Meet Claire: Founder of Luna Physiotherapy

Hello, I’m Claire. LUNA is my physiotherapy practice.

It’s also my question-in-motion: How can we live in the ‘system’ and still work to create meaningful change?

I’ve worked in hospitals and private practice as a physiotherapist for about 10 years. Women’s Health has been my main focus during this time, and I have always felt there were really important things that weren’t being addressed by purely conventional care. When I had the privilege of becoming a mother myself, and going through health challenges with my second child, I felt this lack more acutely. I don’t want to throw out conventional medicine, by any means, but I want us to have the other stuff too!

I want LUNA to be a space to acknowledge and heal from the emotional and physical wounds that we all experience as we travel through life. I want girls and women to know:

You are not alone with your worries, you’re not weird or disgusting or pathetic or shameful. So many other women (whether cisgender, hetero, trans, lesbian, bigender… all women!) have pain, incontinence, birth trauma, prolapse, struggles in their relationships, anger around their kids or their own parents, work stress, financial stress, sexual trauma, fear about the future… And healing is always possible.

It’s taken me a while to feel confident to practice physiotherapy as I do now, at LUNA. I don’t take full responsibility for outcome of treatment - it’s a partnership approach. I don’t hurry, since the body-mind just won’t be hurried, anyway. I offer what seems most needed in that moment - whether that’s soft-tissue release, breath-work, yoga, joint mobilisation, clinical pilates, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, dry needling, pessary fitting, myofascial cupping…

I don’t promise a ‘cure’ because that’s just not how I understand healing. Healing is integrating what has happened in a way that allows us to thrive and grow in the present moment - and the next one, and the next. Sometimes we ‘fix the problem’, but how much better and lasting if we can understand the ‘problem’ more broadly - involving the Physical, Psychological, Emotional, Social, and even Ecological aspects of being human. Then we can learn how to recover what has been lost or nurture something new in its place.

This way of working takes honesty, compassion, and a radically holistic perspective. It’s not sustainable in isolation - so I reach for help! The community of professionals who are gathering at LUNA are ‘practivists’, like me: They are women doing what they can do, here and now, to be part of creating a better world. They believe, as I do, that healing is always possible.