Wellbeing Programmes

Our Approach

At The Good Physio we are absolutely passionate about Wellness. In focus groups, we ask our patients what they feel they need through their recovery journey and they invariably tell us that they want a better understanding of why they got into problems in the first place, to get guidance about nutrition and weight management, exercise habits, sleep quality and mental well-being. However, they often report feeling that, in the past, they have been left to ‘self-manage’ by other physios once they have achieved only a very basic level of symptom relief, function and fitness.

Only by really addressing people’s lifestyle choices are we ever going to manage the increasing burden of chronic musculoskeletal pain and disease that is endemic in Western society. The Good Physio excels at taking clients that extra mile.

Well-Being Coaching

At any one time, we take on a handful of ‘premier’ clients who are really serious about changing their health, lifestyle and physical and mental well-being and and are prepared to commit to real life changing journeys under our guidance. These clients are given the full A to Z treatment, involving everything from pain and injury management through to fitness training and lifestyle change. They receive as much physiotherapy as they need for any niggles and injuries, regular massage during training periods, exercise programmes and nutritional advice as well as lifestyle management, psychology intervention, stress management and mindfulness as required. This is the ultimate physiotherapy, personal training and physical and mental wellness programme all put together for those who are totally committed to changing their lives for the better.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

We all have core beliefs about ‘how the world is’, about ourselves and about those around us that are not entirely accurate. In fact, they are often not that accurate at all and yet they dictate our emotions and our behaviours on a daily basis, often in a quite unhelpful and unhealthy way. In today’s social media world there is a constant drip feed of myths and misconceptions (as well as some fact) which lead to us having implicit biases in the way we view things.

This is often the case with many health issues such as mental well-being, pain and injury as well as illness and disease. These inaccurate thoughts often perpetuate ill health or may even decide who develops chronic illness or pain in the first place.

It very much supports the biopsychosocial model of illness and pain behaviours and, as well as being an absolutely essential part of the Pain Management Programmes run by The Good Physio, it is also a stand alone service for those who just want to try and better manage their thoughts, emotions and behaviours and how these affect their everyday lives.

Mindfulness & Stress Management

Mindfulness is a way of managing feelings of anxiety which can easily build up in chronically stressful situations and is starting to build a body of research backing its effectiveness. With practise, clients can learn how develop self awareness and control over breathing and heart rate to ease feelings of stress. This is sometimes referred to as somatic quietening.

There are some really good apps that we would recommend trying that are easy to use and inexpensive such as Headspace. These are well worth trying to get you started. Using this in conjunction with CBT and Pain Education can be a really effective way of managing anxiety.

Sleep Behavioural Therapy

Until quite recently, we have understood very little about sleep science compared to other areas of human physiology and medicine. We now know that sleep is absolutely vital for life and poor sleep quality is involved in almost every single disease, condition and ailment that we suffer from in the Western world from obesity to chronic pain, mental health conditions and behavioural and learning difficulties such as ADHD and the development of conditions such as autism. As we age, it is almost inevitable that we lose some concentration and memory capacity but poor sleep quality has also been shown to have a role in the development of dementia conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

Good sleep quality is a vital part of addressing chronic pain problems including headache and migraine and so naturally, we have a particular interest in how to help patients optimise this part of their lifestyles.

Many clients are not aware of the links that may exist between their sleep patterns and general health problems they are experiencing and simply want to improve how they feel generally. Tiredness and fatigue are possibly the main reasons why we go to see our GP. Although it sensible to assess any potential tiredness symptoms from a medical point of view, we always look at any condition or illness in a biopsychosocial framework and, most of the time, it is the more psychosocial and lifestyle variables that explain why people feel tired and have low levels of energy, rather than searching for an explanation that has more of a medical slant.

Sleep Behavioural Therapy or Sleep Hygiene can be really effective in improving how we feel across lots of health domains and often transform peoples lives once they start maintaining better sleep habits.

Some patients who do not make significant progress and have also sought to fully address other related lifestyle variables such as pain conditions, mental health problems, diet and exercise, may find it useful to take a deeper look at their sleep. A sleep laboratory is somewhere where you can have sleep specialists literally take a look inside your head whilst you sleep using something called polysomnography and we can provide guidance on how to most easily access these facilities. Whilst you sleep measurements will be taken that include patterns of electrical activity in your brain called an electroencephalogram (EEG) and muscular activity in your eye muscles that tell us about the stages of sleep you are in. For example, rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep, is associated with certain brain activity to do with creative learning, cognitive function and key stages of brain development. Other physiological variables that are measured are blood pressure, heart rate and breathing rate which show natural fluctuations during a 24 hour cycle. These tests may demonstrate that there are conditions such as sleep apnoea or insomnia which can be easily helped in most cases and can often dramatically change our general health and sense of well-being.