Integrative & Holistic Coaching

Providing accessible and understandable health information

• Giving people the knowledge and power to improve their own health.

• Trustworthy health information from the latest evidence that’s easy to understand.

Supporting patients & health professionals through chronic illness, burnout and healthcare-related trauma

• Integrative coaching support.

• Root cause approach for long-lasting better health.

Raising awareness about how trauma impacts health and how ill-health & healthcare can be traumatising

• How illness and injury can be traumatising.

• How patient experiences in the health-system can be traumatising.

• How the health system can be both toxic and traumatising for healthcare staff leading to higher rates of burnout.

Reimagining healthcare

• Narrative medicine- I want to hear your story.

• Building trusting patient-doctor relationships.

• Placing the patient (you) at the centre.

• Respecting that healthcare staff are people too.

• Recognising the challenges and failures of modern western healthcare systems.

• Being honest about what we don’t know.

• Being open to changes in how healthcare is delivered.

HOW CAN EMBODIED MEDICINE SUPPORT ME?

I want to hear your story.

Coaching is an opportunity to explore who and where you are and where you want to go. The coaching room is a space to dedicate time to yourself, your physical health and mental wellbeing, to learn how to listen to your body and its needs.

Coaching is driven by you, as the coach I will be there to guide your self-enquiry and support you through the process of making or moving towards positive change. My ethos is that you are in charge of your own health so you take the driving seat.

Treating the whole body and mind, not just one small issue in a short appointment time.

The health of our bodies and minds can be affected by so many different things- some things you might already know about, but not everything is obvious and sometimes we need help to bring awareness to those things.

Physical health (how your body functions) is inseparable from the health of our thoughts and emotions, social connections, intimate relationships, our living and working environment, the food we eat and the way we move our bodies. Living and feeling our best requires us to consider all these essential elements.

The choices we make and actions we take day after day have the power to prevent or improve, sometimes even reverse diseases. These choices are available to most of us, they don’t have to cost a lot (many of them are even free). The main challenge for most people I see (myself included), is sticking to a change long enough to see the benefits of that change. Old habits die hard and change can be difficult.

PERSONALISED APPROACH

A personalised approach tailored specifically to your needs. Drawing from a wide range of experience:

• 18 years experience in clinical medicine

• Transformational life coaching

• Lifestyle medicine

• Person-focused therapeutic techniques

• Trauma-informed methods

• Somatic techniques (body and breath-work)

• Personal experience of chronic ill-health and burnout

EXAMPLES OF PROBLEMS EMBODIED MEDICINE CAN SUPPORT

• Autoimmune disorders

• Chronic fatigue

• Chronic and complex pain

• Burnout

• Chronic stress

• Fertility issues

• Painful, absent or irregular periods

• Pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS)

• Peri-menopause/ Menopause

• Chronic pelvic pain

• Irritable bowel syndrome and digestive issues

• Inflammatory bowel disease

• Inflammatory arthritis (painful joints)

• Insomnia and sleep problems

• High blood pressure

• High cholesterol

• Depression

• Anxiety

• Chronic-PTSD

• Migraines

• Recovering from cancer

• Diabetes

• Chronic skin disorders (eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis)

• Coping with cancer

• Disordered eating

• Binge eating

• Poor body image

• Imposter syndrome

• Difficult experiences in healthcare settings

• Worries about the future

WHY CHOOSE EMBODIED MEDICINE?

I have experience of both sides as a doctor and a patient.

I understand how living with a chronic health problem whilst navigating our health system can be traumatising.

If you are a healthcare worker, I understand how the work we do and the working conditions we work in can be traumatising.

Embodied Medicine is focused on the root cause, leading to longer lasting change.

Addressing your health more holistically whilst working and building a relationship with one single health practitioner.

Longer sessions of an hour each time and over a prolonged period of time has tremendous benefits allowing us to focus on multiple issues and making it possible to give more personalised guidance which can come from knowing more about you and what you want.

MODERN MEDICINE IS FAILING US

Modern medicine is amazing and saves thousands of lives every day, but despite its advances we are sicker than ever. People are living longer but in poorer health, with more of those years spent in illness. Having handfuls of tablets to take every day, worrying about or feeling limited by your health isn’t how most of us imagine spending our days.

If you break a bone, you can wear a cast for a few weeks for it to heal. If you cut your finger, it should also heal within a few weeks- sometimes needing a little extra help in the way of stitches; If you have a chest infection, you can take antibiotics to help it heal. Whilst this approach works very well for managing emergencies, acute illness and non-complex injury, saving countless lives, it tends to fall short in the management of many longer term and chronic conditions. Diseases and pathological illness are considered as collections of recognised signs and symptoms we can individually target as they appear, but rarely does management focus on the root cause(s), and sadly many health systems put very little time and energy on preventing diseases before they happen. As global healthcare demands rise higher and higher, I don’t expect this approach to change anytime soon. Health systems are under significant strain with increasingly limited resources to look after people in poorer health with not one, but multiple interconnected health problems and complex needs. Governments can make decisions which can impact our health for better or worse. We might not be able to control the decisions made by our governments, but we can control the decisions we make for ourselves.

If you have high blood pressure, you can take one, two, three medications to control it, but if you’re stressed to breaking point, your blood pressure will still be high. If you eat a diet very high in salt, your blood pressure will likely still be high. You can take a statin for high cholesterol, but if you continue to eat foods very high in saturated fat, your cholesterol will likely still be high. Sometimes the drugs don’t work, and sometimes they work for a little while, but they can’t overcome the other things going on around you or to you.

Genes only explain a part of our health destiny, the rest is dictated by our life experiences and the choices we make.

Optimal health isn’t possible if we don’t address the things that make us sick in the first place. Patching up the cracks can work for a while, but if we continue to carry the same load (or more) over a prolonged period of time we will only wear ourselves out more quickly and more repairs to get by, until sometimes we break completely.

We are not considering the chronic and debilitating effects that chronic stress, inflammation and emotional trauma have on the physical body.

There will be some things we can’t change and can’t control, but for every one problem like this there are at least 10 we can do something about. Resistance to change often gets in the way of feeling content and healthy in the now.

THE POWER OF CHOICE

We have power and agency over our choices and how we choose to approach our life and health as individuals.

What choices can you make today towards living better tomorrow?

We are experts of our own bodies, but sometimes we need a little help to tap into our body’s innate wisdom. Deep healing can come from self enquiry. There is so much freely available information about health and wellbeing, much of it is conflicting, making it difficult to know what to do and as a result sometimes that means we do nothing.

Sometimes the best things for our bodies are the simplest. I think we already know the best thing to do but we still don’t do it. Why do we self- sabotage? Through working together we can identify the changes you’d like to make and what might be holding you back from making moves towards them. I am not here to hold you accountable to the goals you set for yourself- this is the current medical model but I don’t believe it is one that leads to lasting change. Sometimes when we hold-back from making changes it can also indicate to us that it might not be what we want. Only you can answer that for yourself. I can walk beside you, supporting you on your journey and give you tools and knowledge to empower you to figure out what works best for you.

I can’t promise you can have it all in life, but I can help you optimise your health, figure out what’s important to you, explore what’s making you feel stuck, identify the direction you’d like to be going in and the next moves you want to take in that direction. The rest is up to you.

GET STARTED

Complete the questions on the contact page and take the first step towards better health.