Learning to Listen: The Road That Brought Me Here

Rather than boring you this month with clinical insights or over-explaining my love of fascia and the nervous system, I thought I'd get a little more personal.

Quite a few of you have asked how I ended up with a slightly more... eclectic approach to physiotherapy. The truth is, there wasn't one defining moment. It was a series of experiences, people, patients and a fair few confronting realisations that gradually shaped the way I think about the body, pain and healing. So here it is.

Learning To Listen: The Road That Brought Me Here

I grew up as the youngest of four children, although my parents also adopted my cousin, so we were really a family of seven.

Mum was a GP until I was about eight, when she experienced some pretty significant mental health challenges. She went through her own healing journey, emerged stronger than ever, and now dedicates her life to supporting survivors of complex trauma.

Dad (affectionately known as Nonno), despite his artistic ambitions (and ongoing creative side hustles), has an incredibly logical, mathematical brain. Between the two of them, I think I inherited both a curiosity for how things work and an appreciation that people are far more complex than the systems we try to fit them into.

For a bit more context, both my sisters are psychologists (make of that what you will), and my brother... well, if I'm honest, I've never entirely understood what he does. Something techy. Love you, bro.

It probably started with dancing…

As for my childhood influences, there was one thing that shaped me more than anything else: dancing.

According to Mum, all roads led to dance. She spent years schlepping my sister and me between contemporary, jazz, ballet and hip-hop classes. Unsurprisingly, that's where my love of movement (and music) began.

I vividly remember our dance teacher running anatomy quizzes during stretch class. Everyone else just wanted to get back to dancing, but I was absolutely nerding out, fascinated by muscles, attachments and making sure I remembered all the anatomically correct terms.

From there, physiotherapy felt like a pretty natural career choice.

I'd also had my fair share of injuries: a broken ankle (trying to do a backflip in a boxing ring at a friend's 12th birthday party... obviously), torn cartilage in my wrist (courtesy of my bike), and a stress fracture in my lumbar spine from, unsurprisingly, too much dancing.

Every time I saw a physiotherapist, I thought they were legends. Naturally, I decided I'd quite like to be one too. And yes, helping people get back to doing what they loved also seemed like a pretty rewarding career.

Learning to look beyond pain…

University was really only the beginning.

One of the earliest turning points came during a student placement at a clinic where the principal physiotherapist practised ConnectTherapy, a model that looks for the "drivers" of an injury, no matter how far away they are from where the pain is.

I remember watching him assess someone with persistent Achilles tendinopathy. Rather than treating the Achilles locally, he worked on their thoracic rings. Their symptoms changed almost immediately. And so did my understanding of physiotherapy.

The body suddenly became this beautifully connected system that simply needed someone willing to solve the puzzle (thank you, Nonno, for passing on the problem-solving gene).

I was hooked.

I went on to study ConnectTherapy extensively, had the privilege of assisting Dr LJ Lee on her courses, and spent nearly five years working in a clinic where the entire team practised this approach. Those years taught me to look well beyond the site of pain to understand why the body had adapted in the first place.

Then I became the patient…

Running alongside my professional development was something equally influential: my own experience as a patient.

For more than twenty years, I've been treated by a Feldenkrais practitioner who has quietly become one of the greatest influences on my thinking (although she would never accept the title of mentor).

Walking out of her sessions was unlike anything I'd experienced in traditional physiotherapy. I often felt like I was floating. My husband still laughs at my post-session face and my complete inability to string a coherent sentence together.

What fascinated me most wasn't simply that I felt different afterwards. It was how I felt different.

There were sessions where it genuinely felt as though my body was reorganising itself without me consciously trying. She might simply be holding my head and suddenly, almost as though it had a mind of its own, my neck would know it needed to rotate to the left.

Sometimes laughter would bubble up. Sometimes tears. Sometimes I knew why. Sometimes I had absolutely no idea.

I'd walk out feeling taller, stronger and more grounded, not because she'd "fixed" me, but because my body seemed to rediscover a way of being that somehow felt both completely new and deeply familiar.

Those experiences introduced me to interoception, nervous system regulation and, perhaps most importantly, the idea that the body often knows more than we give it credit for.

The patient who changed my practice…

The next significant turning point didn't come from a course or a textbook. It came from one of my patients.

She had persistent right shoulder pain (amongst other things) and, despite everything I knew at the time, nothing seemed to create change. I analysed. I reassessed. I mobilised. I corrected. Her shoulder simply wasn't interested.

Eventually, I stopped trying to change it (likely out of frustration and throwing in the towel). But then I was able to truly listen. And hear. I could feel what her body seemed to be saying rather than imposing what I thought it needed.

I realise that probably sounds a little strange. But this was truly profound. As I followed the subtle rhythms and movements within her body, something began to shift. Her shoulder seemed to find a mind of its own. It began moving and reorganising in a way that neither of us were consciously creating.

She started chuckling. "What is happening?"

Honestly, I was wondering the same thing.

For the first time, I could genuinely feel the rhythms within the body and the way the fascial system seemed to guide movement. Rather than pushing against resistance, I followed the direction of ease. Her whole body seemed to know exactly what it needed.

Then something clicked. I realised this was exactly what I'd been experiencing on the Feldenkrais table for years. I'd completely trusted the process as a patient. I'd just never allowed myself to trust it as a physiotherapist.

That experience changed everything, and there has been a rapid evolution of my treatment approach ever since.

Filling in a few missing pieces…

Since then, my approach has continued to evolve. Craniosacral Therapy training has deepened my understanding of the nervous system and the movement of the cranial structures, filling gaps that I had always been desperate to fill. At the same time, years of treating people with persistent pain led me towards studying the human psyche and trauma. Given my family background, perhaps that was inevitable.

In 2022, I completed a Masters in Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy.

In the end, I realised talk therapy wasn't where I wanted to practise. I missed the immediacy of working with the body, the joy of using my hands, and the feeling that change could be guided through touch as much as through words. But what I learnt has never left me.

More than anything, it reinforced what I already suspected: healing happens best when people feel safe, heard and genuinely understood.

Looking back…

Every experience has added another layer.

Dance taught me to love movement. ConnectTherapy taught me to think globally. Feldenkrais taught me to trust the body's capacity to reorganise itself. My patients taught me to listen. Craniosacral Therapy deepened my understanding of the nervous system. Trauma-informed psychotherapy reminded me that every person carries a story deserving of curiosity and compassion.

None of these approaches exists in isolation. They all blend together into the way I assess, the questions I ask, the hands-on treatment I provide, and the space I try to create for every person who walks through the door.

If there's one thing this journey has taught me, it's that the body often has more wisdom than we give it credit for. Sometimes our role isn't to force change, but simply to create the conditions where change can happen.

I often say it's a privilege to do this work, and its hard to say as often as I do, without feeling cheesy. But I genuinely, deeply, mean it. Every day I get to think with you, problem-solve with you, learn from you and, hopefully, help you reconnect with your own body.

So that's how I ended up here.

And if this road has taught me anything, it's that I'm probably not finished learning yet. Keen to see what I can nerd out on next … and how it can help all of you.

Jul, 2026

Gina Kezelman