Our Story
Once upon a time, way back in 2010, a young, slightly naive (to the realities of running a business) newly-qualified sports massage therapist found a small room at the Fitness First in Leyton to start her 2-day a week clinic.
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She loved working with her clients to figure out why their pain was happening and how to keep it away with simple small shifts.
Plus she had big ideas for how she wanted to make her business a resource centre for people with body pain.
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Not being the best at naming things, the clinic’s founder initially named it purely so it was easier for search engines to find it –
‘Leyton’ (because it was in Leyton)
and ‘Sports Massage’ (does what it says on the tin, right?)
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Clients loved the unique approach, that felt less like a typical deep, painful, sports massage and more like targeted soft tissue work (some people called it physio, but it definitely ISN’T physio!).
Eager to help more people, the therapist brought more therapists on – true body nerds dedicated to ridding the world of unnecessary pain who cared deeply about helping people.
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To make sure clients would receive consistent care, she developed an in-depth training process for new therapists to learn her unique approach.
Over time, the clinic won many awards and grew to multiple locations with a team of dedicated therapists who loved applying the unique approach at the clinic to get amazing results for their clients.
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It became clear that what started out as a little clinic in a single room in East London couldn’t be Leyton Sports Massage forever (because honestly it just confused people when we weren’t just in Leyton anymore, and not just for sports-related stuff).
The therapist wanted the name change to not forget where the clinic started, and what the original point of it all was (and still not being super creative about naming things), the name was changed to LSM Clinic – so Leyton Sports Massage will always be in there.
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That therapist was me – Katherine Creighton Crook, and the unique approach the stellar team at the clinic uses (and they are stellar – you can read about them here) crystallised into Creighton Structural Massage (you see, I wasn’t kidding about the whole naming things thing).
Our Mission
LSM Clinic has one goal, and that’s to get rid of as much unnecessary pain in the world as possible.
Pain, aches, and niggles aren’t just annoyances. They interrupt our whole life.
They pierce concentration when working on important projects.
They drain our energy meaning we get tired more quickly than we should.
They take up mental & emotional energy, meaning we’re more likely to feel grumpy or irritated, which has a knock-on effect to the people in your life.
Quite simply, unnecessary aches & pains make the entire world a worse place.
Obviously, as much as we’d love to get rid of ALL the pain in the world, we’re limited to anything muscle-related, which often covers more than you might realise.
Our mission is to help as many people as we can get rid of their muscle-based pain (aka muscle pain, some joint pains that have muscular causes, etc) because we specialise in working with muscles.
We know you’re busy and juggling a million things, so our sessions are structured to be super-targeted and as effective as possible, while still finding the centre of the onion (click on the link to see what I mean by ‘centre of the onion’ and why it’s so important).
I feel like this section should be bigger, honestly, but it’s really that simple.
We want to:
- provide targeted massage therapy to rebalance your body and get rid of all pain that is removable
- figure out the least that you need to do to keep the pain away & create a plan that works for your life
- improve your connection to your body so you notice when things are stiffening up/getting less balanced BEFORE it creates a life-interrupting pain experience
That’s it!
Our Values, Diversity & Inclusion
Now that you’ve heard our story and our mission, we’d like to share our values.
The most important thing for us is that everyone feels welcome and safe when they come to the clinic.
We know that if you’re struggling with pain, you may have experienced frustration navigating the healthcare system.
Especially depending on your gender, sexuality, body shape, ability, colour, neuro-divergent or immigration status, you may have not been listened to, dismissed, gaslighted, or bulldozed over.
We want you to feel welcome and listened to, knowing that we believe you and your experiences.
If you feel there’s something wrong, we believe you.
If your body is telling you something is a factor in your problem, we believe you.
If you tell us something about your lived experience, that might be different to us, we believe you.
If you have an emotional release during the session, either because of the frustration you feel about your pain, or because of the natural release of emotion that can happen during massage, we don’t judge you, and we won’t rush in to try to ‘fix’ it – we know you just need space.
We strive to be anti-racist, transfriendly, pro-LGBTQ+, and anti-fatphobia and anti-ableism/neuro-discriminatory.
When we bring new team members on, we look for people who share these values.
Every team member who joins the clinic receives training around what microaggressions are, what appropriate questions/conversations are, and how we have a responsibility to believe lived experiences that are different from our own.
The business has undergone training on LGBTQ+ inclusivity from Queer Box.
We don’t say we ARE anti-racist, etc because we believe it’s a continual process of learning and improving as we learn, not a destination you just arrive at.
We aren’t always going to get it right – but we’ll do our best to be inclusive and considerate, and if we ever fall short, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll try to fix it.
If there’s anything that you’re worried about, or any questions we can answer that would make you feel more comfortable when visiting us, we are happy to arrange a free phone consultation beforehand, to answer any questions you have.
Our Environmental Policies
We do have an envrionmental consciousness, but we are definitely not perfect in this area.
For this reason we don’t really advertise ourselves as an eco-friendly company, but there are some things we’ve put in place to aim to be more environmentally-friendly.
A few years ago, we switched to paperless systems, from the initial intake form to treatment notes to after care. We do still use some flyers but try to keep it to a minimum.
Instead of disposable cleaning tools, we use reusable rubber gloves and washable clothes for cleaning, and to reduce our laundry load we are switching to sheets in the clinic vs towels, as they’re lighter and can wash more in one load than bathsheets.
The massage wax we use comes in biodegradable containers and are sustainably sourced and produced (see Songbird Wax’s website for more details) – with the exception of where clients have a nut allergy, where we use massage lotion.
Our couch roll, which has to be one use, is made from recycled paper.
I’m sure there are places where we can improve, but we are aware of the fact that we all have an impact on the environment and the current state of the climate, so where we can make changes, we have.
Any questions?
Hopefully, in this page we’ve shared enough about who we are, our story, mission, and values.
But, if there’s anything else you’d like to know, about any of this, we’d love to hear from you using the contact form below.