Dawn Seaman Wellbeing Solutions

06/09/2025

September is Pain Awareness Month, a time when so many important messages are shared to help the public and professionals better understand chronic pain.

Each message plays a vital role in raising awareness, but perhaps the most important one we can share is this: recovery is possible.

Check out the post below, which we’ve shared across our social media channels, to explore these insights and see how we can bring hope and meaningful relief to those affected by long-term pain.

05/07/2025

Integral Eye Movement Therapy helping the lovely Poppy Webber - Qualified Saddle Fitter with confidence and the "what ifs".

I've waited a while to write this, because there are a lot of emotions and trauma around it... but I know how sharing my journey has helped a lot of people so I'm going to open up a little... in case it can help.

Lots of you have followed my journey with getting 'back on board' after a nasty accident ten years ago. It destroyed my riding confidence, which, in turn knocked away at my happiness.
I've only ever known myself as a horse rider, so without that, I felt lost, incomplete. And really f*cking sad, if I'm honest. Despite working with horses every day, and having zero fear on the ground with them, I felt like I was missing out a huge part of my life without the riding.

Over the years I've tried EVERYTHING to make riding fun again - confidence courses, stunt riding, hypnotherapy and horse camp. And they've all really helped. But still, most rides were a chore, and every ride I held onto my breastplate. And I had some real blips.

Then, a couple of months ago, something happened in my personal life that knocked me for six. some old traumas were reignited, and BOOM, my confidence shot back to zero. Endo was also diagnosed with ulcers and given time off work. I got quite poorly, and things were crappy.

I started to realise that maybe my riding confidence was more of a symptom of other things going on. Maybe like I have an emotional 'cup', and my cup is pretty 'full' most of the time (life is hectic and stressful here - self employment eh?), and the more 'full' it is, the less happiness I allow myself to derive from my hobby. From life fullstop actually.

And I decided it was time for therapy. To try and put some old traumas to bed, and maybe empty out the overflowing cup a little.

I went to Dawn Seaman Wellbeing Solutions and had something called Integral Eye Movement Therapy.
Now, I used to be a psychologist so could bore you with the more technical details about memories and storage - and I also think this means I'm a little more sceptical about these sorts of things, but I had nothing to lose.
I had two sessions. about ten days apart. When I was at my absolute lowest. I wasn't sure if it had worked - I am sure that my brain is too complex for these things, and also I don't store my memories as pictures, not at all, so I didn't know how it would work for me.

A couple of weeks later, I went to camp.

For the first time in years I was free from fear. I didn't lead Jude to the arena, I rode him there. I didn't get a single moment of being scared.

When I texted my husband from camp, and said I was having a whale of a time, he summed it up best in his reply... 'Welcome back to the world of actually enjoying your hobby'.

I really hope this is it for me. That I am properly 'back' as a horse rider. And y'all won't have to put up with my whining posts anymore....

P.s. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm smiling in ALL the pictures and I'm not holding my neck strap at all...

24/06/2025

I met Faye as a student on one of my Equine Myofascial Release courses many years ago. She trained in Integral Eye Movement Therapy a few years ago and introduced me to it. I then trained a year after her. We both wanted to use it to help horse riders with confidence issues but it very quickly became aparent that IEMT does SO much more! Faye has put together some workbooks, the first being on the Inner Critic. They are full of valuable information and tools to help yourself. Have a wee look.

Faye does IEMT sessions in Lincolnshire as do I in Norfolk.

👏 well done Faye IEMT Change it is fabulous.

🌟 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐄𝐭𝐬𝐲 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞!🌟

𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐈 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐄𝐭𝐬𝐲, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4317110384/quiet-the-critic-a-workbook-for-the

It’s a small moment, but an important one. I created this workbook because I kept hearing the same thing from riders I work with: “I just don’t feel good enough.”

The inner critic is something we all experience. It’s estimated we have up to 70,000 thoughts a day, and 80–90% of them are negative. That’s like having someone follow you around all day, pointing out your flaws and feeding your self-doubt.

Over time, that voice chips away at confidence, motivation, and even joy in riding.

This workbook is a practical, straightforward tool to help riders notice that voice, reflect on it, and start changing the way they speak to themselves. It’s not about IEMT, it’s for anyone who wants to break the cycle of self-criticism and start building themselves back up.

If you’re a rider who struggles with confidence, or someone who’s done IEMT and is ready for the rebuild phase, this might be a good next step.

Thank you to the person who bought the very first copy, and to everyone who’s supported me in creating this. It's taken me quite a lot of work with my own inner critical voice to get this made and out there!!!! 😁 💫✨

You can take a look here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4317110384/quiet-the-critic-a-workbook-for-the

22/06/2025

When I shared this, it missed off all the text that accompanied it, written by Ruth Duncan of In Touch Education Myofascial Release UK.

🧠 Interoception and Pain: Why What We Feel Inside Matters More Than Ever

For many years, the word 'interoception' rarely made its way into everyday conversations. Even in health and therapy settings, it sat quietly in the background, overshadowed by more familiar concepts like proprioception or the five classical senses. It was often misunderstood as simply 'feeling your heartbeat' or 'noticing when you're hungry'. But interoception is far more than that. It is the body’s internal communication system, an essential and ongoing process through which we sense, interpret, and regulate internal bodily signals, things like temperature, muscle tension, digestion, and heartbeat. It is foundational to how we feel, how we know ourselves, and how we relate to the world around us.

Our early understanding of interoception came from cardiac awareness tasks and breath-holding experiments. These clunky lab studies were valuable first attempts to measure internal perception but, they came with limitations. They were often myopic with a biased focus on the heart and lungs. This reinforced the idea that interoception meant that those people who could detect their heartbeat were somehow more in tune with their bodies than those who could not.

But is that really true?

More recent work has changed everything and research now suggests that interoception is not just about noticing signals, but about interpreting them. And this matters enormously when it comes to pain.

Pain and interoception are not separate. They share overlapping brain regions like the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, areas involved not only in sensation, but also in meaning-making. Pain is not simply about damage. It is a prediction, a protection strategy, built from what the brain believes is going on inside the body.

So when internal signals are messy, unpredictable or overwhelming, the brain has a harder job deciding what to do. That uncertainty can tip the system into pain, even when no clear injury exists. And that pain feels real, because it is real. It is the brain’s best guess that something is wrong and needs protecting.

Here is the part that affects so many people we see in clinic: disrupted interoception often goes hand in hand with persistent pain. That might mean being overly aware of some sensations, like a stomach that feels clenched, a breath that feels shallow, or a muscle that feels tight even when it is not. Or it might mean being disconnected from internal cues altogether, unable to tell whether you are hungry, tired or anxious until it becomes overwhelming.

This is not dysfunction. It is not failure. It is the nervous system doing its best in a landscape shaped by disregulation, uncertainty, illness or emotional stress. And when pain persists, it is often because the brain continues to perceive those internal signals as threatening.

This research shows us that interoception plays a crucial role in how pain is felt and how it is maintained. But more importantly, it offers a pathway for change. Because when we support someone in making sense of their internal experience through therapeutic touch, movement, breath, or simply listening, we are helping them rewrite the story their brain is telling.

This is not about ignoring biology. It is about recognising that biology is never separate from lived experience.

Pain is not in the tissues. It is in the meaning we assign to signals. That meaning is shaped by memory, culture, emotion, attention, and expectation. And interoception sits at the centre of it all.

As therapists, we are working with interoception every time we ask someone how they feel. Every time we help someone slow their breath, feel their feet on the floor, or notice tension with curiosity rather than fear. You are not just soothing a sore back. You are helping someone build a new relationship with their internal world.

And that, in itself, is healing.

In this week’s Featured Image, Garfinkel et al. depict some of the hierarchical levels across which interoception can be delineated, including the nature of afferent signals, how afferent signals can alter different type of processing, the accuracy with which people can detect interoceptive sensations, the neural processing of interoception and body-brain integration, and higher order measures pertaining to interoceptive beliefs, interoceptive attention, and the appraisal of interoceptive sensations. Learn more at https://bit.ly/4l6ZYUa

26/05/2025

I am pleased to have passed my OldPain2Go Advanced Practitioner training.

Feedback from one of my case studies:

"Along with other body pains I have suffered with pain in my neck, causing headaches for over 13 years now. I was very hopeful that having an OldPain2Go session would relieve me of this and it didn't let me down! During the session whilst Dawn was talking me through releasing the pain, I could feel it draining from my body. By the end of the session I was amazed, happy and a little in disbelief I was pain free from head to toe! 2 weeks on I am still pain free and truly thankful." K D, Norfolk

16/05/2025

PAIN AND SUFFERING

A recently published 2025 study by Peter Stilwell and colleagues explored how people describe their worst pain episodes, not just the physical sensation, but what happens to the self when pain becomes overwhelming. The researchers interviewed adults living with long term pain, asking them to reflect on the moments when pain was at its most extreme. Many felt stripped of their identity, disconnected from their bodies, and lost in time. This was not just pain; it was suffering at a deeper level. Some described out of body experiences, feeling like a ball of pain, or becoming so overwhelmed that their thoughts and coping strategies simply vanished. Importantly, this suffering did not rely on narrative reflection, that is the ability to think about who you are or tell your life story drawn from your history and learning. It happened in the moment, disrupting what we call the minimal self, the basic sense of being here, in your body, now.

Traditionally, pain related suffering has been explained through the idea of the narrative self, the part of us that makes sense of life through memory, roles and purpose. This idea sees suffering as a disruption to who we are, what we do, and how we understand ourselves. But this paper questions whether that is the whole story. It introduces a second kind of suffering, rooted in the minimal self. This is your raw, moment to moment sense of being a body in time and space. When pain disrupts that, it can make you feel powerless, trapped, or even dehumanised. You might feel like you are no longer a person, just pain. This study shows that pain can overwhelm either the narrative self or the minimal self, or both. Understanding these differences, we can recognise the full experience of what suffering can be. Reasons for adding the minimal self is that the research argues that pain experiences are not just based on the narrative self as this suggests that those with dementias or infants with limited to no ability to create a story of their lives, can’t experience suffering. Adding that suffering, including suffering from pain, occurs in the moment and not just in the narrative self, helps appreciate the complexities of pain for everyone.

What this research helps us see more clearly is that suffering may actually be the larger and more complex part of the pain experience. When pain overwhelms the self, it can trigger a cascade of fear, anxiety, stress and low mood. These are not just emotional responses, they are deeply biological, activating the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, the body’s core stress system. This system releases hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, which increase physiological arousal and can drive systemic inflammation. Inflammation, in turn, sensitises the nervous system and exacerbates the perception of pain. This creates a vicious cycle, suffering feeds the body’s stress systems, and the body’s stress responses amplify the pain experience. In this context, the work of touch therapies is not just about easing tissues or releasing muscles. What we are really influencing is the emotional and perceptual experience of pain, and the suffering that surrounds it. Through calm, skilled, attentive touch, we help interrupt that loop. We support regulation, connection, and meaning. And in doing so, we may have a greater impact on pain than we ever could through physical techniques alone.

Sometimes a client seems distant, emotionally numb, or disconnected, and we may assume they are avoiding engagement. But the reality might be that they are overwhelmed. They could be in a state where the nervous system cannot self-regulate, and where their usual coping systems have collapsed. This matches with how pain affects brain networks like the default mode network, which handles reflection and identity, the salience network, which filters danger or safety, and the central executive network, which helps focus and problem solve. When pain disrupts these networks, people can feel lost, alone, and like their body is no longer their own. In these moments, our job is not to fix. It is to offer safe, grounding support. Touch can reconnect someone to their body and their sense of self. That is where our true value as therapists lies.

Read the paper here.👇
When pain overwhelms the self: A phenomenological study of a new mode of suffering, based on adults’ recollections of their worst pain episodes. https://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(25)00640-6/fulltext

Additional paper👇
Towards a new model of understanding – The triple network, psychopathology and the structure of the mind https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987719306280