Body-Mind-Unwind with Susannah Nelson

04/05/2026

The Fascia and nervous system story continues.. Great article written by Ruth Duncan.

03/05/2026

This is why I introduce almost all of my clients to self-rolling with therapy balls. 🎾
Jill Miller has written a fascinating piece on what oestrogen does — and doesn’t do — to your fascial tissue.
Here’s the key bit: the fibroblast, the primary cell that builds fascia, is covered in oestrogen receptors. When oestrogen is abundant, it produces more collagen type 3 — the softer, more elastic kind. When oestrogen drops, as it does through perimenopause and menopause, production shifts toward collagen type 1 — stiffer and more rigid.
This is why aches, pains and tension can appear seemingly out of nowhere during this time.
I know this first hand. When I was perimenopausal, I had no idea that’s what was happening. I was going through a relationship ending and losing my father in Australia, so I put the stiffness and achiness down to stress and grief. My life catching up with me.
And yet I was teaching, seeing clients, keeping active. I remember coming across the term “menopausal arthritis” and being genuinely gobsmacked at how sore and stiff I felt. That was around fifteen years ago now.
I was already a bodywork therapist — already working with connective tissue — and I still didn’t make the connection. If I’d known then what I know now, it would have made a real difference.
And here’s the thing — all of this is happening in a body and a brain that is already oscillating between fight, flight, freeze, and that awful flat feeling of shutdown when you just feel really crap. It’s a lot for your system to hold.
So this work isn’t just about the physical tissue. It sits within a much bigger framework of nervous system capacity. The movement, the breath, the rolling — it all speaks to that. That’s what makes it wholistic rather than just mechanical. That’s the piece I really care about.
Movement, self-massage and breathwork are genuinely therapeutic tools for managing these changes — not just “nice to haves.”
The myofascial work I do with clients addresses this directly. And teaching self-rolling with balls puts those tools in your own hands, between sessions, at home, on your own schedule.
I’ve shared the link to Jill Miller’s article on my page — you’ll find it below. 👇
If anything here resonates and you’d like to chat, book a session, or find out about joining a class — just drop me a message. I’d love to hear from youhttps://www.facebook.com/share/r/1D6HEqvvC9/?mibextid=wwXIfr

02/05/2026

🌿 Back to Basics — one place left!
I’m so excited to be collaborating with the brilliant Caroline on this one.
📅 Saturday 16th May, 10am–1:30pm
📍 Tall Trees Barn, Dunsby, Lincs
💷 £65 (light refreshments + follow-up videos included)
We’ll be covering breathwork, alignment-based movement, myofascial ball work, muscle activation and practical nervous system support. You’ll leave with tools you can actually use.
If my earlier post about breathing resonated — this is where you come and feel it for yourself.
One place left — message Caroline to book 👉
📧 mogford24.cm@gmail.com
📱 07939056870 call Susannah if you have a question

02/05/2026

🫁 I love my Buddha belly. And here’s why…
Saturday morning thought 😊
Clients walk in with a tight, toned six pack and I’ll notice two things — great discipline… and quite possibly, restricted breathing.
Here’s what most people don’t know: you don’t breathe into your belly. You breathe into your lungs. But your diaphragm — your main breathing muscle — descends when you inhale through your nose, and that’s what pushes your belly out.
When your core is constantly braced or held in, that movement gets restricted. Often those same people are mouth breathing without realising it, running on a background hum of stress.
And a big relaxed Buddha belly doesn’t automatically mean good breathing either. You might have done years of yoga and breathwork — and still be surprised by what changes when someone actually gets hands-on and helps you access your diaphragm properly.
That’s what I do. Back to basics. Every time. 🙏

29/04/2026

Yep !

28/04/2026

Please 🎨 Come and support a brilliant local artist! My lovely friend
Sarah Nesbitt (Heelis) is holding a private view of her exhibition ‘Colour My World’ — an evening of drinks, samosas and beautiful paintings.
📅 Friday 1st May, 4pm – 10pm
📍 1 The Park, Newark-on-Trent, NG24 1SD
Open Studios then continues:
Saturday 2nd & Sunday 3rd May, 11am – 7pm
(including unframed ‘specials’ — great original art at accessible prices!)
Browse her work online: www.sarahheelisart.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahheelisart/

660 Followers, 1,675 Following, 378 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Sarah Nesbitt ()

27/04/2026

Happy place clean and cool pool !
So lovely to start my day with some baseline diaphragmatic breathing and checking in with baselines. Last night i felt like i'd got a nerve impingement in my neck but had spent far to long on the old laptop doing intense head thing computing down writing to solicitor and going the rabbit hole head stuff !! sometimes it's a habit and sometimes it feels necessary ! well that's my justification ! 😂 hence to say I felt like crap as I had been so focused I was breathing shallow and holding my breath. Gentle reminder to self! Do the stuff you know makes a difference . Not rationally logically as in tick list sort of i've done my yoga for today but i'm still wearing my Shoulders like earrings !! did belly breaths last night thing i goto about 16 then fell asleep and started my day like this . Nervous System regulation is about creating capacity.. And be able to move up and down and not stay stuck in one state .

27/04/2026

Nice clean pool! and a refreshing morning wake up with the birdies at the start of my day !

24/04/2026

It's that All week been
Helping my client's and classes find some extra capacity to deal with their pain, stress, and totally fried fed up running on fumes or too tired to notice any thing very much nervous systems !!
Now, suns out, birds singing and my garden is calling for a little attention .. FridayFeeling

24/04/2026

I've been teaching for over 22 years. And the work has never stayed still.
What started as a full movement method and remedial yoga class has gradually become something much more layered — woven together slowly over time, from years of working with real bodies, real stress, real aches and real lives.
Around 20 years ago I started using self-massage with spiky balls. For the last 10 years, Yoga Tune Up therapy balls have been a core part of the toolkit. About five years ago I added Be Activated techniques from Douglas Heel's method — which brought a deeper understanding of compensation patterns, breath mechanics, and how to help the body switch back on rather than just push through.
I recently reread the email I sent to my class members when we moved online during lockdown six years ago. What struck me wasn't that things had changed — but that the thread was already there.
I was writing about fight, flight and freeze. About survival mode. About how stress changes our breathing, our thinking, our movement, our sleep and our pain levels. About how breath, self-massage, mindful movement and group connection can help us come back into ourselves.
That is nervous system regulation language. Before it became a phrase everyone used. Before the beige branding and the breathwork apps.
Six years on, this is still the heart of what I do. Not as a trend. Not a rebrand. Just the natural evolution of over two decades of this work.
And if you've ever been curious about what a class with me actually feels like — breath, balls, activation, movement, and some honest conversation about what your body is trying to tell you — then the workshop I'm running with Caroline Rose on 16th May at Tall Trees Barn in Lincolnshire is a good place to start.
It's called Back to Basics — not because it's for beginners, but because it's a return to the principles that underpin everything.
Details and booking contact Caroline: mogford24.cm@gmail.com
Questions to me: I'm an analogue sort of women 😀call me on +447939056870 . or email susannah@bodymindunwind.co.uk

20/04/2026

https://www.instagram.com/p/DXUADQMCtUT/?igsh=aDBuOHdqZHRwOG8z

20/04/2026

🌿 **Back to Basics · Update · 16th May**

Only 5 places left .

Here’s the thing nobody’s saying loudly enough right now. The world is a lot. The bills are brutal. The news is relentless. Have I got enough petrol to fill my car? And most of us are walking around going *I don’t know why I feel so tense, nothing’s actually that wrong, hey ho* - doing our yoga, walking the dog, trying to hold it all together - while our nervous systems have been quietly running on threat response for years.

And some people aren’t just a bit tense. Some people are on their knees. The usual stuff - the yoga, the walks, the self-care - just isn’t cutting it anymore and they don’t know why. That’s not failure. That’s not weakness. That’s a nervous system that has been in survival mode for so long it doesn’t know how to do anything else. And the problem is - you don’t know what you don’t know. Nobody told you that before you can really move, you need to be able to breathe. That before the body can let go, it needs to feel safe enough to. That the tension that won’t shift, the exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix, the breathing that never quite reaches the bottom of your lungs - that’s not just stress. That’s biology. And it can change.

That’s what Back to Basics is actually about.

Tall Trees Barn is small and beautiful and we are keeping it that way. This is not a class of thirty people. You will actually be seen, supported, and able to ask questions.

A few people have asked if it’s a beginners class - it really isn’t. It’s for people who already move and want to understand what’s actually going on underneath. The nervous system. The diaphragm. The foundations that explain why the things you’re already doing sometimes don’t quite land the way you’d like.

It’s not woo-woo. It’s not academic. It’s functional, embodied work for real people navigating a genuinely difficult world.

Between us, Carolinr and I have 40 years of experience in movement, breath and bodywork. This is our first collaboration and honestly it’s been a long time coming 😄

**What you get:**
✔️ Small supported group - max 8
✔️ Beautiful venue, refreshments included
✔️ Practical tools you actually take home
✔️ Follow-up videos so nothing gets lost
✔️ Mini foot release balls to keep
✔️ Optional soft belly myofascial release ball (£8 on booking, £10 on the day)

📅 Saturday 16th May · 10am–1:30pm
📍 Tall Trees Barn, Dunsby, Lincolnshire
💰 £65 · payment instalments available

📧 Bookings & questions: mogford24.cm@gmail.com
📧 Questions for Susannah: susannah@bodymindunwind.co.uk
📱 07939056870

*May not working? Drop us a message - we’re keeping a waitlist for future dates.*

Call now to connect with business.