Ep 139 Matt Runnalls - When The Body Speaks: Mental Health, Boundaries & The Massage Room
What do you do when your client’s pain goes beyond the physical?
As massage therapists, we’re trained to work with the body… but what happens when emotions, stress, and life start showing up on the table? In this powerful conversation, I sit down with Matt Runnalls from Mindfull Aus to unpack the deeper layers of what we see every day in clinic.
Matt shares his lived experience with mental health, loss, and rebuilding his life, and how that led him to develop tools that help people not just cope, but truly thrive.
We talk about the “knots” in someone’s timeline. The moments that shape beliefs, behaviours, and even physical tension. And why unless we change the meaning of those moments, we keep tripping over them again and again.
If you’ve ever had a client open up emotionally…
If you’ve ever wondered where your responsibility starts and ends…
If you’ve ever carried something heavy home from your clinic…
This episode is for you.
In this episode, we cover:
• Why presence is more powerful than trying to fix
• How emotional stress shows up in the body
• The concept of timeline “knots” and reframing them
• How to hold space without overstepping your scope
• What to say when a client shares something deeper
• How to create strong, healthy boundaries in your clinic
• Why wellbeing is a performance enhancer, not just a crisis response
Meet Matt
Over many years, Matt Runnalls has worked tirelessly as a mental health advocate to create awareness, acceptance, and education. Having lived with a mental illness, surviving suicide attempts, and losing several friends to suicide, Matt uses his lived experience to help others feel safe to speak up and take ownership of their wellbeing.
He has delivered over 600 presentations across Australia, Canada, and the USA, and his work has been featured across major media, documentaries, and podcasts. Matt was awarded an Australia Day Medallion and named a nominee for Australian of the Year.
He is deeply committed to helping people find purpose, acceptance, and hope.
His Book - Nobody can save me https://mattrunnalls.com.au/nobodycansaveme/
