about
¡Hola!
Hi all! I am Ana Guerrero, originally from Spain, and a BSc-level practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine with many years of dedicated study and clinical practice. At my multi award-winning holistic health clinic in York, UK, we offer specialised massage therapy to help clients manage pain and recover from injuries, acupuncture to address internal medical conditions, and NRRTTM to support mental health challenges.
What sets my practice apart is my global understanding of the intricate connection between the body, the mind, social and financial factors, religion and spirituality. Recognising how these elements impact our experience of pain, both emotional and physical, and how we sustain them or heal them, informs my approach. This holistic awareness permeates all my therapies, consistently yielding tangible and positive outcomes.
How NRRTTM came about
In 2021 while at the clinic, something clicked within, as I slowly unravelled the profound benefits medically-applied rocking (as I called it later) had on my massage and acupuncture clients when it comes to regulating and calming their sympathetic nervous system and restoring homeostasis in all organ systems of the body.
During this creative exploration process of trying out the different medically-applied rocking techniques I was developing and researching, I had a flashback. Suddenly I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in forever, but made absolute sense with my autism and where I am now. I was around seven years old and I was quite sick. I had a colic: vomiting all day for two to three days, anything that went in, went straight back out. I was taken to hospital and given drip treatment. Somehow, vomiting in itself was somewhat traumatic to me then. I hated it and that feeling lasted well into my mid years of life. During this colic episode, whenever I felt nauseous, I’d also experienced high anxiety. I remember lying down on my bed, feeling really ill: stomach cramps, nausea, fear. I was bracing myself, trying my hardest not to vomit. Then I started swinging my feet side to side while laid on my back. I did that for about three to five minutes. And when I stopped, I gently fell into a cosy sleep because the stomach cramps, the nausea, the anxiety, all the discomfort disappeared and I felt sleepy. It was an instinctive thing to do! Remembering this at the time of developing NRRT™ nearly two decades after, was key.
Why Rocking?
Let’s be honest, there aren’t many published studies regarding the benefits of medically applied rocking at the moment and that’s because this is a pioneering concept and that makes Neuro-rocking Release Therapy™’s creator, developer and practitioners, pioneers in the field. There are a few scientific studies out there that have proven the benefits of medically applied rocking for dementia, Alzheimer’s, fibromyalgia, sleep disorders, c-section and hysterectomy recovery and war veterans’ PTSD.
We, the NRRT™ family and since we started this fascinating journey, have been actively involved in gathering data from our student’s case studies and clients that shows that NRRT™ is also beneficial for dissociative seizures, IBS, back, neck and shoulder pain, anxiety, post-stroke recovery, autism, ADHD and more, due to the additions of and influences from:
- medically applied Neuro-Linguistic Programming – developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s.
- traditional Chinese medicine wisdom – Ana Guerrero, creator, developer and teacher of NRRT is a Chinese medicine practitioner herself.
- the principles of Gestalt psychotherapy – developed by Laura Perls, her husband Frederick (Fritz) Perls and Paul Goodman in the 1040s-50s.
- the principles of Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy – developed by Dr Francine Shapiro in the 1980s to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
- vagus nerve stimulation – a highly important nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS), the rest and relax side of the coin, the other one being the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the fight/flight/freeze/friend in the face of challenging events.
Over my years of dedicated study and clinical practice, and especially after discovering Chinese medicine and acupuncture, I have come to the conclusion that a big part of recovery lies in the nervous system. The nervous system connects all the systems in the body (so does the fascia, by the way) and it relies on movement to interact with and learn from the word around us, make sense of it, survive, grow and thrive.
Having experienced moments of rocking as a therapeutic approach during my bodywork trainings back in Spain, before arriving to England in 2008, I could not help but incorporate it here and there into my regular massage and acupuncture treatments in York (and hadn’t related it to my childhood experience with the colic yet). I suddenly noticed or became sensitive to a specific behavioural and physiological nuance that kept happening any time I used a little rocking or shaking in my therapies. The receivers became instantly loose and calm. I was called to isolating rocking and putting it at the service of our recovery by developing a somatic modality involving rocking mostly, plus the above influences and coherent additions.
I felt a fire in my belly and a tickle in my brain. I wanted to know more! I asked some of my clients if they’d like to contribute by allowing me to test certain techniques and approaches. They were ever so helpful and I am so grateful for it! I was positively surprised to see that my clients received it extremely well and found it of benefit.
What happened next?
Well, after my kinaesthetic exploration and findings, I needed to know more. I researched scientific papers, studies, trials and articles where rocking was applied to treat certain health challenges and conditions. I was pleased to find a few, only a few though. This doesn’t mean that medically applied rocking isn’t effective, it just means we have a lot to learn still and I am all here for it.
- I created a therapeutic, science-informed, somatic therapy sequence made of different components and put it to test in 2022 by running a small study that produced great results.
- In 2022, clients were booking the therapy already. Most people repeat! I knew this was significant and I wanted to share it! What if Neuro-Rocking Release Therapy™ could reach more people? Such a natural, non-invasive, gentle, caring, somatic modality with a wonderful effect. But how do I share it? Teach it? Public speaking? Scary!! I have never done anything like this, but how could I not share what I had found?
- I taught the first NRRT™ course in York in October 2022 for York-based practitioners. In 2023 I run workshops in 3 festivals and taught another 2 courses across the country. It has had an overwhelming, positive response and attention to the point that I have been struggling to keep up! I run my daily clinical practice in York. I have gone through doubt, fear, neurodivergent overwhelm and I am still standing, inspired, committed to this wonderful venture.
The plans for the future are to make the course available online so that it is more accessible, and apply for funding to run a study with 50 subjects to prove its benefits. But first and foremost, keep rocking lives!