About me
Hi, I’m Eileen Welsh, I’m a highly qualified and experienced Complementary Therapist across a wide range of disciplines for the treatment of both humans and animals, and I love my work.
My business is built on sound procedures and both technical and ethical best practice. Consultations are undertaken prior to treatment, records are scrupulously maintained and are kept secure and confidential. I am experienced in providing reports and analysis when required and I maintain a friendly, supportive but professional relationship with my clients.
In spite of my name I’m from the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland, but have lived in England for many years. I still have the accent though! I’ve always been an outdoors, nature-loving person; my father was a gamekeeper and fisherman and I was a keen horsewoman, angler and dog trainer in my youth, as was, and still is, my identical twin sister Marie. I married young and was happy for years to follow my husband’s career around the country and to stay at home raising my two children, cooking and tending my garden.
Once my children were older I had a number of jobs and eventually ran my own business, which did well and was both challenging and rewarding. I became interested in complementary therapies through a number of occasions when coming into contact with people in pain and feeling very inadequate to help them. I was already fascinated by the therapeutic benefits of plants and their essential oils through my gardening and I began to read everything I could find on natural healing methods and therapies.
One of the people who influenced me to follow a new path was a very dear friend who had spent her life helping handicapped people. She had taught riding for the disabled for 40 years and was then very ill and in great pain. I felt that this was a message and turning point in my life and I determined never again to leave another person in pain without at least giving them some help and comfort.
In 2000 I paid to learn body massage in a salon. A year later I began a college course in complementary therapies including Aromatherapy, Body Massage, Sports Massage, Reflexology and Indian Head Massage. In 2002 I completed the first two degrees of my Reiki training and in 2003 I qualified through the Football Association for the treatment and management of football injuries.
In that year I also attended an introductory course in Hypnotherapy, and I still use the skills I learned then almost every day in my practice. Also in 2003 I undertook the Level 3 Diploma in Holistic Therapies college course; which included Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Anatomy and Physiology, Advanced Aromatherapy and non-medical Nutrition, and in 2004 the Federation of Holistic Therapists course on ‘the holistic meets clinical treatments interface’.
In 2004 I gained a Level 3 Teaching Certificate in Baby Massage, which included postgraduate studies in Anatomy and Physiology.
2005 was a busy year. I successfully completed the Level 3 Diploma in Understanding the Health Care Environment for Providers of Complementary Therapies so that I could work within the NHS, and also passed in Planning Teaching so that I could teach and work within colleges. The same year I studied with the Children’s Complementary Therapy Network, part of Freshwinds Charity Children’s Project, ‘New Beginnings – Setting up a Children’s Service’.
Finally in 2005, after years of fascinating study and practice, I achieved the degree levels of Reiki Master and Reiki Master Teacher. I continued my training in 2006 with a course in using Aromatherapy when working with Drug and Alcohol Dependent clients.
Building upon my years of working in Surestart Family Centres with pre and post-natal women, young parents and teaching Baby Massage, in 2011 the highly respected teacher Val Groome, who has worked on maternity wards since 1987 and runs her own successful practice in Essex, trained me in Maternity Reflexology.
Additionally, in order to improve and increase my knowledge and range of skills, I have regularly and successfully attended a large number of short term training programmes, weekend classes and seminars on subjects such as Dowsing and Shiatsu.
Throughout the years, as well as occasional teaching at South Cheshire College, I have built up my business Cheshire Complementary Healthcare to provide a range of treatments and therapies to corporate, institutional and private clients, and to animals.
I also worked with my soul partner dog Sam, a cross Border Collie/Alsatian, for his accreditation as a Pets As Therapy Dog. Sam and I worked together helping patients at the Radcliffe Meadow Semi-secure mental health unit in Warrington for 6 years.
My work has included weekly individual client therapy sessions for charitable organisations such as the Wishing Well Project in Crewe, the teaching of Reiki as part of Cheshire East Council’s Lifelong Learning programme since 2005 to date, stress relief sessions in local schools, the running of regular Baby Massage, maternity support and Young Parent therapies programmes for Surestart Centres across both Cheshire East and West and my work in mental health and in the Sandbach Leonard Cheshire Home, and, of course, working with many private clients. For four years until the beginning of 2018 I was the primary provider of baby massage tuition in all Cheshire West & Chester Surestart centres and am currently providing this service through One-to-One Midwives in the Crewe Pregnancy Advice Centre.
As an animal lover my work with animals has been a personal joy, very effective and rewarding, and has included both family pets and horses.
I love learning and expanding my knowledge, and I will continue my journey of exploration, study and discovery, and continue to help as many people as I can; to pass on what I have learned to others and equally to learn from them and to share skills, knowledge and experience to the benefit of all.
And finally, to meet wonderful new friends, both human and animal, like the many I have been privileged to know over the years.