About Maria
From Pain to Freedom: My Journey to Healing and Helping Others
For 25 years, I lived with debilitating chronic pain—RSI, knee pain, and a long list of other diagnoses. I know what it’s like to feel trapped, searching for answers, and wondering if things will ever get better. But I also know that healing is possible because I’ve experienced it myself. Now, my mission is to help others move from pain and fear to freedom and well-being.
Life isn’t easy. I’ve navigated career pressures, parental abandonment, anxiety, loss, and the relentless demands of family life—all while dealing with chronic pain. It’s exhausting, and I understand how easy it is to put everyone else’s needs first, even when our bodies are desperately trying to get our attention. But I’ve learned that real healing happens when we start listening—to our emotions, our fears, and our body’s signals. We can change how we respond to stress, set healthier boundaries, and bring our nervous system back into balance.
My turning point came when I discovered the work of Dr. John Sarno through the Curable podcast. Everything suddenly made sense. I immersed myself in the science of mind-body healing and finally understood that my pain wasn’t just physical—it was deeply connected to my emotions and nervous system. With the help of a Pain Reprocessing Therapist, I found freedom from chronic pain for the first time in decades.
Having already spent years as a hypnotherapist and mindfulness teacher, I knew I wanted to support others on this journey. I trained as a SIRPA practitioner and Embodied Processing Practitioner so I could help people like you—people who feel stuck, exhausted, and unsure where to turn.
I want you to know this: Your body isn’t broken. Your nervous system has adapted to life’s stresses—whether from childhood experiences, trauma, or everyday pressures—but it can also heal. The brain is neuroplastic, and your mind-body system knows how to restore balance. I’m here to help you tap into that wisdom so you can move from surviving to truly living again.
Let’s take this journey together.
My educational background
I have an MSc in Health Psychology and have been helping others since 2011, initially as a Hypnotherapist, Mindfulness practitioner, and then as a SIRPA Practitioner and Somatic therapist.
Mindfulness Practitioner
Hypnotherapist
Embodied Processing Practitioner (Somatic Therapy)
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT/Tapping)
Embodied Processing (EP) is a trauma-informed approach to resolving painful mental, emotional and relational issues by addressing the root cause in the body.
Unresolved survival patterns from childhood result in a dysregulated nervous system, repressed emotions and suffering (eg anxiety, pain, stress). These wounds are held in the body, hence why talking about this trauma often doesn't resolve the problem.
EP helps you to safely get in touch with those core wounds and to process them so that we integrate those parts of us that we have abandoned. The issues on the surface such as anxiety, chronic pain and so on, then tend to resolve themselves.
EP also helps you to develop your felt sense, to regulate your emotions and build a resource in the body.
SIRPA
SIRPA™ (Stress Illness Recovery Practitioners’ Association) was developed in 2010 by UK Chartered Physiotherapist, Georgie Oldfield. It is based upon the pioneering work of John E Sarno MD. SIRPA trains professionals in understanding mind-body conditions, teaching up-to-date pain neuroscience and SIRPA’s approach to resolving chronic symptoms.
SIRPA (Stress Illness Recovery Practitioners’ Association) have an in-depth understanding of the mindbody approach, both the causes of chronic symptoms and SIRPA’s approach to resolving them.
Hypnotherapy is a mind-body approach to healing in which a hypnotherapist uses hypnosis to guide you into deep relaxation and focused concentration, known as the 'hypnotic state.' The hypnotic state is something that can occur naturally for us, such as daydreaming. In hypnotherapy, however, a practitioner will induce you into this state, which allows you to become more open to suggestions. These suggestions can help you make changes to your health. Regression hypnotherapy can also help you to find the root cause of symptoms to create change.
Mindfulness is about being fully aware of whatever is happening in the present moment, without filters or the lens of judgement. It's about seeing the world with greater clarity so that you can take wiser and more considered action to change the things which need to be changed.
Somatic mindfulness helps teach people to become more aware of their felt sense - their ability to sense bodily sensations and emotions. This felt sense is often the key to recovery from chronic symptoms.
