From chronic pain to freedom

How Victoria Jahkeline Salomon, Federation of Holistic Therapists Tutor of the Year 2023, created a unique healing methodology that transforms lives.

For so many years, I was in pain. For much of my life, misdiagnosed Coeliac disease left me in agony and unable to function, while generations of family trauma meant that anxiety and depression were never far away.

I felt like I had tried everything to shift my physical and emotional pain – and I felt like the medical world had failed me.

Then, on a trip to India just over 25 years ago, I discovered the healing power of so-called ‘alternative’ medicine and – for the first time – began to connect my body’s pain with my life experiences.

Fast forward to today, and I’m a qualified therapist specialising in bodywork and mobility. Through gaining qualifications in Clinical Massage, Kinesiology, Biomechanics, Medical Acupuncture, Reflexology and more, I’ve been able to help hundreds of people – including myself – to recover from acute and chronic pain or illness.

But in my private practice, I noticed that clients were often coming to me after being in pain for years. Most of them had spent hundreds or even thousands of pounds on chiropractors, osteopaths, physios and other healing modalities. And yet, nothing seemed to be working to relieve their pain in the long term. Then, every time they were in pain, they had to go back to someone else to relieve it.

I believed they could heal themselves, like I had healed myself. So, I started to teach them what I knew. Teaching and empowering my clients to understand their bodies, their internal alignment and how their bodies and emotions were connected led me to the path I am on today, as the creator of The Ixchel System® and the Get Into Your Body methodology.

What is The Ixchel System?

At its core, The Ixchel System® is a series of courses and workshops designed to bring health and pain relief to all systems of your body.

The system is specifically designed to give you the power to break free from chronic pain by teaching you to understand and rebalance your posture, gait, biomechanics, autonomic nervous system (ANS), nutrition and any genetic or inherited disorders.

Starting with our signature Get Into Your Body courses, all our programmes connect and integrate with one other, creating a systematic, easy-to-follow approach that brings lasting pain relief, sustainable wellness and functional, ongoing emotional and physical health.

The entire system was created from my own life experiences of recovering from pain and trauma, as well as all my experience of working directly with clients who have learnt to heal themselves.

I am so thankful to have been able to reclaim my health and my driving purpose now is to help everyone else to reclaim theirs, to enjoy the freedom of an energised and happy life.

Why aren’t we taught how our bodies work?

Without fail, every single one of my clients asks me why their doctor, physio or osteopath has never shown or told them about what they learn in the Get Into Your Body Methodology.

What’s more, when I work with yoga teachers, other movement therapists and medical students even they wonder why they have never been shown the basics of what I teach in my clinic, workshops and courses.

And my answer is, I don’t know. The practices I teach within The Ixchel System® aren’t complicated. In fact, they’re beautifully simple.

Many of these practices are inspired by my teachers Gary Ward and Chris Sritharan, combining elements of The Anatomy In Motion – Flow Motion Model together with mindfulness to help you feel into, realign and rebalance your whole body.

Remembering how we’re supposed to move

Most joints in your body are designed to move in three directions (known as planes of movement) in particular timing with all of your other joints, in every step you take.

When I first learnt this essential aspect of rehabilitation and preventative movement therapy, I was amazed at how simple it was. Ultimately, the key to being pain-free is simply a by-product of shifting your body mass and moving your body correctly.

Learning these movement skills and the natural relationships that are meant to exist between different parts of my body created extraordinary shifts in my life – and when I started incorporating this approach into my sessions with clients, it revolutionised the results of all my treatments.

We all need to learn to walk well

Movement therapy isn’t just yoga poses, pilates moves or a trip to the osteopath or physio – you need to learn to walk well. Your body needs to be reminded how to access its natural, correct postures with every step you take.

Most of us have lost the art of these crucial alignments and continue, step after step, to put imbalance into our bodies.

It’s not just physical issues like sprains that cause imbalances, they can also be a result of emotional experiences like grief and trauma.

To avoid pain, the body collapses or rearranges where its weight is distributed. This creates pressure on joints, disturbs blood flow and impacts the function of all systems in the body.

After a while, the brain has a kind of amnesia about what movement can relieve pressure – as a result, people end up stuck in very narrow or imbalanced alignments.

This is the fundamental place we start from in The Ixchel System® – how you walk.

So, if this article has piqued your curiosity or feels like it could be a lifeline when you need it most, get in touch with me at victoria@ixcheltherapies.co.uk.

We’ll start by looking at how you walk in slo-motion and take it from there into our first Get Into Your Body programme. As I say to everyone: give me just seven weeks, and you’ll see the results.

Find out more about working with Victoria, her programs and workshops and The Ixchel System® at ixcheltherapies.co.uk

Victoria’s book which teaches you all the basics of her methodology, Get Into Your Body Level 1: The Workbook is available from Amazon for just £19.99