Release, Restore, Rebuild™
About Me
In a safe, supportive environment, I address your individual needs, promoting lasting wellness and relief—helping you reclaim your health with confidence.
Dawn Lean, Manchester massage therapist
​Hi, I’m Dawn, and I’m a fully qualified massage and soft tissue therapist based in Levenshulme, South Manchester. I offer a wide range of treatments from my home-based practice, Sunshine Holistic Therapies, including sports massage and reflexology.
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Everyone’s welcome and I treat a broad range of clients, but I specialise in helping women feel more comfortable in their bodies, whatever their stage of life.
The specialist therapies I offer include pregnancy massage, diastasis recti therapy, (postnatal tummy gap) , c-section and hysterectomy scar therapy, and abdominal visceral manipulation (for diastasis recti, endometriosis and adenomyosis).
I include coaching, education, and support in the cost of therapy, and offer a money-saving, monthly ‘Me-Time Membership’ for regular appointments.
I’m friendly, person-centred, down-to-earth and empathetic, and these
qualities form the foundation of all I do at Sunshine Holistic Therapies. Everything in the body is interconnected, so I treat my clients ‘wholeistically’, addressing every region of the body attached to or associated with the obvious area of discomfort or pain.
I’ll consider everything from your nutrition and sleep habits to your mental and emotional health. After all, to support a human being and their body effectively, therapy needs to focus on the whole.
Scroll down to read more about how Sunshine Holistic Therapies began! To read what my clients say about me, head to my testimonials.
Ready to make an appointment?
Qualifications
VTCT Level 3 Swedish Massage
City & Guilds Level 3 Body Massage
VTCT Level 3 Sports Massage
VTCT Level 3 Reflexology.
Advanced Diploma in Pregnancy Reflexology & Pregnancy Massage
Advanced Diploma in Advanced and Deep Tissue Massage.
Advanced Diploma MSK (Muscular and Skeletal) Assessment and Correction.
Diastasis Rehab for Soft Tissue Therapists.
C-Section, Hysterectomy and Female Abdominal Scar Immersion.
Visceral Manipulation for Women's Health Professionals.
​I’ve been fascinated by the human body for as long as I can remember. On childhood visits
to the library, I always made a beeline for the anatomy books; if it had diagrams of skeletons
or muscles, I was taking it home! The most magical part for me was how the body works
every day without us even realising: the way it’s put together, what it does with food, how it
fixes itself… the list goes on.
When I left school in the early nineties, I’d never even heard of massage therapists, let alone
soft tissue therapists. Over the next 20 years, I did a degree and had various jobs, one or
two of which I loved. But there was always a niggling feeling in the back of mind: the
knowledge that something was missing, something yet to be discovered. I kept looking at
massage therapy courses and started saving up to take them. In 2013, I met my now-
husband. He encouraged me to follow my dream of training to be a massage therapist and
within hours of our first conversation about it, I’d booked my first course.
How it All Began
Helping People from All Walks of Life
Achieving my first qualification and being able to set up my business was like a dream come
true. Keen to learn more, I trained in hot stone massage, soft tissue release, fascia work,
sports massage, deep tissue and more. Each course gave me a different viewpoint,
technique or perspective which I could uniquely blend with the other therapies in my toolbox
to help my clients with their specific needs.
My experience as a massage therapist has given me the privilege of helping people from all
walks of life. I’ve provided reflexology and massage to adults with autism in supported
accommodation, many of whom were non-verbal. I also worked at an osteopath practice in
Manchester City Centre, providing massage, soft tissue therapy and rehab to everyone from
young professional athletes to mature adults recovering from surgery.
My Lightbulb Moment
In 2022, I began working with a team of very busy women’s health physiotherapists at a
private clinic. Here, I began to hear phrases like ‘tummy gap’, ‘diastasis recti’ and ‘scar
massage’, which were all new to me. Such was my curiosity, I began to research these
terms myself. Could this be the missing piece, the thing I was yet to discover? After all, the
abdomen is also known as the core, and a core is something always found in the centre.
Could the abdomen be the core of the human body in every way?
This was my ‘lightbulb’ moment, and it led me to where I am today. I trained with the
awesome Jenny Burrell in Diastasis Recti Rehab and Scar Emersion and Abdominal
Visceral Manipulation with the amazing Alex Antonieu from Ana Therapies / Mummy MOT.
What I witnessed and learnt on those courses blew my mind. I applied my learning to my
work at the private clinic and women were amazed by the results.
Whole Women’s Wellness
Now, in my own business, I offer women bespoke packages that address more than one
issue (for example: tummy gap and caesarean scar), rather than the restrictive system of
appointments that only work on one problem area at a time. With my monthly Me-Time
membership and coaching and support included in my costs, I’ll help you get back to feeling
yourself again.