Learn about natural solutions for chronic pain management with Christine Mcinnis. Ever wondered what natural solutions for chronic pain management exist? Listen in as I interview reflexology expert Christine McInnis about how relfexology, massage, breathing exercises and other natural solutions for chronic pain management can help with migrains, autoimmune pain, and more.
Free Hormone Health Practices (Including guided breathwork sessions)
Transcript of Interview/Episode
?Hello. This is Anna Laura Brown, host of the Autoimmune Rehab Podcast, where we explore ideas, solutions, and helpful hints to help you in your autoimmune healing journey. We strive to transform your health and inspire hope in you so that we can help you with your emotional healing and self-care, and some of your physical healing, things like diets, that kind of thing, which you know, you would find on any kind of podcast on an autoimmune.
Find all the episodes with show notes at autoimmunerehab.com. And now without any further delay, let’s get started.
Hello ladies. Today I am really happy to have Christine McInnis. I think I pronounced that correctly with me, and she is here from Canada with the company Willow Therapies. So Christine, why don’t you start off by introducing yourself to us. Hi, Anna, Laura, and thank you so much for having me. Um, yeah, so I am an advanced reproductive reflex.
Um, I also provide hypnotherapy, and various other kinds of holistic healing services. I really focus on the mind body condition to find, um, a deep level of healing from chronic health conditions specifically, or related to hormonal health or chronic. . That’s awesome. That’s very much needed for sure.
And that’s, you know, that’s a lot of different services. I know, you know, some of us have probably been to practitioners where, you know, they really only offer one or two, or sometimes you go to practitioners and they offer the whole gamut of things. Did you start off offering all those services, or is there one or two that you started off in the beginning and then you added more later?
Oh goodness, no. Um, , that’s kind of how it happens, if you start with one and then you realize there’s kind of like a gap or a need to bring in something else. Um, and there’s certainly other areas like, um, nutrition where I would refer out, but when it was something I’m like, I could do that. I could add that in.
Then I just took additional training. So my initial modality is reflexology therapy, so feet. head. We have wonderful reflex points that can help to adjust how our whole body is functioning. Um, and I found it was a very powerful therapy, especially for, um, helping your nervous system really calm down, and get into a rest and restore mode.
And then the other things just kind of came one by one, um, as I needed them either for myself or for me. For sure. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your personal journey. Did you struggle with chronic pain and chronic illness, hormonal issues, infertility, all of the above, or ? Yeah, I mean, I actually.
Breathe through most of my younger life, but I grew up in a household that had a lot of chronic migraines and chronic reproductive health issues. So I saw my mother and my sister suffering and I was like, well, I know we have a family history of this, but I mean, we can’t just, there’s got to be something else we can do.
You know, I saw them trying the medications. , they would kind of help but their quality of life, especially when they were having a flare up with their conditions, wasn’t great. Um, so I think I had a bit of a helper complex as a kid and teenager, and that led to me just wanting to learn about the human body and, and how one person could have all this going on and one person could be seemingly fine.
What was going on there? Um, so I decided to switch to working in reflexology therapy as a career. When I became pregnant with my first child. Um, I wanted, um, a career that I had a little bit more control over. And then after my child was born, that is when I started to. all of the same issues I had seen my family having.
Um, and I’m just really grateful that I was already in that space and surrounded with amazing opportunities to learn and practice and, and I was able to find really great self-care resources and external resources to, to really help support. That’s awesome. It’s almost kind of like the hormonal imbalance or whatever, you know, goes on when you get pregnant and have a baby that, that just kinda threw you into something and you’re like, oh yeah, there was that.
And then just the extreme stress and interrupted sleep. So my kid had some health issues resolved now, but like he would only sleep 45 minutes at a time. Ooh, yikes. He was, it was hard. It was hard. And I. , your hormones definitely shift, but as you know with like, I think your focus is on autoimmune conditions, stress is one of the biggest, if not the biggest trigger for any and all kinds of flare ups.
So, yep. It absolutely is. I noticed that I notice, especially with myself, that if I get really super stressed, I’ll get these rashes that will break out all over the place and then when the stress goes away, I don’t have the rashes anymore. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like as soon as I see a rash, I’m like, it must be from something you see.
I find that interesting. Like it, a lot of the pain and the ration, the symptoms we’re experiencing are. uncomfortable or downright horrible, but it’s really just your body trying to communicate something to you like, you know, and, and that’s where we can kind of really look at, okay, what’s being communicated.
Not to say there’s not an overreaction happening, but it’s a sign. Okay. We can start looking into what’s at the root cause of this now, and, and they’ll start trying to reduce it. For sure. Absolutely. And I always like to point out to people too that you know, if you’re new to the ID autoimmune journey and or if you are getting rashes and it’s popping up, you know, all the time, maybe on a regular basis and you’re thinking, I don’t know if I’m really that stressed, you need to look at your gut health and your nutrition too, which is really a whole different topic.
But I know personally that my gut health is pretty much under control. And so, you know, I know, and I don’t get a ton, so when I do get ’em, it’s like I’m well aware and in tune that, hey, this is a stressful thing . Exactly. Yeah. And it’s, I mean, that’s what makes it so hard with autoimmune conditions is it’s not usually just one thing.
You usually have a number of different factors combining to sugar of Clara and then, nevermind that if you have an autoimmune condition, you’re more prone to. Other autoimmune conditions. Mm-hmm. , you have multiple autoimmune conditions all affecting you, which makes it very confusing to figure out what the heck is going on.
It does, and that’s the number one reason I think why traditional medicine and healthcare just doesn’t, they don’t get it. They don’t really know how to help people with autoimmune conditions. They get a really great education in their area. Right. Um, They’ll kind of like you have like the one person focuses on one part of the condition, another person on another, and there’s not always a great bringing together of all, of all the factors.
And I mean, you don’t have time to sit there and talk about how stressed out you are often, you know, so they can’t take that in as a factor. Talk about your diet in great detail For sure. Professionals and. Yeah, absolutely. So if somebody’s looking at getting started doing reflexology, what kinds of things should they consider As far as looking for somebody or like how frequently they should do it, all that kind of stuff.
So for myself, I’m an advanced reproductive reflexologist, so I really, really dial into like the endometriosis side of things. I really get into some of the thyroid conditions. Um, if you have, um, Something that’s more related to some kind of reproductive or hormo female hormonal health. Highly recommend looking for a reflexology therapist who does have some specialty knowledge in that we’re not super common, so if you can’t find it, standard core reflexology is amazing for just supporting the overall nervous system.
So it really helps to calm that stress response and it helps to support the brain processes that in an autoimmune condition are kind of going a bit haywire. So it can help to just kind of generally calm support and balance the whole system. So look for someone who is well trained, ideally who. , like a governing body that they’re registered with.
Cause that provides you with liability insurance. And then you know, you’re getting a certain level of training here in Canada. We have the Reflexology Association of Canada, so I’m in our local chapter for that. And they’ve done a really good job of kind of creating a good baseline level of training.
Across the country. I actually, I believe in the US you have a number of different ones. Probably. I’m not super familiar with it since I’m not a reflexologist. Little bit of experience with reflux as a whole, that like two hour online course and certificate and that’s not really who you wanna be. No. You’re probably not gonna do any harm.
You know, seek out someone who knows what they’re doing and is actually going to really support you. Um, yeah, and also reflexology is great because if you are someone who is maybe a little bit more squeamish about getting massages or acupuncture, you know, we’re really just working with the extremity, so it’s very accessible.
You’re usually fully clothed during a session. And I like to make clients a really cozy blanket. You know, table warmer and maybe even foot soak. So it’s, it’s very, that’s awesome. It’s a very relaxing and pleasant therapy. You don’t have a lot to lose to try it out. For sure. Absolutely. So how would you say that reflexology differs a little bit from, say, like acupuncture?
Well, we do use different maps. There is some overlap. So for me personally, with my focus on hormonal migraines, I’ve trained in acupressure for that. So I do bring them together. Um, but we do use different maps. So, um, ac acupuncture uses, um, the, um, meridian system. So kind of like we have lines which go from our head to our toes.
And then along those lines there’s nodes and that’s where they’re putting the pressure needles, um, reflex all do you use as kind of a representational approach. So it’s kind of like the idea that the whole. is reflected in your hand or on your foot. So you would have, you know, like your diaphragm’s kind of in the middle, your brain’s on the tips of your fingers.
The pelvis is more on the bottom, so it’s more if you were to take an anatomy chart and slap it onto your hand or your feet. That’s how we work, with points. Um, but we’ll, we’ll kind of sometimes bore open their system as well. Especially if you get into working on it. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I can see that. But they both become similar for sure. , they’re both kind of like different avenues that do the same thing basically. It’s you kind of, as far as my. Opinion or, or understanding of two modalities, um, sure have similar effects. Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody’s got kind of, let’s say chronic migraines or you know, or maybe it’s fertility, whatever it is, and they’re coming either like say to you or to somebody else who specializes in a similar kind of thing, what kind of timeframe are they looking at?
Are they looking at like once and twice a week for like six months? Or like what kind? How in depth would they need to do what call is so individual? I usually do a pretty thorough consultation with a client, um, to talk about that ahead of time because I don’t want people to, I want people to go into it with an expectation of, of what the time and financial commitments are going to be.
And I do my best to use my experience. I’ve been doing this for a while, so to use my experience to give ’em my idea, um, it really depends. Anything with hormones. . I really like to see people weekly, um, if they’re cycling for at least one menstrual cycle. Um, and then from there it depends. Um, I have clients with ibs I see every three weeks and it seems to stay in check with that.
Um, endometriosis, I would usually see someone weekly for about four to six weeks biweekly until symptoms disappear and then monthly for. as needed. Um, although often I do actually see endometriosis clients stop after a, after let’s say five to six months and not have a recurrence, um, or at least for a couple years.
Well, that’s awesome though, because I know a lot of therapies, you know, I mean, even I have a lot more experience with acupuncture. I’ve done acupuncture quite a bit and it, you know, I got a lot of initial benefits. But then I find that if I go too long without it, then it kind of stops and I have to , you know?
Yeah. And it really depends on what the condition is and the things with a lot of autoimmune conditions, it’s something that is kind of innate to your body. You can get it to remission. But you have to be really careful to keep it there. Or if there’s something your body’s reacting to, like it just could just be environmental, you can’t control, um, you’re always going to be needing something to calm that response and just for sure go away, unfortunately.
But, um, yeah, a lot of people can see. I believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And I’m also, I also work virtually. , um, teaching people how to do this work on themselves, so Oh, okay. Awesome. Yeah, that was gonna be another question I was gonna have is, yeah, so this is one thing I noticed after I’ve been practicing for a number of years, that people were, like you said, like, they’re stuck going to me.
And when they stopped, the symptoms came back. Um, and like I, I consider myself working as a healer and if people are dependent on me as a practitioner, they haven’t really. They’ve just found another method of symptom control. It’s maybe a bit better than the medications they’re on for life, but not much.
So I’m very, very strong on teaching clients both reflexology and acupressure techniques they can do on themselves, but also breath work. Um, I do find meditation , visualization, and hypnotherapy very powerful. as well. And then I do go into, um, some of the lifestyle, um, little bit into the diet nutrition, but I do have people I work with on that.
So it’s about helping them to have resources in multiple areas so that there will be a point in their life where they’re not relying on anybody, any medications to maintain good health. No, that’s awesome. Do you find that most of your clients that come to you initially are already on medications or do most of ’em come before they’ve started the medications?
Hmm. Usually they’re on medications and they’re either wanting to get off. Um, a lot of medications have side effects. Um, yeah. Often they’re either on prescriptions or they’re just taking a lot of Advil. A lot of clients actually come to me at the point where the Advil is starting to give them stomach.
So they know they need to stop taking as much Advil, so they’re looking for something else. Um, unfortunately people should come sooner, but I was just wondering cuz I was like, I’m sure that’s probably how it is, but you know, . Yeah, well, I mean, and that’s just how the medical system works too. You know, they’re, they’re taught to rely on pharmacological, um, um, solutions.
So that’s what we hear from our doctor. And, and you know, you have to really look to find the other. for sure. Absolutely. I feel like I was pretty lucky because my mom grew up with parents that were really into natural stuff and my grandma and said grandparents were, and they’ve passed on now, but when they were alive, they were very much into natural stuff and didn’t wanna take any medications of any kind ever.
My grandpa went all the way till he died of a heart. He died basically from having had a stroke a month before on his 93rd birthday, and he didn’t take any medications until like the last year of his. And then it was my mom and some other people trying to convince him to take the pill cuz he just didn’t wanna take it.
He just, they just didn’t do medications and my, they passed that on to my mom. And so I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever had antibiotics in my entire life. Hmm. Yeah. You know, there’s really a balance to be had and, and I think there’s a lot of benefit to growing up with exposure to a different way of doing things.
It’s, um, For sure. Absolutely. It’s, you know, but I do consider myself blessed cuz I’ve never really considered, you know, chiropractic and acupuncture and massage some of these things. I’ve never considered these things to be weird because I just kind of like herbs and tea and stuff like that. I just grew up around all that stuff.
But I realized that a lot of people didn’t. And so, you know, and I really feel like, like this is how our body wants to heal, you know? Yeah. I think the pills have a place and they can really help give us a break from our symptoms, so we. The energy and the resources to then look at other things, but our bodies want to heal from the inside out, and there’s so many great therapies out there that support that.
Absolutely do. Yeah. So somebody comes to you and they’re just like, I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what I want. Obviously, I mean, you can do things like asking questions to find out what they need. You do things also like muscle testing, things like that to figure out what, you know, whether they need reflexology, whether they need hypnotherapy, you know, or do you just kind of.
Get started with one therapy and then kind of add on as you see the need. Yeah. You know how people talk really well. Right. Um, so with the reflex, all these sessions, you’re often like, especially if I’m working on the feet, you’re sitting and facing each other. I mean, I do a thorough consultation, so I always start with a consultation beforehand.
Treatment, yeah. So a lot of that comes up just through going through their intake form. talking to them and asking about their symptoms. Um, but yeah, once I’m actually working on the feet, they give a lot of feedback as to what areas are, are affected and, and what’s going to support. Um, and then I do, um, it’s, it’s called facelift massage basically, but it’s massage techniques for the head, neck, and shoulders to help release tension.
The goal lifts and slims the face, which is fun, but it’s actually very therapeutic because it helps with that jaw pain and it helps a lot of us hold tension there. So then that’s the other thing I love doing, incorporating a little bit of that into a first session. Um, so I can kind of get a feel for where tension is being held in the upper body as well, especially for migraines.
Because a lot of people with migraines have a forward head posture and then that tension in the back of the neck is a big, big. That’s cool. I never really even heard of the facelift massage, but that’s pretty awesome. I like that idea. It’s pretty fun. It’s its act. Yeah. It, yeah. And why not have both benefits, right.
Healing and, and that was actually, so I studied facial reflexology and it was like an add-on. And it has been very powerful because when someone has a visual change to their face, they look in the mirror every morning. , it really helps them to feel like there’s been an inner shift as well. Like it really helps to support keeping up with the practices and keeping up with the therapy.
Um, so people get better results. And that’s another thing I can guide through virtually as well and get people doing a five minute routine every day. You know it. Amazing. That’s cool. Okay, so tell me a little bit more about the virtual side and how that would work if somebody wanted to work with you that way.
Since, you know, the majority of people listening to this probably won’t live near Winnipeg, Canada. So yeah, , I’ll definitely be sharing with my people if you’re in Winnipeg, show out. I, um, but yeah, so I, I also realized like a lot of the support I was given to my clients, I could do virtually and Covid, we shut down.
we realize we can do a lot more than we thought, um, even from a distance. So that’s where the hypnotherapy really, I, I really love to bring that in. Cause that mm-hmm. It really helps. I can see that. Yeah. Your ability to listen to your body, find out what your triggers are, what’s causing the root cause of the problem.
Creating healthy habit formation. You know, you want to eat well, you wanna drink more water, but it’s. hypnotherapy can make it like you just reprogram your subconscious. It’s pretty neat, actually. Um, and then I’m guiding people to use their own exercises. I’m getting guided through breathwork sessions, so you get that immediate pain relief from those sessions.
And I also provide program supportive people on it, where I really work through discovering your triggers and um, and managing them over. Cool. So if somebody was interested in that, they would just go to your website and there’s information there on it? Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give you the links, but my virtual services are primarily on, um, www.online.willow therapies iees.ca.
Okay. Awesome. Cool. Okay, so we’ll wing to that then. So if you’re interested in exploring the online virtual options, then we’ll have that link below and you can contact her. Yeah. . Cool. Well, is there anything else you’d like to share with anybody before we finish? Well, yes, so I think we had talked in the pre-interview.
Um, I like to leave people with a practical tip, like something they can take away and do. So with autoimmune diseases, anything that can really help to support the parasympathetic nervous system or that rest, restore, digest mode is really powerful. . So I usually will start clients off with a breathing exercise called diaphragmatic breathing.
Are you familiar with that? I’ve heard of it. Mm-hmm. ? Yes. Okay. So. Do we have time for me to go in? Yeah, sure, of course. Let’s try it. . Some people can listen before I go. This might be, we might wanna say to those of you listening to the audio, this might be good. The video will be posted on my YouTube channel that will link below.
And some of you may wanna go check out the video on this one. ? Yeah, I, I’ll, you know, this is, I can, I can talk to this one too. But basically diaphragmatic breathing is the idea. You’re breathing where? With your whole torso. So when you take a deep breath, . Often if we experience a lot of pain, we breathe out here in our chest.
So you’ll notice your chest rise and fall. Often people in pain have a faster breath rate, so what you wanna do is consciously breathe into your lower belly. It helps to put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly, kind of just below your belly button. And as you breathe in, concentrate on bringing your breath down towards where your lower hand is and feeling the belly move out.
and then let the breath come up into the chest. Exhale from your chest, and exhale from your belly and just take longer, slower breaths that way. Breathing belly first, and then when you breathe out, bring that belly towards the spine so you’re getting a large full breath. So this helps to support, um, the vagus nerve response, which is also really great for digestion and gut health.
Um, but very, very like supportive for, for autoimmune. Um, yeah, they’ve done a number of good studies on this, that it reduces symptoms quite significantly. Actually. Feels really good right now to just sit here and do this. That feels so good. Hey, I like it. The first little bit, I’m always starting with some kind of breath where, so you need to feel amazing.
Now, one thing I’ll note though is I do work with a lot of people who are in a constant state of stress and pain. Sometimes this is really, really hard to do. So some people, if you are listening and you, you just literally can’t breathe and cheer your belly, it’s not working, or you do it and you start to get dizzy or shaky or you start to get a headache, um, that’s not crazy.
it happens especially if your, your nervous system is just on overdrive. So what I recommend in that case is instead of sitting like we are lying down on the ground with your hands on your lower belly and not really trying to do much, just kind of concentrating on where your hands sit on your belly while you lie on the ground with your knees bent, um, and just starting there from the most simple place.
Do that for a while. See how it is. Spend three to five minutes. Then the next session starts to more consciously breathe into your belly, still lying on the floor. Work up to that three to five minutes. And as that starts to feel comfortable, then you could start doing it, maybe supported on the couch and slowly work your way up to where you’re sitting and able to do that breath work.
Um, because it can be quite hard for some people, as simple as it is. Yeah, just start at the most simple place, the place that helps you feel good and the best results from that. This is gonna sound like a lot. Um, so one of the areas I support is perimenopause as well. Also responds very well to this.
Three times a day, 15 minutes at a time. Um, most of us probably don’t have the time to do that, at least not right off the bat, if you can. Amazing. For the record, just starting with five minutes a day of that, of that conscious diaphragmatic breathing, um, and then building up as you can. That’s awesome. I love that.
Yeah, that’s great. . You know, just take some time away. Just make yourself stop working for a few minutes. If you’re in pain, if you have an autoimmune flare up right now, just give it a go. Um, try it for like every day for a week and see if it makes sense. Not gonna cost you anything and you have everything you need to do it.
That’s awesome. Thanks so much for sharing, Christine. That’s awesome. Yeah. Okay. Anything else that you wanted to share then? I think that is all for, for today. yeah, if you are actually, if you’re interested in having the full breathing exercise, I do have a free. it’s, it’s on my website, but, yeah, I don’t know if you wanna link that as well.
Yes, I will link that too so you can send it to me. We will link that The main website will give everybody, for anybody’s listening, but you’ll find the resources in the show notes. So you’ll definitely wanna take a look at That is will therapies.ca. I have a five minute guided version of a 15 minute guided version of breath work and then some act, some reflexology for hormone balance in that free resource. So. Awesome. That’s amazing. , I’m probably for sure gonna tan, download it myself and take advantage of it. . Yes. Yeah. Well thanks for having me. We can certainly chat more, more if you want later too. For sure. Absolutely.
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