In this episode, I talk about my three-month series for private one-on-one clients, sharing how it’s structured and the benefits it brings. After my maternity leave, I moved away from one-off sessions and realized how crucial it is for clients to commit and follow a structured plan for real healing. This episode is packed with insights on how dedicated, personalized care can lead to lasting pain relief and better overall well-being.
Discover how working on the pits can impact (and improve) carpal tunnel syndrome, wrist and elbow issues . . . even knee issues!
Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze
Introduction 00:00:01 You’re listening to From pain to Possibility with Susi Hately. You will hear Susi’s best ideas on how to reduce or even eradicate your pain, and learn how to listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to hear it scream. And now here’s your host, Susi Hately.
Susi 00:00:23 Welcome and welcome back. I’m so glad that you’re here, because today I’m digging into the 3-Month Series and why it is that I run a three month series for my private one-on-one clients. Why did I come up with the three month series as a… why not four? Or why not six? Why not one? And then what I chose in terms of the nine sessions that happened through the three months and all the support that I provide for the three months. And there’s two reasons I wanted to share all this with you. The first is you might be someone who is seeking my support with your own pain and reducing and eradicating your own pain and this might really ring true and say: yes, this is the girl for me.
Susi 00:01:03 And then what I recommend is going to my website and connecting through the website of susihately.com/privatesessions, and you can read about the private sessions and then fill in a little application of answering the questions that we need, and we’ll get you on the waitlist for the next opening. And if you are a health professional, you might be thinking like: how do I want to integrate this more with my clientele? You might be ready to give up one session at a time. Or maybe you’re a massage therapist and you’re wanting to get off the table. How might you do this? And so this might give you some really great ideas. So I’m going to first start with how did my thinking work to get to the three month series and the nine sessions over the three months, and then generally how I work through them and the results that I’ve seen happen by doing the three month series. So how it all started was I had my twins March 2017 and up until that point, I’d been doing my private sessions one off at a time.
Susi 00:02:04 So I had a singular rate, and people would come in for one session, and then they’d register for another session, and then they would register for another session. So people would just come in, book, pay and then book and then pay and then book and then pay. And it worked really, really well. I had a lot of people who would be repeat customers or clients, and we would help them continue to progress, and it was really awesome and amazing. Many times people would book multiple sessions in a row, but they would pay for them one at a time. So then I go and have my babies and I have a mat leave where I’m not doing a lot of teaching. And this was March of 2017. And then as I’m coming out of mat leave and I’m reconsidering how I’m using my time, because now at this point, my time is a little bit different than it was just a few months prior. So I considered for myself, all right, how is this really going to work? And that’s when I decided that I didn’t want to do one offs anymore.
Susi 00:03:06 And I also decided that I wanted to do more online work than in-person work. So this is back in 2017. This is well before the pandemic, and I had clients around the world who had done the therapeutic yoga intensive with me, who had done certification with me or were considering those things, and they had already asked for some private series with me of some sort. But at the time, I was fully booked up with the people I was seeing in Calgary. They were seeing me in my studio at my house, and I didn’t really have any time. Well, now that I’m coming back out of my mat leave, it really is now up for grabs in terms of how I really want to design my life, and my kids at that time had a temperament that enabled me to do my work early in the morning. And so I could. I could start to sort of craft this process. I also wanted to make sure that there was a commitment, because if I was going to be away from my kids, my babies, I wanted to make sure that the people who were coming in were really committed to the process, the way that I would be committed to them.
Susi 00:04:12 Now, all my other clients that were coming in for one-offs prior to my kids being born, they were also really committed. But now, like, for me the ante had been upped in a sense, and I just wanted to have that further confirmation. I didn’t want to have as many clients. I wanted a smaller number of clients that I could really focus my time. And with that, I needed an upgraded commitment and an upgraded level of connection. So that’s where I came into having people pay upfront for a series rather than one at a time. So then I knew what my calendar looked like over a three month period. Now, why three months? Well, when I looked at the way that my clients got better, like the trajectory of their healing process. It followed this pattern. Typically, people would be consistently out of pain in five sessions. The first session, they would reduce or eradicate their physical pain. Then between the first and second session, it would come back a little bit, but they would have awareness.
Susi 00:05:16 And then between second and third session it would be gone for longer and they’d have even more awareness. And by the fifth session they were running free, like they were feeling really, really, really good and they were ready to get back to their life. So then I was like, all right, cool. I could make it five sessions. But what I really wanted was to see them make those gains. And again, when I looked at the trajectory of the way my clientele got better, when we added two more sessions so six and seven, then they started to understand how to get back to skiing, or how to get back to running, or how to get back to riding. And then I added an eight session that just really rooted in the concepts. And then the ninth session was a little bit luxurious. So for a period of time I’m like, well, do I do nine? It’s a little over the top. Do I just stick with eight because that’s what’s needed? And that’s when I ultimately decided nine sessions, because who wouldn’t want luxury.
Susi 00:06:10 So that really gives people, over three months, a really solid amount of time to work with me one-on-one with those hour sessions. And because it’s nine sessions over 12 weeks, it gives an opportunity for schedules that don’t match or people being away on vacation, or me doing an intensive or teaching in the certification program. It really opens up some flexibility. So that’s why I ultimately landed at nine. And it looks like: three months, nine sessions, the sessions happen on Thursdays and I start at six in the morning mountain time, and I have my last private one-on-one session at 11, and that session goes until 12 o’clock. Then what happens in addition to those one-on-one sessions is I maintain a slack channel 1-to-1 I only have access to the workspace and there are private channels, so no one else gets access to them where me and my client can connect. And in between those sessions, which is what I call the “white space,” so much change happens. So when the person finishes their first session with me, and then I send them on their way and I ask them the following: I say, can you please pay attention to when your symptoms start to come back? To which they often will look at me like, what? My pain’s gone or my pain’s reduced. What do you mean it’s going to come back? And I remind them, these are new patterns that were growing, so you don’t quite have the bandwidth yet for this to be totally gone.
Susi 00:07:46 We’re building a new pattern. We’re growing. We’re re-grooving a new pattern. So what I’d love for you to notice, if you can, is when some of the symptoms or the signals start to come back, because then we can start to use the body sensing mapping tool to really sense and to articulate what your whispers or your yellow lights are, or whatever other metaphor works for you. We can really get an understanding of what contributes to the good feelings starting to fade, what contributes to the pain feeling starting to arise? Which is sort of the same thing, just looking at it from a different angle. So when you come back with that data, then I can help you even more. Well here’s what’s cool with the slack channel, is now they’re getting back to me sooner. Before when they would just come back to me for their second session and they give me all the details, which is great. Now, like on day three or day four, they’ll say, Hey Susi, guess what? The whispers are starting to show themselves.
Susi 00:08:38 I’m starting to notice this thing. I’m noticing when I’m lifting grocery, this is what happened. I’m noticing when I’m lifting my baby, this is what’s happening. I’m noticing when I’m out playing tennis, this is what’s happening. And it’s so, so cool. It’s also a place that when people are doing the program I’ve given them, if they are having difficulty with it, they can ask questions or if they’re not having difficulty, but they’re saying, okay, I think I want to up it, or is there something else I can do for this or whatever. Like the myriad of questions that can arise is a myriad, like there’s no end to the questions that can arise. So it provides a really amazing space for people to get questions answered, to post videos about the program they’re doing. I can take a look at that, and there can be lots of great dialogue between the two of us. Now, the teachers might be listening to this and saying, Holy smokes, Susi, that’s a lot of work that you’re doing.
Susi 00:09:31 Sometimes it is, yeah. And the people who are registering for these 3 Month Series, they’re people who have a characteristic of honouring their time, and they also honour mine. So while there can be often lots of posts inside of the slack channel, it’s never too much. There’s sometimes a lot, but it’s never too much, I find. Like, the timing always seems to work. There’s some clients of mine who use the slack channel a lot. There’s some people who don’t. And so there’s one of those sort of “whack a doodle” universe things where it’s perfect. So even though someone might be needing a lot of support for me through a given phase, there’s somebody else who’s not needing as much support. And so there’s just this ebb and flow to the process that works really, really well. And people get what they need because they know they also have me. So what ends up happening is over these three months, by about week four, week five, the person’s really humming along, just as I mentioned, like they did before I ran these series.
Susi 00:10:36 And things are humming along and now they’re like, ooh, I think I want to get back to X or Y or Z, do you think I can? And it’s like, sure, let’s go for it. Let’s help you to that next level. Well then by the time they get to session seven or session eight, they’re thinking, oh, Susi, I feel really good. Do you think I could do another series? Because now I want to do this next thing. And I’m like, I would love that. And then we go even further into the process, taking what we’ve gained from the first series and bring it into the second series. So it’s very, very common for clients to enroll in two, three, even four series. I’ve got some clients who’ve been with me for multiple years because they keep up-leveling their awareness of themselves and their awareness of how their body moves and taking it to the next level. Some people I’ve supported through them getting a knee replacement or a hip replacement, they started with me as a way of getting prepared for the hip and the knee replacement, and as they go through their surgery and then come out the other side, then I’m with them in the process of helping them integrate yoga therapy with the PT work that they’re doing.
Susi 00:11:49 There’s so many different ways to work with this. And there’s also lots of people who come in for the one session, they get what they need and then they integrate it in other ways outside of the private series. And so they come in just for the one, and then they’re on their way. So it really serves people no matter where they are at, whether it’s they want that close connection with me, that high tech connection for a three months, or they see the possibility and they’re like, ooh, I want this next thing. And then they know they’ve got me. They know they’ve got my support to take them to that next level. And it’s so much fun because as I’ve mentioned in the Healing Helix conversations, what’s happened is that they’ve grown their awareness, their clarity, their connection with themselves and the overall feedback that they have with their own bodies that they actually start to become their own best teachers. And there’s an up-level of connection of me teaching them biomechanics, them feeling me using the way that I see and seeing the whole matrix, and then being able to tune more into their own matrix.
Susi 00:12:49 And it really becomes this amazingly fun experience of helping someone continue to transform and to continue to grow. Like, it’s one of the most fun things that I do, because I love working with people who intuitively understand and have a deep knowing, for knowing that healing can occur, that healing is possible, that tissue can change. So when they’re in their best space, and I’m in my best space and we’re collaborating and working together and really making it work, there is a magic in the transformation. There’s a magic in the two of us intertwined with the matrix, like not intertwined like “tangled up in it” but there’s this ebb and this flow and this working through the layers that is so amazingly cool. So that’s the 3 Month Series. Now, if I kind of dig into this a little bit more, whether it’s guiding someone through pain relief or whether it’s nervous system down-regulation, whether it’s helping professionals refine their approach to movement and healing and a lot of times those things are all related: between pain relief, nervous system regulation and refining their approach, like professionals who come and work with me 1-to-1, refining their approach to their own movement and healing that really the sweet spot in all of that is the deep transformation in real life sustainability.
Susi 00:14:12 Like, we’re not talking like a quick fix or strategies or tactics. We’re talking like, tissue change. Like for real. And the way that our movement loop between our bodies and our brains work together, the way the nervous system and our tissue works together, the way that our belief and our body movement works together. There’s something truly magical in that space. There’s also a few other pieces that I think are important when we’re considering this length, and why I think three months work so well. The first one is that our nervous systems do take time to adapt. When I think about how neuromuscular mechanics works, like the way that our tissue works with our nervous system motor control, motor coordination, it takes time to integrate patterns. It’s like I said earlier, someone will reduce or even eliminate their pain in the first session. There’s awareness of what’s contributed that pain. There’s awareness to what’s contributed to that pain reducing or eliminating. And there is a pattern grooving that needs to happen, right? So the single session can create awareness.
Susi 00:15:23 And then time is required for the nervous system to integrate and embody that awareness, right? So then the three months gives us some space to really move through these cycles of adaptation and stabilization without overwhelming a system. And I look back and I think about my one-offs, that’s what was also happening, is we are giving lots of space for people to really integrate from a from a motor control, from a foundational granular space of the way tissue and the brain work together. So it’s long enough to see measurable shifts, but short enough to maintain a focused momentum. Right? We can see clearly 90 days or three months is like a season. Thinking about winter, spring, summer, fall. Right? We can see the end. It’s three months. It’s 12 weeks. And I think there’s a certain element in our culture that has been taught that gaining a new habit takes about 12 weeks. 90 days. There’s lots of research about that. There’s a belief there that we can see the end pretty clearly.
Susi 00:16:25 Six months is a bit far out. Six months being two seasons, it’s a bit far out. And even though I’ve got many clients who have continued on with multiple series and multiple sessions, we refocus where we’re at and are focusing just on the three months Which leads to number 2, which is there’s a real balance of support and independence. When I think about those first few weeks as I mentioned earlier, we’re uncovering layers of compensation. We’re uncovering patterns that are contributing to pain or limitation, and we are building, into those uncovering of layers, a retraining process. And that’s all happening in the first few weeks. We’re also working with self-regulation. And as we go through the middle phase of the fourth, fifth and sixth, people are up-leveling their ability to get back to the gym or their yoga practice, or get back to skiing, or getting on their bike, or quilting or getting on the floor with their kids. But inside of that, it’s this movement awareness. It’s integrating their yellow lights or their whispers, whatever that body sensing tool is, that proprioceptive and interoceptive awareness.
Susi 00:17:35 These are subtle but super powerful shifts that create long term ease, long term results. So then as we start to move through the seventh, eighth and ninth week, we are really integrating in a way that feels sustainable beyond our work together. So the point here is I don’t want someone to become dependent, but rather it’s empowerment. And for those folks who do carry on with multiple sessions, that’s what we find. We’re not going back to what we were. Like, no. It’s like this up-leveling and up-leveling and up-leveling. It makes me think about a business mentor that I’ve been working with for almost 20 years, and we’re not going back to what we were. Like it’s consistently this up-leveling. And because he knows me so incredibly well, just like I know my clients incredibly well, he’s able to support me and move me and push me and connect with me in a way that you wouldn’t get if it was just like the first time someone connected. Another piece around why three months works so well is it’s aligned with the body’s natural healing cycles.
Susi 00:18:41 Healing is not linear and our body and nervous system move through phases of activation, of recalibration and of settling. So the three months really allows for an ebb and a flow, right? So when resistance and doubt or setbacks, which can happen, when those arise there’s lots of space to navigate through them with skill and not force. There’s not like this trying to rush. It’s like as I mentioned, it’s luxurious. There’s nine sessions over three months and we’re on Slack, and there’s so much ease inside of that space so that when things arise for the client, we can totally work with them in a very calm and collected way. Now, the other piece that is very fun, particularly for my clients who are using an Aura ring or a Garmin device or other device like tracking, like a wearable device, if someone’s tracking those physiological shifts, whether it’s, like I said, Aura ring or their HRV data, or even just subjective markers like it doesn’t even need to be using a wearable, but subjective markers of ease and energy, then we can see these trends over time.
Susi 00:19:53 And it becomes really, really neat to see the different patterns when someone starts to reduce and eradicate or eliminate pain, and where their energy goes and what happens cognitively and through their belief patterns. Whereas I find with shorter programs, they can create sort of this burst of motivation and insight and a-ha! But then the length of time of three months and the interaction with me really enables these changes to root and to gain some resilience. It also enables us to really test and refine, to give opportunity to try something, knowing that I’m still there, so that if they do decide to go for an 18 hole game of golf and they are sore later; or as one client when Wii boxing was really big, she came in and she had all sorts of soreness in her upper body, and she was Wii boxing with her husband all weekend and she was sore but not “painful” sore but “workout” sore. What’s beautiful here is that there’s so much room for someone to explore and experiment, which is what I want them to do.
Susi 00:20:59 I want them to get out there. I don’t want them to wait until they feel totally good, but they feel enough, good and confident that they can take the interoceptive and proprioceptive feelings with them into the world and really explore with them. And then, of course, the timing. It’s important to mention this. It just works. I find that with shorter programs, they can again give bursts of energy, but the three months can really enable for lasting breakthroughs, establish new pathways to finish up with just this deep, deep sense of knowing. And for those folks who carry on with sessions, they take that deep sense of knowing to a whole new level. And it’s really, really fun to watch someone take that awareness just to a whole new level and watch the transformation happen, right? It just enables a whole new structure really to arise and evolve. And it enables me to be creative. It helps me focus entirely on that person for that length of time and really be there and use my best brain, my best self.
Susi 00:22:10 I mean I only have one brain, but I’m focused. I’m clear. I know exactly what I am doing for that person over that period of time. And then if they do sign up for another one, we just ratchet it up into a whole new level, helping them get that calmer state inside of themselves while also getting stronger, more mobile, and seeing those symptoms of pain or the flares continue to fade away, continue to fade away, and to continue to fade away. I think to finish this episode up, I think it’s really important to recognize that if someone has pain and they really want to get out of it, that there is a transformation that is being asked of them. To me, pain is a signal. It’s a sign that something is off track and there’s an opportunity to learn, adapt and integrate. It’s not about a quick fix, and the three month structure really is a way of honouring how real change happens, in alignment with both the science of the nervous system and wisdom of the body.
Susi 00:23:17 It provides both a personalized deep dive along with a custom tailored approach. It facilitates consistent checkpoints and milestones, regular sessions to refine, adjust, and ensure that what we’re doing is really working. And if it’s not, then to make adjustments, it helps to facilitate integration and sustainability. So it’s clear, it’s embodied. You can feel the change and know exactly what you need to do for yourself. So with that, if you are a teacher or a health professional and you’re pondering this whole idea of like, how do I structure this for my clients? The 3 Month Program might be absolutely perfect for you. And if you’re someone who is in pain and you truly believe, you have a deep knowing, that you can get out of pain, then the 3 Month Series might just be perfect for you and I encourage you to go over to susihately.com/privatesessions. I would love to read your application. You all have a great, great, great time exploring. And we will see you next time.
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Spotify and subscribe via Apple Podcasts or RSS. And if you haven’t already, leave me a review in Apple Podcasts.
Discover how working on the pits can impact (and improve) carpal tunnel syndrome, wrist and elbow issues . . . even knee issues!
