Nicola Stoke

Nic is a medical doctor who has worked in the NHS for the last 10 years, training in anaesthetics, intensive care and emergency medicine. Between 2016-2018 she also worked for different humanitarian organisations 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. The social determinants of health: systemic oppression, racism, housing, education, work and jobs which lead to chronic stress and inflammation are not being systematically addressed. Nor are somatic tools for processing emotions and memories in the body widely available on the NHS.

She first came across breathwork in 2022, and since then has trained with 3 different training schools: SomaBreath, Buteyko Clinic International and most recently, Inspire Breathwork learning conscious connected breathing with an embodied social justice and decolonial lens. Nic believes that in order to give people the tools to be well, we must also address systemic oppression and we can not do one without the other. She has also completed a course in politicised somatics with Staci Haines – The Politics of Trauma 2.0. Through this work she has begun the slow, deep and ongoing process of decolonising her practice.

She believes that governance and best practice are very important in helping breathwork become a more recognisable modality. In June 2025, she helped to co-facilitate a randomised control trial in breathwork with the University of Brighton & Sussex, which has been published in Frontiers in Psychology in June 2026. Most recently she has completed an Internal Family Systems Training online, and is an IFS informed practitioner. She regularly uses these tools to help clients connect to parts of themselves, in addition to breathwork.

She is keen to collaborate so if any of this resonates then please do get in contact.