to a lifetime passion for body work.  Her work now is the culmination of many years of training and experience in different disciplines. She has been in practice since 1992 where her clients have been willing guinea pigs in her ongoing development of light touch therapy work.  
 
Jan has been teaching since 1993, and in 2014 became the first accredited UK teacher in Sharon Wheeler’s ScarWork. Having had surgery in Great Ormond St. Hospital as a young child, resulting in major scarring, Jan experienced great relief and lightness after being treated by Sharon Wheeler; this has given her an awareness of the effect of adhesions and empathy with her clients. 
 
Apart from a missionary zeal for spreading the word about the effects of scarring on the body, Jan’s passions are for travelling and for anything that gets her outdoors and moving.

​Jan's book is available here: uk.singingdragon.com/collections/author-jan-trewartha-pid-300246
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Find out more about training with Jan for "Sharon Wheeler's ScarWork", "Fascial Unwinding and Energy Awareness", and "Specialist training working with abdominal and pelvic scars" here: www.bodyinharmony.org.uk

And Jan's Fascia Hub can be found here: https://thefasciahub.com/

​By Ruthie Baigent, 22nd November 2024

Patrick Casement, psychoanalyst and author of several books and numerous papers on clinical technique, most famously: On Learning from the Patient.

In The Emperor's New Clothes, Patrick Casement discusses power dynamics in psychoanalytic training that can patronise, pathologise and, ultimately, even dismiss students. Psychoanalytical theory is capable not only of drawing into the light, but also of eclipsing the reality of the person in its projection. What Casement describes in terms of group dynamics and narcissistic projection are issues that are common to all institutional trainings -- including schools (for children) -- and, potentially, in all relationships, so we can all learn something from his article, whether we are working with clients, students, children, or simply being with each other in daily life. 

​​Casement says, “…projection comes into play in the services of narcissism…”. If we are unguarded and unaware we risk walking in illusion and not seeing or giving space to the reality outside of ourselves and our “group”, be that a psychoanalytic society, training committee, or, I would add, staff-room friendship group, or beyond. It is the power dynamics of exclusion, of fascism (as I have written about elsewhere), to which we are all prey since it is an easy place for us to go to in our (unwitting, secondary personality) narcissism and insecurity. Casement shows how this is possible, and even normal, when we are inattentive.