Rusty's Place - Rusty Lee Smalley

🌿 SALE 🌿 For 10 days, I’m making it a little easier to come and see me.

From 14th–23rd October, you can book a 60-minute session usually $125 marked down to $100

🌿 If you’ve been thinking about coming in…

🌿 if your body has been asking for something different…

🌿 if your head has been ridiculously busy…

🌿 or if there’s something in your world you’d just love to shift…
this might be your invitation.

Come for the conversation.
Come for muscle release.
Come for Access Bars.

Come because you’re curious what might be different afterwards.

60-minute sessions | $100
14th–23rd October

Book online: https://www.rustyleesmalley.com

My very first Bars class completely changed my life — and it wasn’t just because I learnt the Bars.

I think I went there expecting to learn 32 points on a head. What I didn’t realise was that Bars was only one of the tools I was going to walk away with that day.
There were questions. Conversations. Different ways of looking at things I had spent years assuming were simply true.

One of the biggest things for me was discovering that caring about someone doesn’t mean I have to agree with their problem. I could listen without joining them in it. I could ask a question instead of automatically offering advice. I could be with someone without needing to fix them, save them or decide what was right for them.

💭 That changed the way I was with people — and eventually, the way I was with myself.

That’s one of the things I love most about teaching Bars now. Yes, you learn the 32 points. You gift two Bars sessions and receive two Bars sessions during the day. But wrapped around all of that are questions, conversations and tools that you can take into your everyday life.

And sometimes the thing that changes the most isn’t the thing you thought you came to learn.

✨ My next Access Bars class is 1 November 2026.

🔎 A little research curiosity: In a recent pilot study, 87 people were compared — some received a 60-minute Access Bars session, while others simply rested for the same amount of time.

Researchers looked at things like breathing, pulse, blood pressure and the tiny changes in timing between heartbeats that can tell us something about how the body is responding to stress and relaxation.

And here’s the bit I find interesting: the Bars group showed a bigger shift toward calm and physical ease than the group who just rested. They also reported feeling more present and less physical tension afterwards.

Now THAT makes me curious. Because resting for an hour can feel pretty good all by itself… so what was happening differently in the bodies of the people receiving Bars? 🧐

It was a preliminary, single-session study, so it doesn’t prove what Bars can or can’t do. But it certainly gives us an interesting question to keep exploring.

If you’re curious about learning Bars and would like to sign up for my next class, you can find all the details here:

https://www.rustyleesmalley.com

We know touch can be relaxing. But a huge 2024 review suggests there can be a lot more going on than that.

🌿 Researchers looked at 137 studies involving 12,966 people, comparing touch with no-touch control groups.

In adults, some of the strongest findings were around pain and anxiety. The researchers also found changes across things including mobility, blood pressure and cortisol.

And here’s where it gets really interesting…

Longer treatments weren’t associated with greater benefits.

But having more touch sessions was associated with greater overall benefits in adults, including for pain, anxiety and depression.

So more time, more pressure and more intensity aren’t automatically the things that matter.

That makes me VERY curious. 😏

Because with gentle bodywork, we often assume that if it doesn’t hurt, dig deeply or go on forever, surely not much can be happening.

Yet your body is continuously receiving information through touch.

You might simply be lying there thinking:

“Ohhhh… this is lovely.”

Meanwhile there may be changes occurring that you can’t consciously feel happening at all.

✨ Maybe gentle doesn’t mean less.

Maybe our bodies are simply far more responsive to touch than we give them credit for.

Curious what yours might notice?

Book now
https://www.rustyleesmalley.com

📍 Rusty’s Place at Cairns Health Collective

Study: Packheiser J, Hartmann H, Fredriksen K, Gazzola V, Keysers C, Michon F. A systematic review and multivariate meta-analysis of the physical and mental health benefits of touch interventions. Nature Human Behaviour. 2024;8:1088–1107. doi:10.1038/s41562-024-01841-8. PMID: 38589702.

🌿 How many people have you talked to about the same thing? How many psychologists? How many psychiatrists?

How far back have you had to look to try to understand why something is the way it is? And how many times have you walked away with advice that sounds different on the surface… but somehow leaves you in the same place?

I’m not asking that to dismiss any of it. I’m asking because sometimes people have looked in so many places, listened so carefully, worked so hard, and still quietly given up on the idea that something genuinely different might be available.

That question interests me.

How many times have you told the same story and received the same advice?

Not because anyone got it wrong. Not because nobody cared. But because sometimes the answers we’ve already heard can become so familiar that we stop expecting a different possibility altogether.

That’s one of the things that intrigues me about Access Bars and the conversations that can happen around it. Sometimes it isn’t about more analysis. Sometimes it’s about a different space. A different question. A different experience. Something that doesn’t keep meeting you from the same direction.

🧠 That’s also why I found one part of Dr Terrie Hope’s research so interesting. In her 2023 exploratory case series, four UK police officers had already received standard treatments and were still experiencing symptoms before having seven weekly Access Bars sessions.

One participant’s PTSD checklist score moved from 38 to 18 over the study. It was a very small case series, so it’s not a sweeping conclusion about what everyone will experience, but it certainly opens an interesting question.

What if the next change in your life doesn’t come from hearing a better version of the same advice?

What if it comes from being willing to explore a different possibility?

You can book either an online conversation appointment or an in-person conversation & Access Bars session with me here:
https://www.rustyleesmalley.com

Massive wow with this exploration 🧐

🧐 What happens in the gap between wanting something to stop… and actually saying stop?

I had a hair spa and facial treatment recently, and partway through it my hair was being pulled so much that I was lying there thinking, I really don’t like this. I want her to stop doing that.

And I said absolutely nothing.

I’m still losing hair from how much it was pulled, which is the part that makes me go… seriously? Why didn’t I just say something? This has happened to me multiple times during massages as well.

🌿

That is what got me thinking about this whole phenomenon.

Because when you’ve paid for the experience or already agreed to it, there can be this strange moment where you know you hate what is happening and yet somehow still don’t interrupt it.

You’ve booked it. You’ve paid. They’re halfway through. They might see something I don’t. They seem nice. They’re trying to do a good job. You don’t want to embarrass them, hurt their feelings, seem difficult, or make the whole thing awkward.
You think, It’s nearly finished anyway.

And suddenly your own discomfort and what you know about your own body are being weighed against their feelings.

Even though it is your body.

🌿

S*x can have a very similar layer.

You already said yes to starting. You already kissed them. You already got into bed. You already began. Then something changes and suddenly you don’t want it anymore.

But now there’s all this strange social static around interrupting something you already agreed to.

Will they feel rejected? Will they be annoyed? Will they think I led them on? Maybe I’ll just wait until it’s over.

I know that one personally.

I have been r***d, and years later I had s*x where I wanted it to stop and still said nothing. I didn’t give him a different direction. I didn’t say no. I gave him no information that something had changed for me.

But inside me, it had.

And afterwards, the feeling was horribly familiar.

That is the part I think we don’t talk about enough.

You can come away from s*x feeling violated, even close to the edges of r**e, while also knowing the other person may genuinely have had no idea you had stopped wanting what was happening.

Then the self-judgement piles on top.

Why didn’t I say something?
Why didn’t I stop it?
Why did I just let it happen?

🌿

We tend to imagine refusal as a beautifully clean event:

I don’t want this → I know I don’t want this → I say stop.

Except humans apparently aren’t that tidy.

Sometimes it is more like:

Maybe I’m overreacting → maybe this is normal → I don’t want to embarrass them → I already said yes → maybe it’ll be over soon → now it feels too late to say something.

🌿

And then there is another part of this I cannot stop thinking about:

How practised are we actually at speaking up?

It takes a baby around a year of wobbling, falling, practising and building the muscles to stand and walk.

Yet we can expect ourselves to somehow be brilliant at saying no, changing our mind, interrupting someone or telling someone to stop… even if we have barely practised doing any of those things.

Then the first time we try, it comes out too loudly, too softly, too late, with tears or with an apology… and we think, Well, that didn’t work.
And then we don’t try again.

What if one messy attempt was never proof that we couldn’t speak up?

What if it was simply what an unpractised voice sounds like?

🌿

💛 Curious…

What happens in the gap between knowing you want something to stop… and being able to make the words come out?

Where in your life do you know what you want but find it strangely difficult to say?

What if one awkward attempt at speaking up was not proof that you were bad at it?

And what if you gave yourself the same twelve months of wobbling, falling over and getting it wrong that we happily give a baby learning to walk — and none of it meant you were failing?

🌿

Research that made me curious…

Hospital patients: 30.5% of patients who experienced a problem did not always feel comfortable speaking up.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30269059/

ICU patients/families: 50–70% reported hesitancy about raising concerns.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30002146/

S*xual consent: women described not knowing they could withdraw consent, not knowing how, and sometimes continuing unwanted s*x.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10903583/

Workplace silence: meta-analysis of 84 studies, 34,975 people, found a consistent link between silence and burnout.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40437815/

When something hurts, of course we point straight at it and think, “There. That’s the problem.”

But what if that sore spot is sometimes simply the part of your body shouting the loudest?

🧠 Pain isn’t created by a muscle sitting there with its own little alarm system. Your nervous system is involved too — constantly receiving information and influencing how sensitive an area feels.

And this is where it gets REALLY interesting.

A 2023 umbrella review looking at manual therapy in people with chronic musculoskeletal pain found immediate changes in mechanical pain sensitivity after treatment.

So sometimes we can touch, move or work with the body… and the way an area responds can change.

Not because the pain wasn’t real. Not because we magically erased whatever was happening underneath it. But because the experience of pain can change when the information your nervous system is working with changes.

🌿 Which means the sore spot may not always be the only place worth listening to.

Sometimes I’ll work somewhere you weren’t expecting, then we check again. You move. You notice.

And every now and then there’s that gorgeous little:

“Hang on… why does THAT feel different?” 😏

That’s the bit I love.

Bodies are so much more interesting than “it hurts here, therefore the problem must only be here.”

What if your body has been trying to tell a much bigger story?

Book now
https://www.rustyleesmalley.com

📍 Rusty’s Place at Cairns Health Collective

Study: Martínez-Pozas O, Sánchez-Romero EA, Beltran-Alacreu H, et al. Effects of Orthopedic Manual Therapy on Pain Sensitization in Patients With Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: An Umbrella Review With Meta-Meta-analysis. American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. 2023;102(10):879–885. doi:10.1097/PHM.0000000000002239. PMID: 36917046.

🌿 When you tell someone you’re upset, do they help you build the case… or ask you something that changes it?

You know that phone call where you’re furious about something, and ten minutes later there are now TWO people furious about it? They love you. They’re on your side. They remind you of the other three times it happened, confirm you definitely shouldn’t put up with it, and maybe even find a few extra reasons for you to be annoyed.

Sometimes that feels fabulous. But did anything actually change? Or did your conclusion just get more witnesses?

That’s where I get really interested in conversation. I don’t want to convince you that you shouldn’t be upset. I’m curious about whether there’s a question nobody has asked yet.

What if they didn’t mean what you decided they meant?

What if the part you’re defending isn’t actually the part that matters?

What if there’s an option you can’t see while everybody around you is helping you prove you’re right?

🧠 One of the things I found interesting in Dr Terrie Hope’s 2023 Access Bars research was that the four police officers in the case series had already received standard treatments and were still experiencing symptoms. After seven weekly Bars sessions, one participant’s PTSD checklist score moved from 38 to 18 — a 20-point change.

That doesn’t tell us what everyone will experience, but it certainly makes me curious about what can become available when something different is added to the conversation.

Maybe sometimes we don’t need another person to agree with us.

Maybe we need a different question, a different experience, or simply enough space to notice something we couldn’t see before.

You can book either an online conversation appointment or an in-person conversation & Access Bars session with me here:
https://www.rustyleesmalley.com