In the week that the Killyhevlin Lakeside Hotel has been nominated for Best Hotel Gym at the 2018 Northern Ireland Health & Fitness awards, we received this endorsement from one of our most enthusiastic and regular Club members:
“The body has great powers to heal itself.” So says Fermanagh’s one and only Neuro Muscular Physical Therapist, Jim Fawcett. And he should know, for, following a serious accident in 2006 which led to several operations, he was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Yet Jim is now fit as a fiddle and a walking advert for regular exercise, a healthy diet and his own brand of complementary medicine.
Determined to heal lingering nerve and muscle damage and to wipe out his diabetes through exercise and diet, Jim joined the
Killyhevlin Health Club in 2008. Here he found the range of facilities that suited his needs – a planned programme of
exercise classes under expert supervision including boxercise, circuits, spinning and abs, ball stability, aqua aerobics and yoga; a fully equipped gym and a well heated swimming pool and relaxation areas.
During his quest to heal himself, Jim realised his vocation was to heal others. A graduate of the Irish College of Oesteopathic Medicine in Dublin, Jim reflects wryly upon how, given his own medical history, he was the best guinea pig who ever walked through the gates of the college. He also qualified as a yoga teacher and is presently studying for a PhD in Applied Neuro Science from King’s College, London.
Jim’s Fermanagh Neuro Muscular Therapy clinic is located at the Killyhevlin Business Estate, a stone’s throw from the Killyhevlin Lakeside Hotel. On the walls are life-size posters mapping all the body’s internal organs, blood vessels and nerves. Large reference books line the shelves including a full guide to yoga, a physical medicine which is 5,000 years old and which, according to Jim, is an invaluable aid to both mental and physical health.
“My line of therapy is not mainstream but complementary yet I have referral systems to and from the NHS,” confirms Jim. He describes one striking example of the kind of healing he has achieved and which is not offered by general medicine. A patient who came to him with phantom limb pain had lost a leg below the knee following a motorbike accident and was experiencing foot pain. Jim used simple neuro muscular techniques and the pain disappeared within minutes. Similarly, a horse rider who had lost an arm below the elbow and complained of a really sore thumb was relieved of that phantom pain by Jim’s technique.
Here are Jim’s cardinal rules for good health: Avoid processed food. Eat sensibly. Drink plenty of water and keep the blood flowing throughout the body by exercising every part of it each week. “Don’t be lazy,” warns Jim. “As with everything in life, you have to put in the work to see results. I advise my clients to join a gym such as the one I use in the Health Club at the Killyhevlin Lakeside Hotel.”