Ruth Backway, P.T.

At the time I decided to do the Hellerwork training I had been a PT for 7 years doing acute care and orthopedics in hospitals at first, followed by home health and convalescent care physical therapy . My continuing education training was heavy in Maitland Manual Therapy and Rocabado TMJ treatments, both of which increased my interest in looking at posture. While attending a Functional Orthopedics I Class with Greg Johnson, I met Stuart Bell, Certified Hellerwork Practitioner. Stuart was teaching large portions of this class for Greg, covering anatomy and soft tissue mobilization techniques.

Stuart suggested that I might find Hellerwork interesting and invited me to try a session. As a new PT in 1976, I had sustained an upper back and shoulder injury, which was still causing me a great deal of pain. I was unable to drive for more than 15 minutes without my upper back hurting. I also had a long history of knee problems, stemming from my teenage years, and I hadn’t been able to run more than about 30 feet since then.

After having 3 Hellerwork sessions, I found that I was able to drive 30 minutes without upper back pain. One day, after my session, I was short of time and found myself running to my car! I stopped just short of the car, realizing I had been running without knee pain for the first time in probably 10 years. At that point I decided I had to learn how to do Hellerwork for the benefit of my clients.

In order to do the training, the largest hurdles to overcome were the issue of finding the money for tuition and side-stepping the good-intentioned but distracting opinions of my family and friends. They could not understand why I wasn’t going to graduate school instead of taking a non-PT credentialed training. I had just purchased a house 6 months before entering the training, and was definitely cash poor.

Due to my exuberance about Hellerwork and my natural tendency to share, I told some of my current and former Home Health clients about the training. To my surprise and delight, 2 of these people offered to loan me money towards the tuition. We set up a re-payment plan, and I paid them back with interest within the first year. One of them refused to accept monetary “interest,” so I gave her the series as a gift to repay her kindness to me.

When I entered the training, I really didn’t realize what was involved regarding the emotional aspects of the work. I felt well-prepared to learn the manual therapy techniques, since I had considerable experience with manual work before the training. I found the anatomy review and the kinesiology challenging, in a good way. I was looking at the same information I had received in PT school from a new perspective, and this new perspective seemed incredibly useful. A great deal of the movement reeducation in Hellerwork relates to activities of daily living: standing, sitting, walking, bending, and reaching. As a PT, I had been spending a lot of my time working with patients on these activities, but I had never learned to look at the body’s motion as it related to these activities. Nor had I thought about changing the alignment of the soft tissues to create increased mobility in the joints, therefore making these motions easier to perform.

While I was going through the training, I continued to work as a Home Health PT, and found direct applications of the soft tissue techniques and movement retraining for some of my Stroke and Back Pain patients to be particularly helpful.

Throughout the training, I was pleased with the quality of teaching, and with having the opportunity to explore the connections between my own emotional and physical make-up. Once I had completed the training, I felt absolutely blessed to have been able to take part in this type of training. My ability to be present while in conversation with my family members and friends took a gigantic leap forward, and I was able to listen more carefully to my patients, and understand their problems and needs more fully, both physically and emotionally.

Moving into a practice was actually fairly easy for me. I have always been frugal, and fairly level-headed in business dealings. It seemed obvious to me that the best way to start would be to work 3 days a week doing Home Health and two half days doing Convalescent Care, while building my private Hellerwork practice on the other two half-days. I started out giving inservice workshops to the companies for whom I already worked, and the PTs, OTs, STs, nurses and CNAs of these companies became my first clients.

With my TMJ background, I also had marketing meetings with some local dentists and orthodontists, explaining how TMJD was often related to forward head posture, and how Hellerwork reduced forward head, thus relaxing the tensions around the jaw. They began sending some of their patients to me for Hellerwork sessions.

Slowly, my practice began to build, and I gave up the Convalescent Care, working for myself 2 days a week. As the client base continued to grow, I changed the proportion to Home Health 2 days/week and private practice 3 days/week. Finally, I started working for myself full time. When I opened my office, I didn’t worry about having a lot of equipment. I had some cuff weights, some small dumb-bells, a piece of masonite to use as a ‘sliding board’ for gravity minimized exercises, my treatment table, a desk and my hands. That was all that I needed.

In the beginning I had a lot of fear that I would not be able to sustain enough business to make my house payment and car payment. But, time took care of this fear. It is hard to make the first step, but I started by sub-leasing a room in someone else’s practice, so I kept my office overhead very low. This allowed me to build up my referral base and put enough money in the bank to cover my expenses for 6 months. That gave me a reasonable cushion, so I then felt safe enough to move into a larger office.

Overall, the hardest thing was making sure I had my expenses covered. I had already learned how to budget, so I simply had to apply this to my new venture and keep to my budget. The easiest thing for me has been talking to others about what I was doing, because the changes I was seeing in my clients was amazing! I was finally able to treat old problems in new ways, and these new ways were really helping my patients’ bodies become more balanced and flexible.

I think one of the main questions people need to ask themselves is, “Am I cut out to be an entrepreneur?” I already knew that I was capable of working for myself, providing my own health insurance and motivating myself to get my work done in a timely and complete manner. I had done some in-home sales in college to make ends meet, and I already had learned that the worst thing that could happen in sales was that someone would say “NO,” and the sooner they did that, the sooner you could move onto someone who wanted to say “YES.”

I have always taken the position that it is not my job to “sell” anyone. It is my job to share information, look for the win-win situation and understand when my services will be of benefit to a person. This takes a lot of the stigma out of talking to prospective clients, since all you are actually doing is looking for the common thread that unites you with the client and then seeing how you can best serve them.

Knowing Hellerwork has benefited me immensely, both personally and professionally. The communication skills I learned in the training have been applicable to trying times in my personal life and to working with both difficult and easy clients. My relationships with my family members have improved greatly due to my newly acquired abilities to listen and facilitate. My relationship with myself improved dramatically, for the same reason.

Physically, I have grown from knowing Hellerwork. Ten years ago, I had sustained a serious injury during a fall. I was disabled for 2 years. If I did not know Hellerwork, not been able to treat myself and have the assistance of some willing Hellerwork hands, I would not have been able to return to work.

Generally, my life is busier than my mind thinks it wants to be, but I am pleased with my activities and my level of expertise as a practitioner. I recognize that I have my niche in the PT world, and am happy to work one-on-one with my clients in this meaningful way. I schedule one client per hour, and my work is generally calm and unhurried.

The manual skills I gained from training in Hellerwork have made it easier for me to learn additional manual and energetic techniques. I have found the direct application of Hellerwork and other manual techniques, to the PT treatment of my clients with scoliosis, balance problems, osteoarthritis, joint contractures, orthopedic injury, sports injury, etc. I have an understanding of the need for the body to be in balance throughout its structure, and work more on treating dysfunction, rather than treating pain. This is extremely useful in my profession.

Physically, I continue to get better, and heal from my own injuries more each year. I have taken up ballroom dancing and even tried Clogging a few months ago. I am able to exercise aerobically, and also continue my personal Yoga practice. And, I am able to work, using manual techniques, when doctors and OTs told me I would never be able to return to this type of work after my injury 10 years ago. I also have gained a more poignant understanding of the ebb & flow of lives and of business, and these serve me every day.

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