Sheffield Centre for Massage Training

07/12/2025

I’m so proud of this place. Eva is a superb practitioner and manager and runs this wonderful sanctuary. If you have a tired out, aching body this is the place to go!

04/12/2025

All the therapists who have chosen Therapy Room S7 as their workplace are originally Level 4 trained from the Sheffield Centre of Massage Training. How lovely is that :-)

To receive £10 off any treatment Tuesdays to Saturdays in December text "FB10" and your name to 07749224262. You can also win a 90min massage, see below how!

14/11/2025

We’ve known this all along but it’s heartening to see the benefits of massage being featured in the guardian newspaper.

While they can be seen as a luxury, massages are often part of healthcare – here’s how they affect physical and mental health

13/11/2025

I couldn’t have put it better myself!

What's missing from "The Body Keeps the Score?" From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, Bessel Van der Kolk's book
largely overlooks the relational and systemic context in which trauma exists and persists. He touches on relationships and collective trauma, but the framework focuses on the individual body and brain.

IPNB shows that the nervous system’s regulation depends on ongoing safety in relationships, communities, and environments. Hierarchies, abusive institutions, and chronic social stress keep survival adaptations active, no matter how many therapies are applied.

Recovery isn’t just a matter of retraining the brain or soothing the body. It requires safe, attuned relationships and social environments that allow the nervous system to downshift from survival mode. Without addressing these systemic and relational factors, the body remains on alert, the nervous system remains dysregulated, and healing is partial.

Van der Kolk opens the door to relational and somatic healing, but IPNB emphasizes that trauma is as much about the social world as it is about the individual body. The full path to recovery must attend to both: the body’s physiology and the relational, institutional, and cultural contexts that sustain safety, or keep systems trapped in threat.

NOTE : this is not to dismiss or degrade Bessel Van der Kolk's work or his book. Just a note about what's missing, and filling in the gaps so people can gain that understanding.

27/10/2025

Has anyone tried this?

25/10/2025

True that!

22/10/2025

14/10/2025

What do you say?

🧠💆 Massage is powerful – but not because it squeezes toxins out of muscles. Science shows its biggest influence is on the nervous system. By stimulating receptors in the skin, massage helps calm stress responses, supports balance and enhances wellbeing.

This is far more meaningful than the old ‘toxin’ story. Our clients trust us when we speak with accuracy and confidence.

Learn more in the full blog 👉 https://smto.co.uk/why-flushing-out-toxins-is-a-myth-a-critical-look-at-massage/


GCMT The General Council for Manual Therapies

24/09/2025

I am delighted to introduce to you Kay Morris. Kay graduated in 2014 and until now she has been honing her skills working with the broad spectrum of conditions that come under the umbrella term ‘disability’. She is an expert in this area having worked many decades. Please take a look at her new website

Every body and mind deserves expert, respectful touch. I bring my fully equipped massage tools and techniques to your home, care facility or community space - so you can relax in a familiar environment without barriers.

15/09/2025

I’m always looking for novel ways to teach touch anatomy.

The Opera of Touch: Meet Ruffini, Pacini, Meissner and the Merkel Twins When we teach anatomy, receptor names like Ruffini endings, Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner’s corpuscles, and Merkel cells can …

08/09/2025

Anatomical Prayer

Skin stretches—
dermis, epidermis,
each pore a gate of light.
Fascia glides,
layers sliding,
fibres yielding to direction.

Ulna leans in,
edge of bone meeting
intercostal space.
Rib cage lifts,
sternum arcs,
diaphragm softens
into the waiting hand.

Elbow becomes eye—
scanning, sensing,
palpating the secret map
beneath the surface.
Channels open like rivers,
blood quickens,
lymph stirs in hidden tributaries.

Flesh draws away from bone,
creating breath-room.
Vertebrae unstack,
pelvis tilts,
sacrum drops into earth.

No separation—
nerve sings to nerve,
muscle to tendon,
tissue to tissue.
Boundaries blur,
yet edges remain,
holding the dance in form.

To touch is to listen:
to contraction,
to release,
to the synapse sparking,
to the heart pushing
its crimson tide.

Wise hands know
which fibres to lengthen,
which to invite,
which armour to cast down
like a sheath of rusted plates.

Beneath the surface—
hidden self,
waiting.
I enter through anatomy,
and meet you there,
in the marrow,
where we are
already one.

29/08/2025

The body carries stories that words alone can’t tell. Our nervous system holds the imprints of our experiences — moments of safety, connection, and joy, but also traces of overwhelm and disconnection. This nine-week training is an invitation to come closer to that intelligence, to learn the language of the body through movement, mindfulness, and gentle somatic exploration. Together, we’ll explore the Autonomic Nervous System and Polyvagal Theory not as abstract concepts, but as living processes we can feel and shape in real time.

Rather than pushing or forcing, we move in the Hakomi spirit of curiosity, loving presence, and nonviolence. Each week offers embodied practices that help us touch uncomfortable places with care — using titration (small steps) and pendulation (moving between activation and calm) so that the body knows it is never alone. We will experience how ventral vagal states feel like home, how sympathetic energy can become strength and boundary, how dorsal states can hold rest as well as collapse. Movement, co-regulation, and somatic experiments will guide us, offering both resources and renewal.

This training is for therapists, facilitators, and students of body-based work who want to deepen their understanding of trauma and nervous system healing in a way that is experiential, integrative, and profoundly human. It is also for anyone longing to feel more at home in their body. As we journey together, we will discover how awareness, movement, and connection open pathways to resilience — so that wellbeing is not just an idea, but a lived, embodied experience.

**Starts October 2nd 2025**
Wisdom of the Body training
a Hakomi Approach to Healing Trauma ONLINE
with Vicky Gaughan and Gabriela Valdés Villarreal
Expand your healing practice and join us for a deep experiential learning and transformation through somatic practices, learning the skills for trauma healing.

Duration
9 sessions of 3 hours

Dates 2025
October 2nd, 9th,16th
October 30th,
November 6th,13th 20th 27th
December 4th

Schedule
6:30 pm - 9:30 pm UK
* 12:30 am – 3:30 pm CST
Time change adjustments for October 30th onwards * 1:30 – 4:30 pm CST
Contact wofthebody@gmail.com