Chronic Pain + Illness including Endometrisos and Pelvic Pain Syndrome
Living with chronic illness and/or persistent pain can affect far more than your physical health. Symptoms can fluctuate from day to day, energy can feel unpredictable, and activities that once felt simple may suddenly require careful planning and recovery. You may be managing pain, fatigue, dizziness, sensory sensitivity, brain fog or other symptoms while also navigating the uncertainty of not knowing what your body will be able to manage from one day to the next. When symptoms persist, it can be difficult to know how much to do, when to rest, and how to stay active without constantly pushing beyond your limits.
My approach recognises that living with chronic illness and persistent pain requires flexibility, not a one-size-fits-all plan. We can work together to understand your individual symptoms, energy patterns, capacity and limitations, and find ways to move and participate in everyday life that feel sustainable. This may include pacing, adapting movement, building strength gradually, managing flare-ups and finding practical strategies for the days when your body can do less. The aim isn’t to push through pain or “fix” your symptoms — it’s to help you build confidence, capability and a better understanding of what your body needs.
Nervous System Regulation, Stress & Burnout
Sometimes the body gets very good at being on alert. Persistent pain, chronic illness, sensory overload, prolonged stress and years of pushing through can all influence the way your nervous system responds to the world. You might notice ongoing muscle tension, shallow breathing, difficulty relaxing, disrupted sleep, feeling “wired but tired”, or a sense that your body remains activated even when your mind knows you are safe. Over time, these experiences can make it harder for your body to move between states of activation, recovery and rest.
My approach recognises that nervous system regulation isn’t simply about being told to “just relax”. Instead, we can explore how stress and your individual experiences may be influencing your body, and use movement, breathing, body awareness, education and behaviour-change strategies to support greater flexibility in your nervous system. The aim isn’t to eliminate stress or keep you permanently calm, but to help your body develop more ways to respond, recover and return to a sense of safety and rest when it needs to.
Neurodiversity
Knowing what to do and being able to consistently do it are two very different things. For neurodivergent brains traditional health advice can feel overwhelming and become a source of guilt. Routines, regular exercise, meal preparation, consistent sleep and daily wellbeing practices may all sound like sensible advice, but actually getting started, remembering them and maintaining them can be much harder than it appears. Neurodivergence can also influence energy, attention, motivation, overwhelm and the way routines are built and maintained.
My approach considers how your brain works alongside your body, using health coaching, movement and an understanding of physiology to create strategies that are practical and achievable for you. Rather than relying on willpower or expecting you to follow rigid routines, we can work on things like getting started, reducing all-or-nothing patterns, recognising your energy and attention patterns, making movement easier to initiate, managing overwhelm and finding ways to recover when routines inevitably fall apart. The aim isn’t to make you better at forcing yourself to function like someone else — it’s to understand how you function and build strategies that actually fit your brain and your life.
Hypermobility and Connective Tissue
Hypermobility means that some or many of your joints can move through a greater range than is typical. While being flexible can sound like an advantage, for some people it can come with persistent pain, muscle fatigue, joint instability, difficulties with knowing where your body is in space and the feeling that your body has to work much harder to feel supported and stable. Hypermobility can occur on its own, as part of a hypermobility spectrum disorder, or alongside conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and may overlap with symptoms including fatigue, persistent pain, pelvic pain and orthostatic intolerance.
Hypermobility is not something that simply needs to be “fixed” or made less flexible. Instead, the focus is on helping you develop strength, control, proprioception and confidence in your body, while taking into account pain, fatigue, instability and your individual symptoms. Together, we can find movement and practical strategies that support your body and make everyday life feel more manageable, without pushing it beyond what it can comfortably handle.
POTS and Dysautonomia
Dysautonomia is a term used to describe conditions where the autonomic nervous system — the system responsible for automatically regulating things like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, digestion and circulation — does not function as effectively as it should. POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) is one type of dysautonomia and can cause symptoms such as a racing heart, dizziness, light-headedness, fatigue, brain fog, exercise intolerance and feeling unwell when standing or being upright for longer periods. Symptoms can vary significantly from person to person and from day to day, and may overlap with conditions such as hypermobility, persistent pain and other complex or chronic health conditions.
Living with POTS or dysautonomia does not mean that you simply need to “get fitter” or push through your symptoms. Exercise and movement can be helpful, but they need to take into account how your body responds to being upright, changes in heart rate, fatigue, symptom fluctuations and your individual capacity. Together, we can gradually build strength, movement and physical capacity in a way that works with your body, rather than against it. The aim is to help you better understand and manage your symptoms, build confidence in what your body can do and make everyday activities and movement feel more achievable.