It was a docu-drama that brought the actress Annabelle Apsion to the Rosen Method,a form of hands-on bodywork designed to release physical and emotional tension. It worked so well for her that she now balances her role as Monica in the Channel 4 series Shameless with running the UK's training school and working as a practitioner.

“I found out about Rosen after I'd played Jenni Hicks in the 1996 drama documentary about the Hillsborough football disaster,” she says, sipping tea in the sunny kitchen of her Hampstead home, North London. “Both her daughters died at the stadium. I hadn't played a ‘real' person before, and this was such a horrific experience. Every day for six weeks I was playing someone in distress and by the end of the filming I was still affected by having to relentlessly conjure up those images and feelings about Jenni's daughters and how they'd died.”

The stress of this reverberated for some time, leaving her unsettled and anxious. She was also between jobs, something she usually enjoys because it allows her time to pursue other interests. Not this time. But a chance attendance at a Rosen Method workshop, which she thought was a massage class, changed things.

“I've always liked massage and I've had lots of different bodywork, shiatsu, reflexology, Indian head massage...you name it, I've probably tried it, and I thought volunteering to be demonstrated on would be a good way to get a free treatment. In fact, I was a bit disappointed initially as I was expecting a deep-tissue massage. This was much more gentle and exploratory, assessing where the emotional tension was rooted in my muscles and gently encouraging them to ‘let go' by themselves rather than having something done to them, which is a very different experience.

Bodywork affected her feelings

“It was amazing. As the treatment went on I was able to connect to my body in a way that I hadn't before. The practitioner asked me some incredibly pertinent questions while she was working on me. She said that it was in response to the information she was getting from my breathing - and from the way my body responded to her touch.

“Through Rosen I could connect, identify and let go of the physical side, which released the feeling side. It was a profound experience at a time when I really needed it.”

What Apsion realised was that bodywork could affect how she was feeling. “Our posture can come from how we are feeling and vice versa. We know this, but it's easy to forget. And by nurturing ourselves, it's much easier to be more effective and nicer to others. So it's good for the body, good for the soul and, by extension, good for society.”

The Rosen Method was devised in the 1970s by Marion Rosen, who originally trained as a physiotherapist in Germany in the 1930s. She had become involved in avant garde bodywork, breathing and relaxation exercises before leaving to live in the US before the Second World War.

By bringing her earlier experience of these other disciplines to bear on her practice as a physio, she found that she could help those patients who, in spite of extensive treatment, never seemed to recover fully. She reasoned that the mind must be at work.

She also found that she could work with her patients' unconscious responses to her touch to release deeply held feelings that were stopping their muscles relaxing and, therefore, hindering full healing. Not only were people becoming physically better, they were also feeling happier, changing their lives, losing weight and getting pregnant. Doctors began to refer difficult cases to her. Recognising that she had devised a treatment method of real value, she initially trained 12 students. Now 94, Rosen still practises and teaches in California and her method is taught and practised around the world.

Apsion says that she decided to train as a practitioner after that first treatment eight years ago. In 2003 she also decided to set up a school in the UK with Ingrid Maria Nordgren, from Sweden. “The Rosen Method is very big in Scandinavia and because I had had to go to Denmark to train, I wanted it to become more widely available here. We get a lot of physios and nurses, people from established scientific and medical backgrounds who want to extend their professional practice, coming to train with us,” she says.

The school runs weekend workshops, plus three seven-day training programmes during the year, which Apsion helps out at. She also sees clients when she is in London, but there can be long gaps when she's working or on location. She says the method has helped her as an actress and as a teacher at drama workshops where she uses touch “as a way of accessing deep states of feeling and awareness”.

Would Monica in Shameless be up for Rosen Method therapy? “Monica is one of those people who wreaks havoc wherever she goes and is addicted to drama and confrontation,” Apsion laughs. “Although she's in her early forties and has had seven children, she's more immature than any of them. She has used her sexuality, I think, as a way of seeking affection and intimacy, and as a way of getting self-esteem. She doesn't much care what she says or what people think of her, but underneath she's pretty damaged. Yes, she would benefit from Rosen.”

Apsion says that she gets a lot of interest from people of all ages who have watched the series “and they all seem to like Monica, which I find interesting”. She says: “I'm often asked if I am like her, which hasn't happened before with any other part I've played. She's a great alter ego to have and I love playing her because she thinks she is fabulous, she celebrates everything about herself and never worries about offending people by what she says and does. “It's very liberating to play someone so selfish, but she is definitely quite different from me.”

Contact www.rosenmethod.co.uk 020-7060 0683

Dr Toby Murcott: What's the evidence? Can the Rosen Method therapy treat stress and anxiety?

There are no objective, controlled, clinical trials on its effects. One report claims that patients with poor sexual function did appear to benefit from a Rosen-type therapy, but this was not a clinical trial and is weak evidence for its effectiveness.

What about the techniques it uses?

Most hands-on therapies have limited amounts of evidence to support them. For example, massage could be useful in helping to relieve stress in healthcare workers and healing touch may help patients with dementia and might improve pain management in critically ill patients. Relaxation techniques, such as self-hypnosis or meditation, have been shown to be useful for conditions from stress relief to headache.

Is it placebo?

There's no way of saying, but it is recognised that placebo-based improvements are as real as those produced by established treatments. It is well understood that a good relationship between patient and practitioner can produce improvements, even if the treatment is later shown in clinical trials to be mainly placebo.

Dr Toby Murcott is a science writer and broadcaster

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