Pain Freedom Pathway Course

This course is for you if:

You have had back pain, neck pain, or other musculo-skeletal pain for at least a year that is affecting your quality of life.
You want to get back to doing what is important to you. You don’t want pain to keep overshadowing everything.
You are fed up with trying ‘quick fixes’ that don’t last, or exercises that don’t help.
You are prepared to make some changes (these won’t be big demands on your time and energy, but if you don’t change anything, your pain won’t change…..)
You want support and care to turn this around, not be left to struggle on your own.

If you’re nodding along to the above, then let’s talk.

Pain is such an individual thing, so it’s best to just have talk first.

So, I invite you to book a confidential chat below.

This is a conversation to get to know you and your problems. What you have tried before. What might be missing that would be worth trying. What the path to getting better could be.

If I think I can help you, and crucially, if you are definitely interested! – I’ll let you know a bit more about the Pain Freedom Pathway Course, so you can work out if it is the right fit for you.

And if we’re not a good fit, I’ll help you figure out what the next steps you could take to help your pain on your own.

What I can promise you is that this 30 minutes will be worth the effort.

What people say about the Pain Freedom Pathway

I have been suffering with mid back, shoulder and neck tension and pain since I was a teenager. My job as a dental nurse not helping matters. I was looking for ways to teach myself how to hold my body to relieve tension. Mireille has been an amazing guide through the Alexander technique process. Helping you to re-train your thinking and therefore being more aware of how you and your muscles react to and hold tension, and therefore be able to gently release it.

Mireille’s course is very comprehensive. She provides sessions with her in person, along side an online learning course, as well accompanying feedback for each session with her. She is always positive, encouraging, every little step forward you make is a success. It’s really made a difference to my thinking. I notice now when I’m holding tension in my muscles and the noticing means I can make a change.

I highly recommend Mireille and her teaching of the Alexander technique!

Kathy

I’ve suffered with back pain for many decades, so when I had the opportunity to work with Mireille I jumped in without hesitation. I was very motivated because I had resigned myself to a life of pain which I thought could only get worse the older I got.

There were some light bulb moments like when the sensitisation of pain was explained & that really helped me to see that I didn’t need to fear the pain. I realised I could be in charge! The tendonitis I’d had in my shoulder disappeared & I finally had the courage to go on a long walk which I hadn’t done for years & I didn’t have the usual back pain.

I feel empowered & now fit the techniques Mireille has taught me into my daily schedule.

Tina L

The Pain Freedom Pathway is designed to give you a thorough grounding in the skills you need to transform your pain.

It will give you back a sense of control – with tools to settle pain and insight into what the trigger factors are for you (there may be more than you think).

It will help you move with more ease, and in a way that doesn’t aggravate your pain, giving you a chance to recover.

It will show you how to weave easier movement, and managing stress into your every day life, so once you have the skills, you don’t need to do extra exercises or ‘pain care’ stuff: you can just get on with life, and do the movement or exercise you love to do!

The course is delivered either completely online, or as a combination of online with in-person lessons if you live in the Norwich area.

Are you ready to make the changes that will shift your pain?

Will this help my condition ?

This course is aimed principally at musculoskeletal pain, particularly that affecting any part of the neck and back, but could also be anything from a knee to a hip or shoulder problem.

Pain may have very many different underlying causes, and it rarely comes in a neat box!

If you have other complicating conditions and other pain, just give me call and we will go through your needs and make sure this course is the right fit for you. I only want to work with you if I am confident you will benefit.

More reviews of the Pain Freedom Pathway

Mireille is an absolute pleasure and joy to work with. She has a great gift for conveying the information in a way you can understand. Mireille is kind, generous, gentle and supportive. Mireille’s course content is amazing and thorough, it helped me to look at moving in a completely different way. I have been able to let go of beating myself up so much for my body’s inadequacies and lack of movement.

My pain is more manageable and more in control and my muscle tension has greatly reduced. Things have started to unwind due to Mireille’s tips, tricks and techniques. Mireille quickly is able to get to the core of your issue and helps you to work through it in a kind, compassionate way.

I highly recommend Mireille as an Alexander Technique teacher, her course, private sessions. I have even had amazing insights just from her newsletters. She is dedicated to helping people in pain.

Alison

This pain course is transformational! I have so much more understanding of the way my body works physically and how powerful the mind body connection is. The bringing together of these two areas of information and awareness have been so valuable.

I haven’t experienced any back pain since starting this course despite doing some fairly heavy manual work in that time.

Even more of a bonus is I now have the freedom of not being in fear of my back ‘going’ because of the valuable knowledge and tools I have learnt.

Rachel

I have had ongoing back issues all my adult life and have always heard that this technique could be the answer but had never really understood what it was or how I could practice it. It has transformed my belief in what me and my back are able to do.

She is very good at giving me tiny digestible bits of information for me to take away and work on. The practice has seeped into my life, standing, lying, sitting, moving and last month I found myself lugging around large stand alone ovens as if they were fluffy pillows.

I tell people about what the concept is and I always say it is difficult to explain without sounding a bit woo-woo but, it is stripping away the bad habits and tension picked up through the years and realigning your posture and movement to mimic how you stood and moved as a child.

The sessions are very relaxing and I am not joking when I say that I would like to continue seeing her for the rest of my life.

There are also listen at home recordings so that I can practice in between sessions. I can not recommend more highly.

Sophie

I came across Mireille and her work via social media and was intrigued to find out more about her approach and the Alexander technique, too. As a fellow vet with a similar pain story, I got in touch and we set up an initial call.

Needless to say, I signed up to the Mireille’s Pain Freedom Pathway. For me, having a structured program to work through and learn more is an important part of this. The course is easy to follow with great little videos that are not too long and easy to implement. I valued the live Zoom calls with Mireille, too. She is great at spotting tension held in the body and has really made me understand and use key elements of the Alexander technique in my every day life.

Her approach is very individual and she always took my progress and challenges into account during each session and ensured that the work we did during the online session was applicable and meaningful in what I was trying to do in real life.

I recommend working with Mireille if you are suffering from persistent pain and want to learn a different (and more gentle) approach to moving, reconnecting with your body and creating more awareness around movement patterns and habits.

Sandra

I came to Backtoactive after having trouble with back pain for several years. I had tried physio, Pilates, osteopathic services ,acupuncture, etc. I had read that Alexander Technique can also help with posture and confidence, and is used by singers, which made me interested in giving it a go. I found it surprising and fascinating how the lessons trained me to “talk to my body” and release the tension I hold, not only in my back but in other areas I hadn’t even noticed. While working with Mireille I have been through stressful times in my job in healthcare, and I’ve been able to identify how stress relates to my pain and find ways to calm my nervous system using the techniques she has taught me. Having worked in similar environments, Mireille has a level of understanding which informs her calm and supportive approach.

I believe learning to use Alexander Technique is the best thing I have done for my back pain. Additionally, it’s an invaluable tool for managing stress and supporting wellbeing, and I’d highly recommend Mireille’s lessons.

Cathy

I had become increasingly aware that I had a lot of muscle tension which was not helping my physical fatigue. However I had no structured idea of how to let go of this. Alexander Technique had been mentioned to me a couple of times so I thought it would be worth exploring.

Mireille is a brilliant teacher – breaking the concepts and how to apply them down in to bite size chunks. She is also great at adapting to my limitations and is refreshingly non judgemental and makes the lessons enjoyable too. I now know how to release tension rather than just shift it around. My posture, balance and quality of rest periods have all improved. I can see how applying AT is going to be such a useful life skill.

Victoria

With lockdown preventing my joining any exercise classes, I began to realise I needed something deep and structured to help my increasingly (to my mind) poor posture. I have a long way to go, but under Mireille’s guidance, light hands, and lots of reassurance, I am beginning to understand the process that the Alexander technique offers. It is unlike any other kind of ‘corrective’ exercise.

During my sessions I was gently guided in a ‘thinking’ process. Mireille instinctively understood my psychology, and how bodily tensions emanate from internal stresses. Stresses that one is unaware of, having lived with them for so long.

I feel I have begun on a journey (apologies for the cliche) and may need ‘reminding’ by reading the excellent notes that accompany each session, and indeed taking part in further classes. Mireille has not set me ‘goals’ that I may not meet, such as a perfectly straight back, but has shown me how I can help myself in realistic and everyday ways, so that I can move more comfortably.

Sue

Mireille has used her training as an Alexander technique teacher in correcting long term patterns of faulty body use to cure her own chronic pain. She therefore comes from a place of first hand experience in this respect.

I find her to be very skilled at identifying entrenched patterns of use and little habits that need to be unlearned in order to gently and gradually re-educate the body to be more at ease and pain free.

We work on specific areas that cause discomfort or difficulty in everyday life, such as sitting and working positions, repetitive tasks where tension creeps in and builds up causing stiffness and pain and on improving movement skills. You learn to recognise where you are using excessive and unnecessary effort to carry out simple everyday activities.

Mireille sends you a resume of the work you do in every session which serves as a great ongoing prompt to build up your awareness and understanding of what you’re doing wrong so that slowly you learn to release problem causing habits. You can also benefit from her short online recorded voice sessions to help your daily practice .

I think everyone can benefit from lessons in the Alexander technique , whatever your walk of life or occupation, to generally improve the way you function and perform better at everything you do.