Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:00

Welcome to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we bring together forward-thinking practitioners who are redefining healthcare through root cause, holistic, and patient-empowering approaches. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Greenland. I'm a medical UK doctor working in functional medicine, focused at root cause analysis for complex conditions, and this podcast is about creating a space where health professionals can share what they're building, why they're building it, and how we can collectively move healthcare forward. Today I'm joined by Jono Goosen. Jono is a London-based back pain and movement specialist and founder of Jono Goosen Limited. His mission is simple but powerful. Help people move better, feel better, and live the life they want to, pain-free. Jono, with that, I'd like to welcome you to the show and thank you very much for joining us.

Jono Goosen: 0:44

Thank you very much, Andrew, and um yeah, thank you for the introduction. I'm very happy to be here.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:49

Perfect. So maybe you could start at the top. Could you start at the top? Could you perhaps talk a little bit about your journey and how you've ended up doing what you do? Um, obviously, you've had quite a geographical um journey as well, both professionally as well. Can you take us back to Zimbabwe and walk us through how you ended up building your practice in the UK?

Jono Goosen: 1:08

Okay, so it's pretty it's uh I mean it is a bit of a long journey. Um it all started when I was a you know a young boy. My mom used to make me massage her back because she was in the health and fitness sector. Um being, you know, she was a personal trainer, and then she she started owning gym. So at about the age of 14, I was always pulled into the gym to help people use the machines and all of that. So the human body and human health has been a great interest of mine since a young age. And then progressing through school, it came time to leave school and what I was thinking of doing, and then the Sharks Rugby Academy came up, and then I went down to Durban and I played rugby for a bit. I studied sports science there for two years, and then um you know my rugby career took off for a little bit, played semi-professionally, and then I ended up moving back to Zimbabwe from Durban, and I went back into the gyms, and I was helping a lady expand her facility and working with clients and all of that. And then I got a bit bored of of kind of working in that environment. Um, it kind of got to the point where I just felt that people were paying me to count for them. And I knew that there was something missing, and I could, I could, um, I could help people a bit more with with their with their bodies and and their health, but I just didn't know what. So I decided to take a complete pivot and went and bred chickens for a couple of years in the middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe and Mazvingo. And I um I quite enjoyed my experience in there and working with with the birds, and um, you know, we're producing 140,000 day old chicks a week. So I really had to monitor the environment that these hens were in, and that's where I really started to understand the impact of the environment on our production, really, you know, because if the hen wasn't happy, it wouldn't give you an egg. And cut a few years, go go fast track a few years from there. I then went back to Harari, and then I was looking for the next thing to do because I, you know, wanted to go back into working with people again. And then this process came up called Maya Reformation, and it was developed by Jackie Simpson. Well, she's the founder of it in Harari, and her life's journey is a is a you know, it's a different topic, uh different question, I think. And um, so I went again. It was um my it was my mother Jane who then told me to go and look into this, and I you know, I was like, you know, it sounds like a massage to me. And she says, it's the furthest thing from a massage. Just go and speak with Jackie and and just and see where it goes. So I went and I spoke with and I sat down with Jackie, and then I she the first question she asked me was, Why do you want to be a practitioner? I said, Well, because I want to I want to help people in a way, in a more meaningful way. And she said, Okay, that's great. So she said, Well, first of all, you have to come and have the process. And when I went and lay on her treatment bed and she gave me my first session, I remember it. It was it was, you know, it was really something. I was like, wow, okay, this is this is quite intense, but it felt amazing. And I then finished the course of treatment with her, and then I joined her. Um, I went on her second course, and yeah, everything just started making sense, working in the body. That the way that um the process works with it, you know, you I could see with my understanding of of the the anatomy and physiology, I could see what I was trying to do and what the body was was meant to do, and that's to heal and restore through improved blood and lymphatic flow. And yeah, so qualified in 2018, and then I started thinking how best to go about this. And what's funny is that I I gave a treatment to a person who then launched me in a new area. So I went from Harari, I was treating in Victoria Falls, and then I treated a lady in Harare who lived in Zambia. So she took me up to Zambia. I was working in the Copper Belt for a while, and then I uh I then I gave a lady a treatment in Harare who was from the Isle of Wight, and then she said, Jonna, there's nothing like this in the UK, and if you're interested, she would host me in the Isle of Wight and see where it goes. And that was in July 2019, and um at the same time we're also coming on holiday to visit my wife's grandmother and her father. So we just tied it all together, and then I was also speaking to a uh tetraplegic in London who heard about me from somebody in South Africa, so it's you know, the stars were kind of aligning, and then um we came over here in July 2019, um, and then we just got things kicked off, and then people were actually following me around the country because I gave a treatment to a lady who was from Yorkshire, and she said, Would you like to come to Yorkshire? So I kind of went up to there as well. And then um my grandmother-in-law lives in Shropshire, and then I was working in London, and then so that's how the whole UK came across it. And then when I came in, came back to the UK in January 2020, scheduled to go back in March 2020, and then of course, COVID came along and um everything went into lockdown and we couldn't go back. And then that's when I spoke to my wife and said, you know, the opportunity is here for me to apply for my ancestral visa, and that's going to take a seven-year process to get my British citizenship. So that's that's where that's how it all came about being in the UK. And um, yeah, I've settled in London because that's I think that's where you know everybody needs to come to London, I found, for some for some reason. So um, yeah, so that's that's where I am today, five years into it.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 6:51

Lovely. Well, thank you for that sharing that journey. It's always um inspiring and interesting to hear how people get from the beginning to where they are. So, for those that don't know much about myoreformation, and that includes me to some extent, can you give us a kind of an idea of exactly what it looks like from a patient perspective? What can they expect? What does it do perhaps differently from other modalities?

Jono Goosen: 7:11

So, myoreformation uh it's a full-body treatment designed to separate muscles and ligaments and open up joints, and that way we are promoting the blood and the lymphatic flow. And um and the way we move through the body is we're working perpendicular to the muscles' attachments. So the easiest way I could explain it is our body's working, our bodies work vertically, and what the what the process does is it it takes the body horizontally, so we're stretching each muscle from its attachments and then letting it go, and then the body's going to try and recalibrate to that. And through that, through that's the the separation of the of the muscles, we're also lengthening the muscles and allowing them to return back to their resting position. So inevitably, we are resetting the fascia and and triggering the muscle memory because that's what's doing the healing at the end of the day. So it's yeah, I think that's that's the best way I can describe it.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 8:15

Thank you. I mean, what's the closest it comes to? Because there's obviously lots of different manual therapies out there. Is it a blend of other things or is it very similar to something else that people might have a handle on?

Jono Goosen: 8:26

Yeah, so I so it was stemmed from Bowen, which uh was developed by Dr. Bowen. And because if if we go to Jackie's story, because this is her process, this is her life's journey into healing herself from um being declared a quadriplegic at the age of 19. Um so if I go if I go into the founder's story, I'll just give you a brief of that, and then that will give you an idea of where the how the process came about. So when she, after her accident and being declared a quadriplegic, she started spending every waking moment trying to get her signals back to her fingers and her toes. And then eight weeks later, she managed to sign herself out of hospital. And then from there, she went into the rehab and the physiotherapy work, and then she she they managed to get her walking again, but it was always assisted walking, and she was always in constant pain. And then they turned to her and said, This is all you're gonna get, so you might as well start making provisions to make your life a bit more comfortable. And she said, Well, first of all, you said I wouldn't walk. Now I'm walking, now you're saying this is all I'm gonna get. So she said, Well, thank you. And then she went into the alternative side and found Bowen. And Bowen gave her some relief, and then she managed to learn it. Well, she she studied it, and then she was practicing on family and friends, and then she came across vasco-muscular harmonization technique, VHT, which is all about stimulating the nervous system, because the philosophy is once you once the body's gone through something traumatic, like an accident or or anything like that, the nervous system will contract itself. And if we don't do anything to retrack that, then the body is going to stay in high alert and you're preventing the blood and lymphatic flow from doing its primary role, which is to feed the body. So she managed to learn that again, and then she figured out that both, you know, Bowen wasn't challenging enough, and VHT was a bit too challenging. So she went somewhere in the middle, and then she incorporated the lymphatic stimulation into it. So the process is it's a bit of everything in one, is the best, is how I like to tell people. It's like you can go to lymphatic drainage, you can go to roffing or massage, or you can go to VHT, or you can go to whatever else, or reflexology, or anything, or you come into my information, you can get all of those modalities in one.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 10:56

Amazing. So tell us a little bit about your practice as it stands now and what kind of patients tend to seek you out. In fact, how do they even find you? Because I suspect they may not necessarily be searching for the name of the therapy, but they clearly get to you somehow. So tell us a bit about that.

Jono Goosen: 11:12

So I mainly uh Radio HP has been my first port of call for um just putting myself out there in terms of and then it's mainly been word of mouth and referrals. That's how I've been managing to build my clients. And I've been focusing on on you know, my adverts at Radio HP has primarily been on back pain. Because you know, it it's probably the most common um thing that's affecting people in this day and age is you know, everyone's suffering from some back pain in some form or another, um, especially being at desk all the time. So I've that's how I attract people in, and then once they've felt the process working for them, there's always somebody that they can that they can think of that would benefit from it. So that's kind of how it's been working for me.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 12:07

And um tell us maybe a little bit of uh like a typical patient journey. Now I appreciate every condition, and even within back pain, there's a whole array of different presentations. But what might a journey look like for a patient with back pain in terms of their initial contact with you, working through the treatment plan? What does it look like?

Jono Goosen: 12:27

So I always recommend starting the process with three treatments within a two-week period. Um, just when we obviously when we start, to give the body a really good start to the process because when we open the channels, the body is going to try and go back to what it knows because that's the most efficient way of operating. And then and I spoke earlier about triggering the muscle memory because that's what's doing the healing. So the three sessions over a two-week period allows me allows us to trigger the muscle memory and also monitor the how the body's responding to the process because we are taking the body out of its comfort zone. We're going into the threshold because that's where the work needs to be done, but obviously at the body's pace. And then the so the second session, we can go the body will be a bit more trusting to the process, and then the third session really just sets in that that memory, and then we can then determine how chronic the body is in, what frequency we need to work at, whether we come in every two weeks or every three weeks or every month. It just depends on how chronic the body is and the response to the process.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 13:46

So, in the world of back pain, what are the biggest misconceptions that people have about back pain in your in your um but from your perspective?

Jono Goosen: 13:56

It's that it's something that they have to live with or manage. Or um, you know, it's and I know everything has it's part of it, you know, but they kind of say that the the the they have a weak core. Yeah, they may have a weak core, but what I found is that when you're putting load on top of load, you just you're just kicking the can down the road. You're not really getting to the cause of the problem. Um and like I said, when you're sitting at a, you know, it's depending on on your life's on your lifestyle and where you are, what your what your body's doing for the majority of the of your day. So when when you try and straighten up, that's when the the pain starts setting in because your body's so used to being in a certain position. And once we remove the tension, you're allowing the vertebras to then free up a little bit and move naturally within the body. So it's not about strengthening or putting load because the back's already loaded, which is why you're getting the pain and inflammation in the first place.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 14:58

And so for patients who've had back pain for many, many, many years and have got that mindset that it's something they have to put up with, how do you get them to reconnect with trust in their body? Obviously, you do the hands-on work, but what about the kind of the psychological side of um of this?

Jono Goosen: 15:12

That's part of the parcel with the process as well, because the mind has to take part in the treatment. It's not me just treating your body, the mind has to be actively involved in diffusing that natural fight or flight response that the body's going to go through with the movement associated with the treatment. So bring which will then calm the mind down because we are challenging, waiting for the mind to calm the body down, and then we move through the through the through the muscle structure. So it's kind of it's you know that it's it all it all ties into one process.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 15:51

Thank you. And so zooming out a little bit from your niche and your speciality, what shifts are you seeing in the wider movement and rehab space at the moment?

Jono Goosen: 16:01

Um I think people are starting to ask better questions, I think. Um they're starting to take to take better care of themselves, but it's very slow, and they they know that well, they want to it's all about preventative care now, and people are starting to acknowledge that the more they stay mobile, the longer they will be mobile. Um, uh instead of just sitting in one place and just paying, and just when the body, when something goes wrong with the body, that's when they pay themselves attention. But you know, people are coming to me, they're like, I'm starting to feel tension, and then I say, well, that's a good time to come in because we are dressing it early rather than waiting five, 10, 15 years before something chronic pops up, and then you then have to go through the more drastic measures. So I think preventative care is becoming more prevalent right now at the moment, which is which is nice to see.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 17:04

Do you think we're moving towards more empowerment or more dependency? Obviously, outside of your setting, because I appreciate that you have a slightly different approach, but just more generally.

Jono Goosen: 17:14

Um it's a it's it's a difficult one to s to say because there's there's I think they're quite evenly distributed at the moment. It's um I think I think it comes down to to uh creating more awareness for for people out there, which is why you know I was very attracted to your podcast. Is you know, there's so many different things to to do that you don't need to become dependent on one thing. You can empower yourself to to live a life that you want to live if you choose. Um, I think people become restricted in in what they know, and that's when they become dependent, I think. So it's it's kind of a mixed bag, really.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:03

And I guess you have a lot of people coming to you from conventional medicine. Where do you think the shortfalls still are in conventional medicine as the way they approach musculoskeletal problems and back pain more specifically?

Jono Goosen: 18:20

Uh yeah, this is a tricky one because I, you know, it's something that's a very hot topic at the moment, isn't it? Um for me, following the science is very is very important. It's research is coming out and it's starting to enlighten us on new on new studies on how the body actually moves and corrects itself. And what I've found is that medicine is still basing its approach on old science. I know that I know that it is starting to shift, but majority of my patients that have come come to me have gone through the through the usual um routine of you know sterile injections. And then if that doesn't work, which you know, the first one works well, then the body builds a tolerance and that to the second one, then the third one hardly touches sides because the body is you know it's strength, it's adapting to that process. And then the next port of call is going into spinal fusion or um surgery or anything like that, um, instead of addressing the soft tissue. And then, but obviously they've sent them to physiotherapy and rehab and and all of that, which is then adding load onto an already stressed area. So if we go back to the science and we look at um kinesiology, that gives us a great anal um a great picture of of where musculoskeletal treatment needs to be and where the awareness needs to come in as well.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 19:54

So there's I guess there's still a gap between movement professionals, in verticomas, and medical professionals. Is that getting any smaller from what you're saying, or are we just in status quo?

Jono Goosen: 20:06

Uh I think, like I said earlier, is that people are starting to ask better questions, you know. So, and they're starting to look for the alternative routes. I'm not taking anything away from anything here because everything has a place in in the grand scheme of things. It just depends how we can incorporate it all into one banner, really, to give the patient the best form of care. And I spoke at the I spoke at the septus patient um conference two weeks ago talking about this exact gap between being medically stable and physically confident, and where where my work will fit in is between that gap where the the MRI scans and the x-rays pick say that there's nothing wrong with the person, but there's but the person is still feeling the pain and discomfort. And there's nothing really to direct that person to an answer that they seek. So that's where that's where my information will sit in, just to help bridge that gap with making the patient's life a bit more um easier to get through, I guess.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:18

Thank you. So I'd like to move a little bit around to the business side because I know many of our listeners will be building their own practices. I'm just curious to know what's working really well for you in the from a business point of view at the moment in your practice.

Jono Goosen: 21:30

Um what's really it's it's it's kind of hard, you know, it's you've you've got to be at it all the time. And um I think I think it's the creating the awareness part of it, which is working well. Every client that comes in, you just it's about helping them understand what we're doing and then creating the referrals, and then you know, and then obviously. working on the back end and just keeping people informed and just making making I think it's making my clients feel my patients feel heard and and understood really and you know letting them know that I can sympathize with where they are and work with them to get them to where they want to be. I think that's the main just making them feel heard I guess.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 22:25

And on the other side of the coin what are some of the challenges of doing the work that you do and extending your reach and general the general business challenges or maybe things you perhaps have to overcome along the journey?

Jono Goosen: 22:38

It's definitely people well you know going down the conventional route and you know I'm always you know complementary alternative therapy is always the last resort once they don't get the answers that they need from the um the medical world. So I guess that that that is one of the challenges that I'm that that I face is you know people coming in with the mindset that you know that they've already been told that nothing's gonna nothing is wrong with them and nothing's gonna fix them. And then it's just changing that mindset and working with you know once we start working with people and we start getting to the deep seated um tension and we start releasing that then the body's is going to shift and then there is a you know sometimes there is a regression before there's progression um because we have we're taking the body back through what it's been coping with. And and then that can get really really scary for people because now they've like you know something's been triggered so then it's they then want to go back to to the conventional route because now they think something has happened to them rather than this is you know you're going through a healing crisis it's part of the process we just need to allow the body just trust that the body knows what it's doing. And um you know at the end of the day everything that you do relies on the body's own ability to heal itself. So we just need to do something that just enhances that own ability. So as a business owner we often wear all of the hats or at least many hats which of those hats is the biggest time drain for you in the business definitely um marketing and uh lead generation and um putting that out you know because I'm in I'm in I'm in my practice four days a week and I've only I've only given myself one day to do the administration but I found that if you only do if you only do administration on one day you're too slow to keep up with this with the the world of technology at the moment you know people want answers now and if you're not there to do that then um you know you can you could leave business on the table. So definitely um it would definitely be marketing and just keep make keeping yourself in in in the public eye because one you know what you know what they say out of sight out of mind. Indeed.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 25:00

And if your practice suddenly doubled um its new client inquiries in the next month what would happen hopefully nothing would break and hopefully not you but what what would happen? Well sure I I would I would uh be a very happy man I'll tell you that anyway and luckily I I've uh got my wife on the other end to help me with the booking inquiries and and with the administration and that type of stuff so um yeah no I mean nothing will break it's just a matter of of how to service those people as efficiently as I can I guess um so yeah no it's I I welcome that that um new dilemma I'm gonna give you a magic wand I'm gonna empower you with a magic wand if you could fix one thing in the business tomorrow what would that be it would be lead generation that's obvious if you you've had a long journey you've obviously um come on quite an interesting route with uh experiences and influences but if you were to build everything again from scratch tomorrow would you do anything differently um I haven't thought about that would I do anything differently I I um I probably I don't think I would I think everything everything happened to kind of get me to where I am today I need I think I needed to go through that process to gain the experience so you know if if I had the experience that I would have today I probably would just um instead of driving all over the country I'd just get on you know podcasts like I'm with you today Andrew and then start talking about it and then um just creating awareness that way rather than thinking I have to lug myself all over the place I guess.

Jono Goosen: 27:08

You know I I think I'd be a bit more efficient in terms of of gaining awareness I think but I think that's the main thing. Yeah but other than that you know I've been I've been I really love my journey I've I've been I've been luckier than most um being able to work in different locations all over the place. I think I've seen more of England than most than most people have their entire life so I don't know I I think this this journey has has been my journey and I am where I am because of it. So yeah I wouldn't want to change anything.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 27:42

So nice thank you.

Jono Goosen: 27:44

And as you look ahead what's the um next evolution of your work look like would the next evolution would be to establish a training school and start teaching people about the process and get more practitioners out there because I'm getting inquiries from all over the country and um yeah I think that's that's the next step for me and I've you know I've already started um advertising it in in uh the the FHT magazine the Federation of Hallistic Therapists which is my governing body and you know getting a few inquiries from there but it would be to find a to find a suitable location and start teaching people and just build build a team of practitioners to help the public I guess.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 28:27

Are there many of you out there at the moment?

Jono Goosen: 28:30

So uh in the UK there are three of us um practicing there's two in London and uh two of us in London and then there's one in Stroud and um there's one practitioner who's just opened up in Australia and the rest are based in Zimbabwe I think there's about 25 people in Zimbabwe at the moment. So yeah that's it's an it's an ever-evolving discipline um I mean like I said it's it's stemmed from other practices but it brings in everything um you know it stimulates every single system in the body at the same time which is what the body needs in order to kick start its own natural abilities.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 29:14

So plenty of scope to expand in the UK based on those numbers thank you. Yeah plenty of scope yes with that genre I'd like to thank you very much for joining us today it's been a really interesting conversation hearing about your journey your practice a little bit about the modality that you're practicing and how you're helping people and I wish you all the best but thank you very much for joining us.

Jono Goosen: 29:32

Thank you very much Andrew I really appreciate uh being on the show and um yeah thank you