Benjamin is a higher degree research student completing his PhD (Medicine) at Sydney University exploring the use of dance as a treatment in chronic pain populations. Benjamin is in the unique position to combine his background in Physiotherapy and Exercise Physiology with his dance teaching. His patients repeatedly told him that their chronic pain was not noticeable when they were dancing. In response, Hickman launched a scientific study on dance for pain management, and additionally published a systematic review of studies to date on dance and pain. The results? A whopping 74% of studies proved that dance reduces pain or improves the perception of pain.
Ben is the Director of his own combined allied health clinic and dance studio based in Sydney where he uses not only conventional medical approaches but also incorporates dance and other complementary and wholistic therapies. Whilst being a health professional during the day and dance teacher and event organiser at night, he enjoys using all his skills together and has designed his own dance for Arthritis and dance for health programs in the past year. His drive for learning and innovating has seen him and his business featured in newspapers and reaching the finals in a number of small business and entrepreneurial Australian awards.
He hopes that one day there will be more awareness and recognition of the whole human and how therapies need to be sustainable, enjoyable and effective to really enable society to change their lifestyle habits for the better.
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