Volunteering at the UCLH

By Linda Mills

Shiatsu Practitioner for 24 years

My role is to support the staff involved with supporting the nation.

Every interaction is positive for me and I always leaving feeling "Who Healed Who"? as the NHS staff are unanimously a great group of dedicated individuals and teams, top quality human beings, who are always open, kind and fascinated by what I do. 

 I am honoured to volunteer and gain as a person every time I have gone in for the last year, (that includes the time I have shared with Amanda Tata and the team she works with, who run the thousands of volunteers that come in each week to support the hospital). 

I am a roving practitioner and spend between 3-6 weeks in various departments, promoting the positive healing experience of Shiatsu. This involves finding spaces to give both seated and lying down Shiatsu. I improvise with what every area I have given, spend 10 minutes taking notes and enquiring how I can help. Then I offer twenty-minute treatments.

I see everyone. From cleaners, nurses, dinner staff, doctors, to specialist consultants from every department.

It's a complex process, with multiple layers of intricate interactions between me and others. Shared personal knowledge and professional expertise meshing into a unity of exchanged experience. If I am speaking with a neurological consultant - I refer to all I know re Shiatsu/Acupuncture to support the healing process, for example 50% of all acupuncture in China is used for strokes. Anything else I have read, for example Professor Jill Bolte Taylor's book or her TED talks "A Stroke of Insight" - I mention this, or the film 9000 Needles and so on. 

Whatever the topic, we interweave our shared knowledge, whether it is with staff from the cardiological or gastrointestinal departments, infectious diseases wards or end-of-life-care clinical experience.

If this involves teaching a specific Qi Gong movement, a toe stretching release mechanism for pain, or reference to herbs, food energetics or a scientific paper I have just read - I refer to whatever is useful.  

A fascinating exchange of human care results, where our mutual aim is to support the patients indirectly, by supporting the staff needs. My role is to support the patients that come to the hospital seeking healing in one shape or form, by caring for their carer(s).

I spoke to one consultant in July 2022, who has dedicated her entire life to this process of giving to others for decades. She said to me she gives 100% and that my thirty-minute treatment was the first time in her memory for decades that she had received unconditional care from another, no strings attached. In my mind, she is a wonderful woman. A hidden jewel in the nation. Someone I highly valued. 

WE NEED TO LOOK AFTER THE CARERS / HEALERS / SPECIALIST CONSULTANTS that run the NHS. If we want them to know what Shiatsu is and gain from this ancient healing art, they need to know about us.