Meet Tessa
Physiotherapist | Psychotherapist and Breathing Educator
Tessa is the heart and soul behind Zephyr Movement. She guides people out of burnout, anxiety, breathing dysfunction and/or persisting pain. Over the last four years she has helped over 200 people ease their symptoms and cultivate long term management strategies.
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Her aim as a practitioner and mentor is to guide people into gentle resilience. Her client's have been tough for so long, now completely depleted left searching for a sustainable way to continue navigating life's challenges.
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She began physiotherapy in the hospital system, quickly noticing how intertwined physical and mental health are. Not only that, she worked in a system so overrun it often failed to support their staff, particularly recent graduates. University prepares us for clinical work so well but the unique emotional toll of working in healthcare is harder to anticipate.
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She graduated with an advanced diploma in Applied Psychotherapy (Clinical Hypnotherapy) learning more about the mind body connection. Zephyr Movement was created to support her community using the full breadth of her skills. Fellow burnout health professionals and the community at large are invited to find rest and support at Zephyr Movement.
Qualifications:
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Master of Physiotherapy
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Bachelor of Exercise Science
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Advanced Diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy, Applied Psychotherapy and Neurolinguistic Programming
​Career Highlights:
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Creating Zephyr Movement
Tessa has created a business where she gets to cultivate all her skills from Breath-focused physiotherapy and Clinical Hypnotherapy
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Physiotherapist in Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, Brighton England
Tessa worked as a generalist with the paediatric population across acute wards (respiratory and orthopaedics) as well as outpatients (musculoskeletal and rehabilitation)
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Volunteer Physiotherapist at Malamulele Onward, Johannesburg South Africa
Tessa worked alongside this non-profit organisation doing fortnight therapy blocks for children with cerebral palsy (CP) and their families. Tessa also assisted with data collection in CP classification at outreach locations to better identify the needs of children and their families.
Our mission:
To create a community of people who value gentle resilience.
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Breathing Re-training | Movement Patterns | Hypnotherapy
What is Zephyr Movement?
Zephyr Movement is both a Wellness clinic and Online Mentoring Service. We support people who are burnt out and exhausted. Imagine resting at the same time as learning how to prevent and manage symptoms long term? (Talk about efficient.)
Tessa created Zephyr Movement as she learnt the hard way how to navigate her own mind body connection alongside her clients. All the years of study and clinical knowledge didn't help her avoid burnout (more than once), even experiencing a persistent pain condition in her early 20s.
Personally, she was encouraged to disconnect from 'humanness' in healthcare. Professionally, she was faced with the nuance of ethical dilemmas along side clinically complex patients. She wished she had a mentor to support her through the 'mental load' rather than just the job specific skills. Her specialty is teaching professionals how to deal with 'energy draining' clients.
Clinically, she noticed a lack of regulated breathing advice from medically educated professionals. With something as vital as breathing, it simply affects too many systems within the body not to be guided by a properly educated professional. There is simply never a 'one size fits all' approach when it comes to breathing education. Physiotherapy provides a foundation in the finer details of how the body works paired with the holistic understanding of a person from her Psychotherapy.
Fierce Dignity
We aim to protect, advocate and treat our community with equality. All human beings are worthy of respect.
Gentle strength
Tough love often has an expiry date. It is exhausting. We value strength in gentleness as a sustainable way of living. It's a different kind of resilience.
Collective compassion
We work together in collaboration. It's often easier to have compassion for others versus ourselves. Collectively, we all deserve understanding.
Sincerity