Testimonials.
All client experiences shared with full consent. Names have been abbreviated to respect privacy.
Private osteopathic work, over time.
To release what holds you back — and to protect what works.
Barbara Spooner
Osteopath D.O. · BSc (Hons)
Bern · Remote
Travel on request
Sessions in English & German
Sometimes there was an event. An injury, an operation, an accident. A loss, a breakdown, a period that changed something. Everything has been treated, everything has been looked at.
Sometimes there is pain. Sometimes there isn't. And still:
"I haven't been the same since."
Sometimes there was no event at all. Nothing to point to.
You are well, capable, doing everything right — and still sense:
"Something is holding me back."
And sometimes nothing is wrong at all. You have invested — in your health, in your training, in understanding yourself — and simply want to know:
"Why am I not freer than this?"
And sometimes nothing needs resolving at all. You are well, and you want to stay that way — with something that holds the whole system, not just the part that hurts.
"How do I keep this?"
That the mind affects the body is familiar.
What I began to observe in practice was the other direction: that physical patterns appear to affect the subconscious too.
A restriction after an injury, an operation, a fall does not only sit in the tissue. It seems to feed back — into how a person feels, and how they function.
This was not something I had been taught, and not something I had heard described.
This is where my work begins.
❧
My work is based on osteopathy and extends beyond the physical.
Instead of treating a physical restriction on its own, I work with the physical and the subconscious pattern together.
More recently it developed again. Many people function almost entirely in the conscious mind — thinking, planning, anticipating.
Physically here, mentally somewhere else.
Deeper change did not appear to happen at that level alone. So I began working from the conscious into the subconscious as well.
What I see when this shifts is presence.
And that matters for a simple reason.
The body functions in the now.
The heart beats now. Breathing happens now. The nervous system responds now.
When someone becomes present, I see it in the body: the feet connect to the ground, breathing opens, the gaze clears.
They are no longer somewhere else. They are here.
The name.
Some people live in the cocoon without knowing it. Not free, and used to it.
And then it opens. And it is free.
The butterfly effect: a very small change in the right place can lead to a disproportionate one. That is what I kept seeing — not a large intervention, but a small shift, and the whole system reorganising around it.
❧
A young football player came to me with hip pain. She played at a high level and there was physical overload. The hip was the obvious place to look.
But her breathing was not free, and there was considerable tension through her thoracic region. Instead of concentrating only on her hip, I began working there.
Everything initially became tighter. I perceived fear and asked her whether she felt afraid. She said yes immediately. She felt constricted.
She was under considerable pressure from school and football.
As I worked with the physical restriction and what I perceived at the subconscious level together, something began to change.
When she stood afterwards, she breathed differently. Her gaze was clearer. She walked differently. She felt it herself.
And with that, the hip was able to release. The pain she had come with settled considerably.
She had not been relieved in one place. She had been relieved as a whole.
I have documented cases over the years and written a ten-page clinical study, which Gez Lamb followed and reviewed.
The people I work with already bring an awareness of their body, their health, their mind. They have invested in themselves.
This work does not begin at zero — it builds on that.
They come from business, from sport, from the arts — and from lives that are simply demanding without a title to describe them.
Many have excellent care around them. I do not want to replace any of it. What interests me is what remains despite all of it.
Often it is hard to put into words. Not one thing. A number of small things. Sometimes physical, sometimes emotional — most often both, no longer separable.
There is nothing to perform. No exercises. No effort. Nothing to prove. You lie or sit down and allow me to work.
Every person feels the shift by the end of a session. They get up lighter — more focused, less easily pulled out of what they are doing.
The changes I see come through continuity. What has settled over years needs time.
I work over a longer period. After the first session I can see what is needed — how much, and over what period. That is not something a client can judge in advance.
A small number of clients each year, always after a conversation. Everything is private and confidential.
Three ways: in my practice near Bern, remotely, or I travel to you.
Remote is the part people ask about most. It developed during Covid, when my mentor was in London and I was in Bern. We had treated patients together for years, and he had been working remotely for a long time.
Through years of deep osteopathic palpation, I found I could work with these patterns without being in the same room. I have received remote treatments from him myself — they are among the best I have ever experienced.
It also saves what matters most:
no travel, no waiting room, no half a day lost around an appointment.
All client experiences shared with full consent. Names have been abbreviated to respect privacy.
“Even across continents, something in my brother’s system responded.
It was subtle, but deeply felt.
We both sensed a shift — without needing to explain it.”
— D.P. | Pianist, 64
London
“I came into the sessions feeling ungrounded — and left with a deep sense of being rooted again.
Old memories surfaced without needing words.
It felt like something was clearing on a deeper level. I’m truly grateful.”
— A.L. | Vitality Coach, 46
Los Angeles
“I feel whole again — light, grounded, at ease in my body.
Even my posture shifted.
Something in me reorganised, quietly but profoundly.”
— S.Z. | Artist Manager, 57
Zürich
“I’ve never felt my body this deeply before.”
— M.B. | Ice Hockey Player, 23
Bern
“I finally feel like I have arrived. For the first time in a long time, I have no MS symptoms.”
— Anonymous
"I have known Barbara both as a student during my days of teaching undergraduates and during the last 23 years when she has been on my courses and in practice with me from time to time.
I have seen Barbara grow in her understanding of the deeper relationship of Osteopathic technique to the inner person at all levels of function and expression.
The 'Butterfly' method is her unique synthesis of all she has learned combined with something that comes from her inner being. I am honoured to be counted as a teacher that has inspired her to look deeper, but in her work now I can safely say that the 'student' has outgrown the 'master'.
The sessions she has given me remotely are as nothing I have ever experienced before in an osteopath's hands. She has an intuitive ability not only to see the focal points needing release but to divine the inner causes that have produced the patterns and at what level they need releasing.
Her work is profound and what she has to offer is safe, very special and life changing.
A truly unique healing experience."
Gez Lamb - internationally respected British osteopath, lecturer and tutor in London, who has taught three generations of osteopaths.
