Jan has worked in healthcare since 1979, originally training as a State Registered Nurse in the British Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC) where she worked with patients on the wards and in the operating theatre – a superb if non-deliberate foundation for her future career.
In 1988, her life dramatically changed direction when her training with a blind massage therapist, to really ‘feel’ the body, led to a lifetime passion for bodywork. At the Auckland Commonweath Games, where Jan was a massage volunteer, she learned from professionals of all modalities. Her work today is the culmination of years of training and experience in different disciplines.
In clinical practice for over 30 years, Jan focuses today on teaching, writing, speaking to online and in-person audiences, and on running The Fascia Hub, a community education platform focusing on fascia and related topics. Through her school, Body in Harmony Training, she runs a variety of light touch therapy courses including Sharon Wheeler’s ScarWork for which she was the first accredited teacher in the UK.
Having had surgery as a young child, Jan was treated by Sharon Wheeler in 2012, putting her on the path to her own training in this remarkable modality, and eventually becoming a ScarWork teacher in 2014. Her personal experience gives her an awareness of the potentially devastating effect of adhesions and an empathy with people who have problems caused by their scarring.
Jan co-edited and lead-authored the book Scars, Adhesions and the Biotensegral Body, published by Handspring Publishing in 2020, to help those who work with scarring to understand biotensegrity (the tension/compression system of the body) and how that way of looking at ourselves explains the potential full-body damage that scarring can cause.