Helen Stoker

I’m a lover of anything to do with the outdoors, and a big believer in movement and nature as a form of healing both body and mind.

I initially set out to be a psychologist with a keen interest in the mind. Life took me in a different direction and I ended up with a Sports Science degree and later on a Diploma in Sports Therapy and Exercise rehabilitation. In 2022, following some personal trauma, I experienced what I can best describe as ‘burnout’. I took time out of clinical practice and cycled through South America for 12 months. I thought I was escaping but it turned out that being on a bike for 8 hours a day there was no escaping, and so as somebody once said “the only way out is through”. I cycled my way through the grief and pain, and began to understand myself much more through the process.

I also had time to contemplate why two people could come into my clinic with the same symptoms and receive the same treatment, how was it that one could finish treatment pain free within weeks whilst the other may still be coming to see me 12 months later, still in pain. This frustration led me to researching chronic pain, the difference between acute pain and discovering the science behind it. Now a Pain Reprocessing Coach and a SIRPA Practitioner, I’ve finally joined the dots between body and mind.

Bringing together my sports therapy and rehabilitation experience with the latest chronic pain research, I now work very holistically, understanding how the physiology can affect the mind and emotions but also that the mind and emotions can affect the physiology, and why it’s so important to work with both.

Working mainly online from my home in Portugal, and occasionally working from the UK, I recognise that each person is unique and therefore treatment and recovery is also unique.