Who’s working in Antibes?

Rachael Dickens BA, BSc Hons (Ost), DO

Rachael works in both clinics
Antibes:  Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings
Monaco: Thursdays

Rachael  set up the english osteopath clinics in 2002.
Rachael decided to become an osteopath after being temporarily paralysed for 6 months following a sports accident. It was an osteopath that finally got her walking and even though at that time she was working her way up the commercial career ladder in huge publishing companies (The Daily Mail General Trust and The BBC) and had just attained the promotion of Publisher, she gave it all up to go back to University and complete the 5 year course at the British School of Osteopathy.

She moved to France in October 2001 and opened the clinic in Antibes in January 2002. The Monaco clinic opened in March 2010. With them both being so popular she is thinking about opening her third…

Rachael is a product of her environment! She comes from a family that has huge links to their community.  As a child her parents made  her go and visit old people who had no visitors or family. This was no hardship as they would give her presents and chocolate… as she got older her commercial streak took over and soon she had a lot of elderly ladies knitting jumpers on demand for her school friends. This gave the old ladies something to do, all the teenagers got handmade jumpers and Rachael made a profit.

Growing up she was involved in the home her mother ran, which was for adults with physical and learning disabilities. Today her sister runs a farm where all the staff are again, adults with physical and learning disabilities, this farm has a craft shop, a nursery and a cafe as well as rare breeds.

When Rachael moved to France she set about creating a charity whereby babies and small children who may otherwise not get to see an osteopath, could visit one for free. This charity, Osteos du Coeur, which she formed with 4 french osteo friends ran for 5 years until it merged with the Croix Rouge in Antibes and now is much bigger and has wider coverage. Whilst she was President of the charity she was honored with a national award for the Prix des Femmes (Womans’ Prize) This is where the public choose which female has made the biggest contribution to their community. After a few rounds of voting Rachael was a finalist and was flown to Paris and given a cheque for 1000 euro. She remains the first and only British woman to have been honored in this way.

Supporting Wounded Veterans is a UK registered charity which takes medically discharged members of the armed forces and teaches them to ski, or to learn again as an amputee. Then the real work kicks in with the one on one Mentoring that each soldier is given to find jobs/careers for the veteran skiers. So far it has a 100% success rate.

Rachael is on the Committee and heads up the medical team. Her role is to keep these soldiers safe as they go skiing, without eyes,legs and arms.  She is involved from the initial recruitment of the skiers and has to make the tough decisions as to whom to take on an incredibly oversubscribed event. It’s a year long task for a weeks safe skiing.

As an osteopath Rachael works very ‘structurally’ She is an ace manipulator, and has over 15 years clinic experience.  She uses the acupuncture techniques of ‘dry needling’ to great effect and is also very experienced with cranial osteopathy. Stretchy tape or Kinesio tape is often used to also help reinforce the osteo work.

Personally Rachael loves to ski and box, and kayak and hike. She always has a dog with her, which is why the clinics are dog friendly! She has recently started making websites (like this one) and is morphing into a techno geek.
Her current charities are:
Osteos du Coeur
Supporting Wounded Veterans

Romain Almirall BSc Ost Romain joined our team in 2010 and now works in our Antibes Office He is the hardest working member of our team because he owns an osteopathic clinic in Marseille and at weekends and Monday mornings he works there too. He is uber fit and a keen sportsman. Because of his history of playing competitive tennis he is really interested in sports injuries as he has seen and experienced most of them. Romains biggest and darkest secret is that he was on the National French team for Ballroom Dancing. He maintains that he only did this through parental pressure and that the positive side was that it enabled him to be highly sought after with the opposite sex. !!! Romain has won the accolade of being the osteo that talks the most!, and he has very stiff competition from the girls. Patients refer to him as ‘the chatty one’.

Shona Shona is a wonderful massseuse. Available at the clinic in Antibes and for home visits Very strong hands, if asked for. She is a full time massage therapist, and her treatments are drawn from her training in; Deep tissue body sculpting Sports Flowing Swedish styles Acupressure Thai Skin rolling and manual kneading (combats cellulite) Passive joint and sensory repatterning Price 70€ an hour table time