BeActivated? Or Deactivated…? – 20 Feb 2019

Apologies for the break in service. It had been my absolute intention to feed back on the BeActivated treatment straight away but then something happened which turned my life upside down and caused a massive ‘life interruption‘. Two weeks ago, my amazing, lovely, caring, loving mum had an accident which resulted in her needing emergency brain surgery. As a result, the last 2 weeks has been spent in a strange, timeless world that has existed almost entirely in a hospital environment in which I have only interacted with my immediate family and hospital practitioners. Mum is now out of intensive care and (we think) out of immediate danger…. We have a long way to go in terms of rehabilitation and recovery but I am confident that in time, we will have her back home. I am not going to dwell on this particular part of my life as it is not my story and my mum is not currently in a position to be able to give her permission to discuss this in any detail.

So.. back to talking about me! My favourite topic! Not…

I have very mixed feelings about the BeActivated treatment. I actually believe that it might be useful to me but I have not been back. Admittedly, a lot of that has been because of the other things that have been going on in my world recently but the main reason that I have not been back, is that the practitioner and I did not gel. In fact I would go as far to say that we actively did not like each other.

I think my face has a lot to answer for in this particular instance. As has been previously discussed, I am not very good at hiding exactly what I am thinking. That is unless I am anticipating the need to potentially conceal my true feelings and I have therefore gone through some sort of planning of possible, appropriate facial expressions and phrases in advance. Think ‘I am about to open a present in front of someone who has a history of gifting awful and unsuitable items’. The kind of presents that make you think ‘How can you know me even a tiny bit and think that I would want a floral toilet seat cover with matching headscarf…??’. These things I can plan for. I wasn’t really expecting the need to exercise any kind of facial expression concealment on arrival for the treatment, so this is possibly where it started to go downhill.

For £60/hour I was not expecting to arrive at a nondescript bungalow in a large residential area and be shown to a spare bedroom that appeared to be a general dumping ground for random items (as many a spare room is). There was a bed pushed up against the wall that had been stripped to the mattress protector and a mobile treatment couch arranged at a jaunty angle to fit into the remaining available space. It was the most bizarre set-up. I have visited many a practitioner in their homes over the years and come across all sorts of arrangements but nothing quite so sketchy as this, it has to be said. My immediate initial thought was ‘well my £60 is not contributing to swanky premises, is it??’. It later transpired that it is not even his house. It belongs to his in-laws!

I conducted an instant recalibration of expectations and tried to reset my face. I don’t think it worked. Not entirely my fault, I don’t think, as the next weirdness came in the form of me perching on the only chair in the room while he kind of lounged on the bed and said “So, tell me about yourself”. WHAT THE ACTUAL?? At this point I just allowed my face free rein to do whatever it felt necessary. I wasn’t sure what on earth was going on anymore. Am I here for health related treatment or on some sort of terrible, ill advised first date? My response of “Erm what do you need to know?” was counteracted with “Everything” from him. I really felt that it was getting a bit ridiculous now. I went with a brief medical history and a summary of my expectations. It seemed the most appropriate response in the increasingly odd situation.

His turn next. He explained the premise of the BeActivated technique which can essentially be summarised into how we should be breathing right into the stomach area and how as a result of poor breathing, the mechanical elements of the body stop functioning as they should and other parts of the body start compensating, which over an extended period can lead to serious mobility and pain management issues. The BeActivated treatment aims to reset your body and get it working correctly again. I am very happy to accept all of this but what I do have an issue with, is how neural pathways that have been damaged as a result of MS can be magically fixed. His response to this (or my interpretation of) is that he is brilliant and that he is going to reactivate the neural pathways and I will be cured. By this time my scepticism is clearly apparent and he can sense it. I am not sure that this level of scepticism is something that he is used to dealing with. I decided at this point that it would be best to crack on as I felt the interpersonal element was starting to really break down. In retrospect, this was possibly a mistake. It turns out the the treatment is REALLY REALLY painful and I think he enjoyed punishing me for being a doubter.

To cut a long story short….. after a short examination relating to the strength and movement of my arms and legs he started to ‘reactivate’ my breathing and neural pathways. I have never given birth so I may not have a realistic view of pain levels but I can honestly say that the treatment was the single most agonising thing I have ever endured. Within seconds I was crying my eyes out. This is completely normal apparently. Not just because of the pain but due to the release of pent up emotions resulting from past emotional traumas. The points that were treated were around the edge of the rib cage for the breathing and two points at the base of the skull sort of behind my ears. The pain was so intense that I could only cope with 5-10 seconds at a time. It was horrific, I’m not going to lie. But when was anything good for you pleasant?? At one point, he tried a sort of attempt at a bullying tactic to try and goad me into coping with the pain. This was ill judged on his part. There are a select, few people who would get away with that sort of approach with me. But they know me. He does not and had I not been incapacitated and writhing in pain I would have punched him. I was finding him a little full of himself by this stage.

We had a brief chat at the end of the treatment interspersed with my continued sobbing. He advised a further 3-4 treatments and wanted to do them within the next month. I explained that I might struggle to fit them in around other commitments and that the costs might be prohibitive within that time-frame but that I was interested in pursuing it. We left it that he would send me a message later that evening to let me know about an evening slot the following week and I cried myself all the way home and then collapsed on to the sofa exhausted. I didn’t move again until bed time. I felt dreadful and really sad. I felt it was more a case of being deactivated rather than reactivated.

I just couldn’t really process what had happened. The pain, the weirdness of the set-up, the personality clash. It was all a bit confusing. And I continued to feel like this for the whole of next day. Later that following day, I had a PT session with Scott who had mentioned the BeActivated treatment to me in the first place. It was more of a counselling session, really and we discussed at length how I felt about it. He knows other people who have been to see the same practitioner and we left it that he would find out what other people had experienced and how they felt and get back to me.

So how did I feel physically after the treatment? Was it of any benefit? I am now definitely breathing further down into my stomach area than I was before and as I was walking about the next day, my body felt more connected. By that, I mean that the different components seemed to be working together more effectively than they usually do. Quite often, I feel as if my upper and lower body have become disconnected and they are working completely independently of each other. Scott said he had also noticed a difference in my strength and an improvement in my balance. When doing supported lunges, my (normally useless) right foot was not collapsing out, even when I became tired.

Over dinner later the same night, I relayed in detail to Amazingly Supportive Husband the general experience plus Scott’s and my feedback on what we had observed in terms of improvement. His view is that I need to get over myself and get back there regardless of how I feel about the practitioner and the cost. If it is benefiting me, then I should pursue it. He is, of course, right and falls into the category of one of the few people who is allowed to speak to me like this. So I decided there and then that I would contact the guy the next day and make the next appointment.

And then my mum had her accident….

Needless to say, I had a major recalibration in terms of priorities. Interestingly, the practitioner has not been in touch with me which I think says a lot. Scott thinks he can’t deal with my ‘no nonsense, say what you think’ approach.

In the meantime, it turns out that someone else locally has just completed the training to become a practitioner in the same field. It seems that it actually doesn’t take very long (a matter of days rather than weeks…). Another reason why I feel that £60/hour is a bit steep. So I think I will wait and see what happens there and how long it is before they are practising commercially and maybe I can continue the treatment with them. I do not need to best friends with the people I am dealing with with regard to my health, but I do need to like them and believe in them. And I did not like the man I met, sadly.