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Helping you understand and overcome your chronic pain to live your fullest life Clinics at 132 Harley Street and 2 Lower Sloane Street. Online sessions.

10/10/2026

When reading articles about pain, be mindful of these truths.

There is a great deal of information about pain out there, some of which is inaccurate.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

10/10/2026

What if changing your relationship with movement could change what’s possible?

When living with persistent pain, it’s understandable that movement can become something we approach with caution.

But perhaps there’s another way to look at it.

A shift from “I can’t…” to “What can I do?”

A way to begin widening choices, building confidence and living yourself better.

That’s what I’m exploring in my latest Pain Talking post, Motion is Lotion.

An invitation to think differently about movement and what becomes possible.

Read via the link in my bio.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

09/10/2026

To understand a person’s pain, you have to understand the person.

Something I say often, and this new research published in Nature Medicine is an interesting reminder of why.

Researchers looked at the experience of pain in 6.1 million people across 118 countries.

What caught my attention was how much the experience of pain varied.

Women reported more pain than men.

Pain didn’t simply increase with age as we might expect.

And where people lived made a considerable difference.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Because while the research reveals patterns across populations, it also reminds me of something fundamental about pain.

It’s an individual experience.

And every individual is different.

Two people can have similar physical problems yet experience pain very differently.

Because their lives are different.

Their experiences, circumstances, beliefs and what matters to them are different.

This is why personalised, whole-person care is at the heart of what I do.

It’s not simply about understanding the pain. It’s about understanding the person experiencing it.

And that starts with listening.

Not assuming we know what someone’s experience is because we’ve seen something similar before.

Not reducing someone to a diagnosis or a scan.

But being curious about their life and understanding what their pain means to them.

Research involving millions of people can help us see the bigger picture.

But it can never replace the importance of understanding the individual in front of us.

Because to understand a person’s pain, you have to understand the person.

And that person is always unique.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

—

Book your free discovery call to find out how I can help you.

Link in bio.

09/10/2026

Unheard, dismissed, gaslit.

The system as is is means this is possible.

In our system and society, persistent pain is poorly understood.

It assumes things are only real if you can see them on a test.

This is wrong.

Let’s keep pushing for change.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

08/10/2026

On my way to a poetry workshop, and just before it I’ve got a meeting with some people who are working within the NHS to deliver pain care.

Meeting them to talk about my new Pain Café—version 2.

I’m hoping that we can connect it up, although we might be doing it in different ways, but of course there is no single way.

In fact, that’s the whole point. Each person is on their own journey and we need to meet them where they are.

The original Pain Cafes followed a fairly rigid route, and now we’re turning on its head to work with a group of people. A unique group of people.

This will be the group’s journey—they will be in the driving seat.

As ever, my role is to be the guide.

People don’t need fixing, because there’s nothing wrong with them.

To believe there is something wrong is a judgement. Indeed, there is a situation to handle and to understand and to find a way forward.

But to consider it a problem or something that needs fixing puts them in the backseat, whereas we need the person to feel that they are in the driving seat.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation specialist

07/10/2026

When illness changes your world, it can change much more than your body.

Your freedom.

Your confidence.

Your sense of what is possible.

In this new Pain Talking@episode, I speak with philosopher Professor Havi Carel, whose work is shaped by both deep philosophical thinking and her own lived experience of serious illness.

We talk about bodily doubt—what happens when the body you once trusted becomes uncertain—alongside pain, loss, freedom, possibility and hope.

If you are living with illness or persistent pain, there may be parts of this conversation that feel very familiar.

And if you are a clinician or therapist, I think there is a great deal here about listening, understanding the person, and taking lived experience seriously.

This is a warm, thoughtful and important conversation.

Come and listen.

🎧 Link in bio.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

07/10/2026

There are many well-intentioned messages about calming the nervous system.

That’s not quite how it works though.

The nervous system doesn’t work in isolation to other systems.

And in itself cannot calm down.

It’s the person, the whole person, who calms down.

And this is a really useful skill to practise and hone.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

07/10/2026

Healthcare must catch up.

Each person is individual and has individual needs

That’s why we must begin by listening to the person, hearing their story, clarifying their needs and picture of success, and starting there with their care.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

07/10/2026

You cannot reduce pain to anything less,
just as you can’t reduce any experience to anything less.

You experience pain, not the body part, not the brain, not the nervous system.

A minimal account would be considering the integrated systems—immune, nervous, endocrine, autonomic.

They work together. They are not separate.

At the moment there are many messages focusing on the brain and the nervous system. This is not an accurate view and will limit understanding.

Take pain in menopause as an example

You can only understand this by understanding how the endocrine system works within the ensemble of other systems.

The whole person perspective allows us to make sense of the subjective experience and the science or whatever is measurable from tests.

Importantly, it helps us make sense when the tests do not show anything—remember that these tests are not the complete picture.

Just because a test doesn’t show anything, it doesn’t mean that everything is fine.

Tests only test what they test for, so are limited.

Remember, you cannot see pain on any test.

Pain is whole person, hence we need the whole person approach.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

06/10/2026

There’s the experience—that is real.

Pain is real.

Your beliefs about the causes?

Is your explanation for the pain accurate?

This is a key distinction although related.

Your beliefs about your pain have some role in shaping your pain, so they are vital to understand and examine and update to truth.

That’s why understanding your pain in the context of your life is so important at the start of your journey to live yourself better.

With care,
Richmond 🕊️🌿
Multidisciplinary Pain & Rehabilitation Specialist

—

Get in touch to arrange your free discovery call

Address

132 Harley Street
London
W1G7JX

Website

https://richmondstace.com/

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