Under pressure
A revolutionary sensory therapy is bringing clients a deep sense of wellbeing and inner peace.
A revolutionary sensory therapy is bringing clients a deep sense of wellbeing and inner peace.
Words Monique Balvert-O’Connor
Desiree De Spong loves how her working life is strongly focussed on offering people the chance to be wrapped up and supported, to feel warm, relaxed, calm and even healed.
All that is possible thanks to Desiree’s knowledge of the body’s lymphatic system and her associated desire to help facilitate life-changing results for a variety of people.
The Tauranga woman is a lymphatic specialist and developer and designer of Flowpresso®. Flowpresso, Desiree explains, is a sensory therapy system designed to reset the body’s physiology to support healing and general health.
The system is a result of Desiree’s desire to combine holistic therapy with scientific rigour, driven by a conviction that lymphatic therapy offers “a missing link in health”.
Essentially, Desiree tells, Flowpresso the product is a special bodysuit – one that comprises individual chambers that inflate in sequence and cover the legs, abdomen, arms and torso. It is non-invasive natural therapy, with reclining clients remaining clothed while enjoying a sensory treatment based on compression, thermodynamic heat and deep pressure (“pressure of a good kind”). Hence the feeling of being wrapped up, hugged and calmed.
Among those endorsing the suit is our constabulary. A research study, which involved 135 first responder candidates, showed the suit improved sleep by 92 percent, reduced stress by 63 percent and reduced anxiety by 55 percent. The WBOP Police became early adopters – that was two years ago – and remain users. Following their lead were other first responders, such as nurses and firefighters – people dealing with community stress and then their own. Referrals also come from counsellors, psychologists and others within the health field.
So, what’s the magic behind this suit? Flowpresso’s purpose is to release toxins, switch off the body’s fight-or-flight mechanisms, and encourage a rest and repair state, which is the optimum state required for a body’s healing process. Time in the suit once per week for three weeks is recommended.
For Desiree, Flowpresso is the realisation of her dream to create an evidence-based therapy that helps with mental health and sleep crisis.
It’s a field that’s a far cry from what she did in her “past life”: She worked in IT and finance for the NZ Fire Service.
“I made the change as I wanted to be involved in something that helped people. I became spellbound when I attended workshops in lymphatics. It was like a lightning bolt moment, as I saw lymphatics as the missing
link in health,” says Desiree, who went on to train in the USA and Australia.
She’s been a lymphatic specialist for two decades now, constantly building upon what she can offer. Flowpresso is a relatively new development, resulting from extensive worldwide study of existing technologies and their efficacy. This keen entrepreneur soon realised she would need to design an effective device and develop an initial prototype.
The first Flowpresso suit was manufactured only four years ago. Updates and refinements followed and the full Flowpresso system was launched in February 2020 with support from NZ Trade and Enterprise.
Close to 500,000 sessions per year are going on in the world now, Desiree tells. Exports are predominantly to the USA, Australia and the outskirts of Europe. In the USA alone, the suits are used in about 240 clinics and donned by those in law enforcement there too. Desiree has been hosted on a couple of occasions at the NZ Embassy in the USA to speak to those involved in defence, homeland security, law enforcement and firefighting.
Back home, Desiree and fellow wellbeing advocate Karen Gemmell, own Neuro Bar (with Tauranga, Te Puna and Matamata clinics) where Flowpresso therapy is available. Other clinics have purchased the suits, so Flowpresso is available in various locations nationwide.
Creating something pivotal in facilitating people to experience positive change in their lives is the best thing ever, Desiree says. "It's heart-touching and I’m elated. Users talk about how relaxed they feel after a session – some hadn’t necessarily realised how stressed they were. People say they’ve noticed improved sleep quality and energy, and a decreased stress response. Many feel they’ve been hugged all over.”
“Among other things, hugs release the feel-good hormone, but a lot of people don’t have access to hugs. And as the saying goes, we need four hugs a day for survival, eight for maintenance, and 12 for growth,” Desiree smiles.