Linda studied painting at Central School for Art and Design in London, England and subsequently earned her living both as an artist and as lecturer at a number of high profile art schools.
She was a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and was interested in the use of analytical debate to better understand connections between the multifaceted properties of the world around her. However her contention was that personal observation should always be the point of departure. She married and moved out of London into the countryside on the edge of Ashdown Forest so that she could draw and paint more easily from nature.
Ten years later, four months after his father’s premature death and three days after her son’s home birth her apparently healthy new born she had already named Doran, began to seizure, the first sign of an undetected blood incompatibility between them.
Two weeks later Doran’s doctors explained to Linda that because of his exceptionally high level of jaundice and the way he was presenting it was clear he had sustained a very serious brain injury.
He was later diagnosed with severe athetoid cerebral palsy, visual impairment and severe bilateral hearing loss. His Doctors prognosis was that Doran would never be able to sit, stand, walk or feed himself, was unlikely to have any form of speech and would not grow normally, any understanding he might have had would be frustrated by his sensory motor loss.
They suggested, because of the gravity of Doran’s brain damage that he went into care. When Linda refused, they advised he be permanently sedated or he would have muscular spasms and cry continuously. Linda felt sedating Doran denied him opportunity to relate to the world around him. She politely handed back the prescribed phenobarbitone. Linda, Doran and his elder sister Lili, began an extraordinary journey.
Once home Linda moved about the house with Doran cradled in one arm while the other took on the practical household tasks. Doran’s crying ceased, he seemed more at ease with the world around him. Linda believed keeping Doran against her body night and day would allow him to feel her heart beats, her movements…and her breath. She wondered whether this could be restoring vital information that his severe motor -disability denied him.
Linda saw the world differently…she began to recognise Doran did not breathe normally and commenced a twelve hour daily programme of gentle manipulation designed to assist his movement, breathing and brain growth.… her dedication paid off, at the age of six Doran began walking and becoming an engaging ,social little boy. Unfortunately from here the approach began to plateau...his development slowed down…his movements remained abnormal and he still could not speak.
She was told at Doran’s hospital reviews that despite his early achievement, he would probably be needing a wheel chair when he reached his teenage years and nothing she could do would change the medical paradigm. Linda recognised that to take her knowledge further to help Doran and children like him, she would have to retrain as a scientist.
She wrote a book describing the journey Doran, Lili and herself had made so far. The book was translated into many languages and became an international best seller. Parents from all over the world contacted her asking for help.
Finally she sent a copy of the book to the head of Cerebral Studies at University College London, his name was Professor Patrick Wall, a powerful but often frustrated proponent of brain plasticity.
Professor Wall was interested in Linda’s theory that the problem was not so much the brain but the failure of the respiratory system to supply the nutritional oxygen needs necessary to rebuild developmental processes adequately. Unexpectedly she had gained an extraordinary friend, mentor and ally.
On his recommendation Linda became a PhD Qualifier at UCL this meant she was able to study three years in one and then begin her research into the role of the diaphragm in human development and how diaphragmatic deficiency might be the roadblock preventing better outcomes in children with brain injuries. Her research was intended to lead to a doctorate and the hoped for incorporation of her findings and the therapeutic approach emerging from them, into the UK National Health Service.
In the midst of looking at the effect of diaphragmatic breathing on circulating oxygen as an epigenetic trigger, Linda also met Dr Phillip James the UK world authority on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Dr James was impressed enough by her knowledge and her different way of thinking to invite her to train in hyperbaric oxygen therapy at Dundee University Hyperbaric Faculty. He helped her to conduct a research study to investigate her belief that HBOT could benefit children with cerebral palsy and other neurologically based conditions such as autism.
The publicity around her pioneering HBOT work inspired Linda to found the charity Advance and to raise money to purchase and refurbish a building, install two HBOT chambers and commence a new therapeutic approach for children neurological challenges based on an assessment of their breathing and the enhanced provision of oxygen to their body tissues.
By this time she was also coming close to developing a unique restorative therapy focused on the multifunctional roles of the diaphragm. Her literature searches and research studies showed the diaphragm should be rather understood as the respiratory \circulatory \postural muscle that drives development forward epigenetically and integrates all physical and mental functions.
Gradually Linda put together a literature search and a number of statistical studies that supported her argument that abnormal brain development affects diaphragm development. She recounts waking up one morning with a very clear hypothesis. This was that since there was considerable evidence from the literature that epigenesis was triggered by both oxygen delivery and the mechanical stretch of the cell wall as a result of pressures…and that the major source of these pressures appeared to come from the combined respiratory /circulatory /postural work of diaphragm on the body tissues thus enabling all bodily systems to become dynamically interconnected…restorative therapy should reflect all of the above.
Linda devised a therapy which she tested using computerised respiratory inductive plethysmography equipment which uses feedback from breathing movements via tiny electrodes placed in straps fitted across the upper and lower chest. The equipment indicated positive changes in diaphragmatic breathing pattern during therapy and considerable positive pre and post therapy change after six months.
She began to statistically analyse correlations between improvements in the children’s breathing their chest shape and body structure and their functional abilities and developmental progress which are presented as a pilot study in the thesis.
Linda did not focus on what was wrong with development but on a deeper understanding of what underlies and maintains normal developmental processes.
Linda was painstaking with every aspect of her work and finally completed her thesis which alongside her five studies, contained a substantial number of before and after pictures of the children, glowing hospital records and parents detailed reports.
She opened clinics in South Africa, Slovakia and Berlin and later began to help children throughout the world by teaching parents her therapeutic approach (which became known as the Linda Scotson Technique or LST), she uses Skype or Zoom and runs workshops by invitation.
Doran was twenty six years old when Linda began developing LST using him as her first patient. At this time he had a weak flaring diaphragm, he was five feet eight inches tall, he had poor posture, a retracted sternum, compressed lumber spine and a tiled pelvis. He walked poorly, he had only a few words of speech, poor hand control and a thin underdeveloped body structure and poor stamina Change was deep and impressive.
Today Doran is six feet tall with an athletic body, he runs half marathons speaks clearly and intelligently and has become an accomplished and gifted painter.
Linda points out how fortunate she is to have the help and support of her daughter Lili who works with her at Advance where they visibly change lives. The approach is now extended to many other conditions since the work of the diaphragm is key to both physical and mental health.
Her dedication shows that not only is everything connected in the human organism but that the organ that initiates and maintains this connectedness is the Diaphragm. She believes the more people understand this rather beautiful fact, the healthier, happier and wiser humanity will be.
Contact Linda by email info@advancecentres.com
www.advancecentres.com
www.lindascotson.co.uk
