Dr Nicola Stoke
Nic is a queer person who trained as a medical doctor and has worked in the NHS for the last 10 years, training in anaesthetics, intensive care and emergency medicine. She also worked for different humanitarian organisations between 2016-2018 providing healthcare for refugees in different settings.
Over the last few years, she has felt frustrated at the state of the NHS and healthcare in the UK. Working in the fields of anaesthetics and intensive care has informed the way she thinks about health and healthcare and is certain that we are never getting to the root causes of disease. Not only are we forgetting the social determinants of health: systemic oppression, racism, housing, education, work and jobs which lead to chronic stress and inflammation, we are also not making useful healing modalities available that are important for health maintenance.
She became interested in breathwork in 2022, and since then has trained with SomaBreath and The Buteyko Method. She is currently completing her 3rd breathwork course which is learning the conscious connected breath with a decolonial lens. This year, in 2024, she started the ongoing process of decolonising herself and her practice. She believes that breathwork practices viewed with a social justice and decolonial lens have a role in giving people autonomy over the health, moving stuck emotion through the body and helping people live fuller, healthier lives.
Instagram @drnicolastoke