Private Health Rebates are BACK!!!

Private Health Insurance Review 2024 Report

Next Steps Explained

The Department of Health has released its recommendations from the Natural Therapies Review Report 2024.  In the report seven of the 16 therapies which had their rebates removed will have them reinstated, if the Federal Government follows the advice. 

The seven modalities recommended for re-inclusion for private health insurance benefits are:

• Yoga

• Naturopathy

• Shiatsu

• Pilates

• Tai Chi

• Alexander Technique

• Western Herbal Medicine

This is a vital step forward in obtaining Private Health Rebates for our members. 

The list of Therapies NOT recommended to be eligible for private health insurance benefits include Kinesiology, Homeopathy, Bowen Therapy, Feldenkrais, Aromatherapy, Buteyko, Iridology, Reflexology & Rolfing.

This is a significant win for Shiatsu as an effective and suitable modality which can be used in conjunction with mainstream health management techniques and it is an acknowledgment of the effectiveness of Shiatsu to treat general health conditions.  

(Note:  the overseeing panel which reviewed the evidence did not contain a specifically shiatsu-educated expert to advise on shiatsu and oriental medicine evidence. Nor did the committee consider evidence provided under the category of ‘acupressure’ which is what our submission requested. This indicates that the advisory committee was able to see the clear benefit Shiatsu provides in treating western-diagnosed health conditions.) As a result of STAA’s clearly presented evidence, Professor Michael Kidd has recommended Shiatsu’s reinstatement to the Private Health Insurance benefits.

There is one more step before you can begin advertising or offering Private Health Rebates to your shiatsu clients in clinic.  These recommendations need to be formally accepted by the Health Minister and the previous bill which removed the seven modalities needs to be amended.   As you are aware we are facing a federal election and the government is in caretaker mode meaning no new legislation or changes/amendments can be made until the new government is sworn in.

What you can do now to be ready…

These next weeks can enable us to be ready to welcome new and past clients who wish to claim for their shiatsu treatment:

• Renew your STAA Membership if you haven’t already done so.

• Ensure your First Aid and CPR are up to date and copies uploaded to your member profile using the Wild Apricot App or emailing toenquiries@staa.org.au.

• Ensure you have logged 20 hours CPE and have evidence to show this should you be audited

• Write a letter to your local members and current Health Minister - Hon Mark Butler MP requesting that these recommendations be accepted promptly and the amendments to the Private Health Insurance Benefits Bill be actualised as a priority.

STAA is on the front foot and will continue to apply pressure to action the recommendations outlined in the 2024 Report.  We will step our members, current and past, through the process so that you can offer private health rebates in your clinic to your clients as soon as these recommendations are enacted.

Be Well,

Belinda McIntosh

Acting President

STAA.

Oncology Massage available in Cygnet and Kingston!

We are very excited and proud to announce Tiziana will be offering Oncology Massage and Reflexology in Kingston (Mondays) and Cygnet (Sundays) once a month.

Osteopic is an established Osteopathy clinic in Kingston who will be welcoming Tiziana; The Healing Space in Cygnet is now your southern access point for Tiziana’s wonderful therapies.

She can’t wait to see you!

Yoga Therapy with Clare

Our peaceful levels have gone up now that Clare Sullivan is back in residence at Body Stillness.

Clare offers one on one yoga therapy every Wednesday.

Bring your questions, worries, health concerns; or perhaps a home practice that has become stagnant and is no longer providing exactly the right amount of health benefit that you need and want.

Clare approaches your body as a unique, potentially functional whole system that is dynamic and responsive to a gentle, focused input of a series of movements, postures and restorative sequencing within her yogic training, that will increase a sense of balance, strength, release and positivity.

Yoga and the Senses with Clare.

Yoga and the Senses with Clare Sullivan

Focussing in on our senses can help us stay grounded and calm.
In Clare’s classes and one-on-one sessions, there is a focus on each sense:

Taste - what I am eating?

Sound - what I am listening to?

Smell - what I am smelling?

Touch - how am I moving?

Sight - what I am reading?

"Release" by Danna Faulds

"I lay myself down on the welcoming ground,
the earth's spine becoming mine.
Peace seeps into heavy limbs and slows my heartbeat to the pace of nature.
I take refuge in the quiet,
and let my burdens go,
one by one,
until the earth and I both float in the same vast and holy silence."

Tiziana is extending her availability

From January, 2023, you will be able to book appointments with Tiziana on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday for 60 and 90 minute appointments.
Some Saturdays are available on request.

Tiziana’s treatments include reflexology, lymphatic drainage (reflexology), oncology massage, gentle remedial and scar tissue release therapy.

Gift vouchers are available by contacting Tiziana on 0484 34 9902 or email: tiziana@reflexionshobart.com.au

The Heart of Shiatsu

by Jane Pollard

Something that is often neglected in Shiatsu is the long tradition of working on the core energy of a person via the chest and “hara”, the abdomen. This work is called Ampuku. The “hara”, in Japanese culture, is so much more than just an area of the body, it is the heart, the spirit, the very essence of a person and of their culture.
This is Shiatsu at its most profound.

I have always used some Ampuku in my practice, but I have been very excited to discover over the last couple of years a translation of two classic Japanese texts on the subject from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A Shiatsu colleague in Fukuoka, in Japan, has republished these with the original elegant woodblock illustrations. With the help of his texts and his online course and demonstrations, I have been able to study the subject in much greater depth than ever and to expand the possibilities of this beautiful, affective (to do with the emotions) and effective work. It is wonderful to be able to make these available to the people I work with.

As my Qigong Grandmaster Yang Meijun said: “Yige Xin” or “One single Heart”.

Price Rise

Some of the Body Stillness’ therapists will be applying a $5 price rise from January 1st, 2023.

Love from Lilly, Tiziana, Jane, Clare and Calista.

Yoga Therapy || Building Better Bones Yoga course || Nutrition

Welcoming Clare Sullivan!

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Yoga Therapy

A one-on-one personalised therapy session designed to meet the specific needs of your health journey.

A Yoga Therapy session may include:
– gentle movement for strengthening, balance and flexibility
– mudra, mantra practices, meditation and relaxation
– breath work for calming the nervous system
– mindful eating

While not offering a cure, Yoga Therapy can be beneficial for a wide range of illnesses and chronic conditions such as: Parkinson's Disease; Multiple Sclerosis; Cancer; Anxiety and Depression; Eating and Food issues; Osteoporosis and Osteopenia.

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Building Better Bones:
a 6 week yoga course

A Natural Approach for Osteoporosis and Osteopenia, incorporating Yoga, Nutrition and Lifestyle; a 6 week course designed to help prevent bone loss and restore bone density.

No yoga experience is required. All you need to bring is enthusiasm for learning.

Course Content:

Yoga - Safe exercise based on scientific knowledge and age old yoga principles. After 6 weeks you will have a short practice that you can continue at home.

Nutrition - Food information to enable you to make small, significant changes to the nutrition of what you eat, optimising the intake and absorption of nutrients that support bone development.

Lifestyle - Sleep, relaxation and other lifestyle factors are often the missing pieces of the bone density puzzle. Clare will explain the underlying mechanisms of how poor sleep, stress and anxiety effect bone metabolism.

– Limited numbers, high level of individual attention
– one-on-one sessions available in parallel to the course

Free 1-hour introduction to BBB course (bring a sister or friend!)
Weds 1st June - 6:00 pm
Sat 4th June - 9:30am

Courses start:
2pm, Friday 19th August- 23rd September

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Nutrition with Clare

Find a comfortable relationship with food that is sustainable, enjoyable and not “rule-based”. Clare will support you with kindness and compassion to explore new approaches as you navigate the food changes you are looking for.

Clare has trained and worked as a dietitian implementing mindful and intuitive eating and cognitive behaviour practices. Clare helps you reclaim the enjoyment of food, improve your digestion and as a consequence, your overall health.

She is available for one-on-one sessions every Wednesday and Saturday at Body Stillness.

FREE 30 minute phone consultation with Clare.
For all new Yoga Therapy and Nutrition clients.

Contact:

0478035415
clare@foodandbody.com.au

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Tiziana's first Reflexology

The first time I received a foot reflexology treatment, I was sitting by a pool in Thailand.  I hated it!  Lots of fast, deep movements made it painful. I didn’t know I was experiencing a method of reflexology commonly practiced in Asia, but not Australia. 

When I stopped limping, I did feel energised, but it would be another 15 years before I tried it again! What a difference.  In the hands of an Ingham method reflexologist, I went to another world, blissful and calm. I felt deeply relaxed and my mind and body detoxed over the next few days.  My spirit felt uplifted and I floated for days. I knew straight away I wanted to be a reflexologist and that this was my new calling. 

 It took another dozen years to change the course of my life, walking away from a corporate career aged 50 to begin studies to become a therapist.  Now I am doing what I love best; offering gentle, healing treatments to help body and soul uplift.

Tiziana is available Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and some Saturdays.

www.reflexionshobart.com.au

Deb's first Feminine Embodiment Coaching experience

My First Experience of Feminine Embodiment Coaching.

When I received my first Feminine Embodiment Coaching, I really didn’t know what to expect. I was intrigued by the idea that I could release old unresolved issues from my system by focusing on my body and allowing my body to lead. 

The Feminine Embodiment Coaching session began with a deeply relaxing exercise to drop into my body. By the end of this process I felt unbelievably relaxed and calm. I felt connected and truly safe in my body. It was a weird sensation. I hadn’t realised how unsafe I had felt and how all up in my head I’d been.

Then the Feminine Embodiment Coach asked me about a recent issue. I had come expecting to target my past, and the hurt I had suffered many years ago. Instead, we discussed this recent issue and how I wanted to feel differently about it by the end of the session.  

The Feminine Embodiment Coach guided me to keep the recent issue fresh and encouraged me to feel, sense or see what I was experiencing in my body and observe how my body responded to this recent issue.

My body was tingling with feelings and sensations! I could feel all of the little knots, all the constriction in my muscles, all the tension this particular recent issue had caused in my body. Amazing!

These feelings and sensations were not tied to any specific flashbacks or memories. Instead, I saw a word picture, an image in my mind’s eye, to help me unpack what I was experiencing. 

It started with a castle. I had tentatively let down the drawbridge but I was cautious to enter. What if it was a trap? What if there was something lurking inside? 

The Feminine Embodiment Coach kept encouraging me to return to the feelings and sensations, dropping back into my body. I drew my attention to the tension in my body and it shifted, dissolved, drawing my attention into deeper pain, older wounds.

My body felt these shifts, and wanted to move. I yawned and coughed, opening my throat, my fingers closing into a fist to express all the trapped anger and frustration. Tears rolled down my face. 

My body knew exactly what to do. All I had to do was listen to my body and allow it to make any movements or sounds it needed to explore these unresolved little knots of tension. I just had to feel it to welcome all the feelings and sensations. I resisted the urge to push it down and hide from the pain.

The Feminine Embodiment Coach invited me to explore the next layer of feeling...and the next layer, and the next. I could feel all the pain and suffering I'd experienced many years ago. 

Only, this time I didn't need to relive it or go back through it in my mind. I just needed to feel it and allow my body to move or give sound to it. The layers began to dissolve. The feelings and sensations kept shifting, changing, as if my body knew exactly what to do.

I grew more confident and in my mind's eye I saw my castle with its drawbridge down, only now I was willing to enter through the great arched castle entrance. To my surprise I didn’t enter a castle at all, but a fortress. I entered into an inner courtyard protected by the great stone walls. 

 This image opened more feelings and sensations in my body. This time it felt like an opening, an expansion into some part of me that had felt closed and scared. My body was alive with a tingling rush of sensations. Riding these tingles, the Feminine Embodiment Coach encouraged me to expand my capacity to feel this too, to welcome this in too. 

 By the end of my first Feminine Embodiment Coaching session, I imagined myself standing with my arms stretched up, legs apart greeting the earth and the expanse of blue sky. The fortress walls had receded, expanding my inner courtyard to an enormous stadium sized space. 

I felt free! Liberated! Protected by the great walls surrounding me, giving me clear boundaries without cramping my style. 

But that was just my first Feminine Embodiment Coaching session. Each session is different. A Feminine Embodiment Coaching session might be all feelings and sensations in your body. Or it might be all memories and flashbacks. Or it might be a mixture all of these things in different sessions.

None of what arises needs to make any sense. It doesn't need to be logical and we don't need to analyse our felt senses. It's simply following the wisdom of the body as it arises.

What's important is that you just observe without a need to “do” anything about these feelings or sensations. You just acknowledge how you feel. 

All of it is deeply healing. It feels like coming home to your body’s inner knowing you always knew you had!

Feldenkrais one-on-one

We warmly welcome Nicole Harstead to the Body Stillness group!

Nicole is a qualified Feldenkrais practitioner offering class and one-on-one Feldemoves sessions. Nicole believes that acceptance and being kind to yourself combined with the ability to observe what is happening in your mind and body is crucial for positive change.

Experiencing life happens through our body as much as our mind. If we are in a relaxed state during a guided meditation, we don’t just think “I am relaxed”, it can be felt throughout our whole body. 

When Nicole was younger she experienced some trauma, and it wasn’t until studying Dance and Movement that Nicole realised she had come back into her body. Getting to know her body again was a very nurturing feeling, like coming home.

There is no limit to how much awareness we can bring to our Mindbody experience. The richness of our embodied life is connected to the richness of our life.

Being present in our bodies, feeling grounded and balanced are all facets of the lived experience. There is so much to explore within ourselves, and as we do our connection to the world changes also.

Nicole believes its time to claim your space, really be here in your body and be authentically you. There are always better options for being here. Are you going to settle, or welcome these positive changes into your life?

Nicole Harstead is a Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner with Graduate Diploma in Movement and Dance. She has also completed a Bachelor of Teaching and Bachelor of Arts.

Feldenkrais is a universal method for learning new ways of moving, sensing, feeling, posture and breathing; and the exciting part is, these new connections made in the body are also made in the brain. This masterfully designed method harnesses the neuroplasticity of the brain to bring about positive improvements for individuals to improve their quality of life.

The method was created by Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1950’s and has two parts:
Functional integration ® hands-on sessions with a Feldenkrais Practitioner usually done lying on a table and, Awareness through Movement ® group mat classes where your teacher verbally guides you to explore various movements, ranging from basic to larger whole body movements .

Feldenkrais is for everyone

The Feldenkrais Method can help:

• refine alignment and improve skeletal and muscle use

• move beyond inefficient, repetitive patterns of moving and decrease pain

• sense subtle movement distinctions and improve performance

• enhance creativity and curiosity in your life

• recovery of whole body function after periods of injury

Book in any Tuesday or Wednesday with Nicole to see how it works for yourself!

Reflexology Association of Australia is presenting Lilly Harris

https://reflexology.org.au/tasbranch-info

Spring newsletter: Ange Vincent and Price Rise

Body Stillness Health Group News

– Post 2020 price rise
– Practitioner profile - Ange Vincent
 

Post-2020 road to recovery

As you may know, when the corona virus arrived in Tasmania, we had to close our doors for two months. When we joyfully reopened, our gift to you was to offer reduced sessions by $10- our way of supporting our community and the Tasmanian economy.

We now need to begin to financially recover from such a tough year, so we will be having a small price rise.

• $5 price rise

• Applicable to all Body Stillness therapies

• Commencing January 1st, 2021.

Book your next session before January 1st to take advantage of our 2020 price.

www.bodystillness.com.au/book-now/

Ange Vincent and Clinical Hypnotherapy.

Ange of Natural State Hypnosis provides a unique and personalised hypnotherapy program to support you to remember your strength and tenacity and your ability to move into your optimal body, mind and spiritual wellbeing.

With a background as a registered nurse, Ange's understanding of the nervous system under stress helps encourage you to practice Hypnotherapy-focused mindfulness habits. These new habits can help relieve anxiety or negative experiences that have gotten in the way of how you want to live.

Ange's techniques target weight loss, quitting smoking, body image issues and poor eating choices; as well as understanding how these unwanted habits and behaviours can lead to compounded health issues such as insomnia. 

Ange has a strong working relationship with allied health teams, including GP's.

Natural State Hypnosis can provide you with refreshing new ways to manage your health proactively, which may include gut-directed hypnotherapy and motivation through self-hypnosis and mindfulness techniques.

Look forward to your body moving in new and positive ways!

Ange is now available Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Limited appointments available.

Gerry has a new job!

Great news for Gerry, he has just been offered a massage teaching job. Unfortunately this means we will be seeing him less frequently.

Gerry is still available for Massage and Ortho-Bionomy treatments on request.

He is regularly available at his Hobart Mixed Martial Arts gym in Montagu Bay.

Invitation to our REOPENING

You are invited to our REOPENING in our NEW LOCATION:

5pm, Friday June 19th.

RSVP’s are essential as we can only allow 20 people at a time;
BYO drink, snack and sanity gel (hand sanitiser).

Body Stillness' NEW LOCATION!!

Great news! We are in the final stages of preparing to be open for you in our new location. We are sorry we are not be able to accommodate wheelchair access. Please ask us about home visits.

For your next appointment, please arrive at:

12 Smith St, North Hobart.

We have 1-2 hour parking on Smith and in Letitia street.

We will have beautiful new photos coming soon! In the meantime, stay up to date by following us on Facebook and Instagram; look for ‘Body Stillness’.

Love from Lilly and the Body Stillness health group.

Exciting NEWS coming

Even though we haven’t been able to see you, we have been busy getting Body Stillness ready for a reopen. The past month has required us all to dig deep, and there will be some surprising changes when we are ready to greet and treat you again. We ask you to be open minded and flexible. You may need to consider your accessibility as stairs might be part of our new access arrangement. We’ll update with more news very soon!!

Take care. Stay well.