Richard’s Story - A Heart Attack & Contact Care

– Contact Care and his heart attack

This is a story about Richard and his experience with having numerous heart attacks and the help of a modality called Contact Care – Flinch Lock Release helped him recover.

In January 2020, Richard woke up during the night gasping for air.  His heart was pulsating at an alarming rate. He didn’t know what was happening. He sat up holding his heart, shaking uncontrollably, with sharp pins and needle feeling in his left side arm. He felt like someone was stepping on his chest. He was taking shallow breaths, and it was hard to get enough air.  Looking back, it was silly but he is so dedicated to being on time and not letting people down, he made himself get up in the morning. He staggered down the hall trying to pull himself together. Not putting two and two together that he had had a heart attack.

He went into auto piolet and went to work. Any chance he could get he sat down, even lay down. He felt exhausted all day.  His heart continued to pound all this time and his whole body was. He found he was crunching over more and more as the day went on. It says it is an indescribable feeling having your heart race like that.

That night he fell asleep and woke up with the same feeling. He then drove himself to the medical center and told them he was having a heart attack. He was rushed in the ambulance to Thames.

He felt a total collapse feeling in the ambulance. His blood pressure was something like 198/194 from memory.

In Thames, they put him on a monitor, took blood, and said they think he probably has angina because that is hereditary. He was confused by this.  What difference did it make, how could they claim this?  They said maybe it was SVT, some electrical fault in his heart.  He was told about our natural pacemakers and how he had failed and he was on his last one.  A dangerous situation but because he was young he should be all right the doctors said. They offered a drug called beta blockers. With no actual diagnosis, once things had calmed down he was told to go home.  Come back when there’s a serious problem was what it sounded like they were saying. He left feeling afraid and confused. Over time he felt better but he was not standing as straight as he used to and was often left breathless.

Then some weeks later he had another episode.  And another. Each episode it got worse. It was becoming harder to recover. He became stiff and hunched over it was very debilitating.

A friend suggested Flinch Lock Therapy – Contact Care. He got an appointment straight away. Which was very lucky as this great man is very booked up. Dale Speedy asked what issues were going on. Richard touched his Heart, chest, feet, and jaw sharing with Dale how each part of the body had pain. His heat ached, it was hard to breathe, his legs ached, and his jaw was clenched. All these areas Dale said related to your heart.  He explained that when any large organ that goes into a state of trauma, the rest of the body crowds around to protect it. He told Richard his face looked like he had had a stroke. His shoulders were hunched to protect his heart. His rib cage crunched in as a protection mode also.  How he then proceeded to treat me is difficult to explain in words. I find my explanation doesn’t really show the depth of healing that I received from it.  But here is my best effort to explain.

He chooses the right wording to comfort me. First, he asked permission from me. It felt so respectful. He asked me to come toward him as if we were giving each other a hongi.  He asked me to hold my Pounamu around my neck. So, doing this, I leaned into him, pushed into him actually. We did not hongi, rather my face went into his shoulder. When I stood back and he mirror imaged what I was looking like. He was all crumpled up and twisted. It was like he had received something from me and was affected by me.  But he then stood up straight and told me he was going to pull my body back into the correct posture, releasing what was creating this crumpled-up me. It was about teaching my body that it no longer needs to be in protection mode.

He released the tension in my face and jaw. It was so tight like I was gritting something. He pushed my shoulders back. Then he worked on my diaphragm. As it was pushed in. He twisted it and released something. He said it was 75 % winded. This creates a huge difficulty /pressure to get oxygen. He worked on my lower legs freeing up the circulation. It had been sore to walk on but it came right.

He said you won’t need to come back to me. How often does this happen? Some practitioners ask for you to return every fortnight continually. As if to be out of pain and comfortable you need to keep going to them. Three weeks after seeing him I did a 10k walk /marathon.

Everything he said made so much sense, there was no academic jargon, no fear-mongering. I felt empowered and really helped as an individual.  No blaming my Maori ancestry, no claiming I had had a hard attack due to my genes.

He described that my body did what bodies do when under attack when experiencing trauma. I understood what was going on. I understood why he did what he did. It all made sense. And it gave me the confidence that I was going to be fine. There was no great fear. I thought when I left. How did that just happen?  How do I tell anyone what just happened?  It felt unreal to me. Yet so right.