Profiles

Hi, we are Alex Romich and Richard Headland. We have opened The Somatic Clinic with the aim to challenge the perspective on bodily pain and wellness. We have worked with the human body for over 20 years collectively. We both started our careers as personal trainers and went down our own avenues of specialisation such as nutrition and strength and conditioning, manual therapy, and injury/dysfunction management. Our aim is to improve quality of life, movement, and self-confidence. Pain is a big part of life and is the body's way of telling us something is not right or that the body has lost confidence in a particular movement.

This grasped our interest, as performing the standard of losing weight and building muscle mass can have a direct effect on the 3 aspects that make us human: physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. These three factors are considered in all our patients, as a dysfunction in one aspect can present itself in any way possible in the human body and will exhaust the other aspects making them inefficient.

Working with the human body in this way has given us good insight and experience into post operation treatment and care, pain management, rehabilitation of movement, weight loss and muscle building.

How is this achieved?

The Somatic Clinic is part of an affiliation of multi-disciplinary therapists, specialists, and trainers who all work together to allow you to achieve the best quality treatment and therapy, with the aim that all treatment needs clinical or personal, are all handled under one roof. Should you need to be referred to other services, such as the health service, we will work closely with you to achieve this.

What we believe

We believe that the human body wants to be functional and efficient, hence why our slogan is freedom in movement. We follow and truly believe in these principles of treatment and uphold them in treatment and practice.

Principle 1: The body is a unit

The human body is a unit, an integrated organism in which no part functions independently. This is the same for systemic and structural functions, meaning a dysfunction in one aspect of the body will influence other body parts or systems.

Principle 2: The body self-regulates and self-heals

The human body is fascinating and wants to maintain vitality and function as much as possible. The body will regulate itself against infection via the lymphatic and immune system. It will also repair any physical damage with inflammation and tissue building cells. This will be maintained by the body if proper circulation and neurological function is apparent. Restore these functions and the body will return to vitality and functionality.

Principle 3: Structure and function are interrelated

This principle of treatment focuses on the importance of structure and function and their relationship with each other. For example, the musculoskeletal system can reflect and make changes in other bodily systems affecting joints and circulation.

Principle 4: Rational treatment

This principle combines all the above principles and looks at the body as a whole structure and finds the cause of symptoms to address the current issue. In essence a hip dysfunction can be related to the back or even ankle, meaning not just the symptom will be addressed in treatment, but also the cause.