Tools & Techniques
Tools to Support Your Recovery and Resilience
Helping you understand your body, regulate your nervous system, and make meaningful changes
Alongside my coaching, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, hydrotherapy, and acupuncture services, I use a range of evidence-informed tools and techniques to support your health and wellbeing.
These tools form part of a holistic, personalised approach that helps us better understand what’s going on beneath the surface – and gives us the insight we need to tailor your care in a meaningful and effective way.
Whether you're managing pain, recovering from injury, or struggling with stress and fatigue, they are designed to help you build long-term resilience and feel more in control of your health.
A Nervous System Informed Approach
The nervous system plays a vital role in our physical, mental and emotional health.
Stress, trauma, anxiety and even chronic physical conditions can all take their toll on the nervous system in complex and varied ways, and affect how we feel in our day-to-day lives.
To reduce stress, restore balance and support healing, we need to understand how both past experiences and modern life impact our nervous system and bodies as a whole.
This is why it helps to have tools that allow us to maintain self-regulation and build stress resilience. In other words, tools that help us adapt to and recover from both physical and emotional stressors.
In affiliation with Jessica Maguire’s Nervous System School, key elements of my nervous system informed approach include:
Polyvagal Theory: Using Dr. Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory and the idea that the autonomic nervous system (ANS) - which includes the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches - can be used as a tool to understand stress responses. This theory focuses on how the vagus nerve affects the body's ability to switch between states of safety and threat.
The Vagus Nerve: Vagus nerve efficiency and developing ‘vagal tone’ is essential for nervous system regulation and much more. The vagus nerve has a wide-reaching influence on all systems throughout the body, including the cardiovascular, digestive, musculoskeletal, immune and endocrine systems. When vagal function is compromised, it can lead to symptoms such as bowel issues, a racing heart, chronic pain, fatigue, and food or sensory intolerances.
Somatic Experiencing: Somatic experiencing is a body-centred approach that helps clients become more aware of bodily sensations. By tuning into physical responses to stress or trauma, we can start to release stored tension and resolve the physiological impacts of past trauma.
Trauma-Informed Care: Prioritising safety and empowerment in a safe environment where clients can work at their own pace to regain control over their nervous systems.
Resilience Building: Helping individuals build resilience and become more adaptive to stress through techniques that improve emotional regulation, strengthen coping strategies, and reduce the likelihood of nervous system dysregulation in the future.
Integration of Mind, Body and Emotion: The goal is not just to manage symptoms, but to integrate emotional and physical healing through both somatic (body-focused) and psychological (mind-focused) methods.
Evidenced Tools and Resources: Nervous system awareness, movement, breathwork, and sensory exercises are all essential elements of building a personalised toolkit you can come back to whenever you need.
Firstbeat Life™ Technology
Using advanced technologies to help you take control of your health – from the inside out
Every day, your body tells a story about how you handle stress, how well you recover, how you sleep, and how fit you really are. But are you listening?
Firstbeat Life™ helps you understand your health from the inside out using science-backed Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis and VO₂ Max fitness testing. These are both increasingly used as key indicators of overall health and longevity.
Whether you're looking to manage stress, improve sleep, or optimise physical performance, Firstbeat Life™ gives you clear, personalised insights based on your real physiological data.
How does Firstbeat Life™ work?
Firstbeat Life™ is a professional-grade stress and recovery monitoring tool. It tracks and analyses both HRV and VO₂ Max in real-life conditions, turning detailed ECG-based data into clear, practical feedback you can use.
These insights make it a valuable part of the overall picture, helping us understand how your body is really coping and what kind of support or change might make the biggest difference.
What is HRV and why does it matter?
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is the variation in the time between consecutive heartbeats. A normal, healthy heart does not tick evenly, there is continuous variation between beats. HRV is a widely recognised marker of nervous system activity and indicates how well your body is responding to the demands placed upon it.
What is VO₂ Max and why does it matter?
VO₂ Max is generally considered the best indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness. It reveals how much oxygen your body is able to consume during maximum effort. The higher your VO2max, the more oxygen your body can use – and the better your aerobic fitness. Even small improvements in VO₂ Max are linked to better energy, health, and longevity.
Key benefits and insights
Firstbeat Life™ provides personalised data to help you better understand how your body is responding to daily life.
Here’s what it can offer:
🔬 Stress & Recovery Analysis
Track how your body responds to daily pressures at work, home, during sleep, or while exercising. Learn what impact your lifestyle and health have on your performance, you’re ability to recharge, and your risk of illness or burnout.
💤 Sleep Quality Monitoring
Understand how restorative your sleep really is. Identify patterns and habits that affect how well you recover overnight.
🏃 Activity Tracking & VO₂ Max Estimation
See how your body responds to physical activity and get an accurate estimate of your VO₂ Max. Use it to assess your fitness baseline, set new fitness or activity goals, and monitor progress.
📊 Personalised Wellness Report
Get a clear, easy-to-read summary of your stress, recovery, sleep, activity, and VO₂ Max – plus science-backed recommendations to improve your health.
📱 User-Friendly App
Your data is synced automatically to the Firstbeat Life™ app so you can view and track your results with ease.
Affiliates:
TESTIMONIALS
"Getting to know Firstbeat has been a revelation. With Sarah's expert guidance to understand the app's graphs and analyses, I can clearly see the way different aspects of my life impact on my health and wellbeing: what raises and lowers my heart rate, how heart rate variability reflects my sense of wellness, what affects my sleep patterns and how my body recovers through the day (or not) from stress and activity."
- J.W.
"I was quite wary about commencing the Vagus Nerve work with Sarah as I had not heard of it before and have had counselling in the past and did not really want to embark on another such course. I need not have worried because this is not a ‘talking therapy’, although talking is obviously involved in establishing a context, and is rooted firmly in understanding how the body works and creating a ‘toolkit’ of strategies to deal with physical and emotional symptoms...
The most significant change that I have experienced is a sense of structured control when panic or anxiety occurs. This is in the form of a structure of daily practises to follow but also in a rapid response to an incident or upset that might previously have overwhelmed me and become a full-blown panic attack. The course has also allowed me to understand more about what happens to me and why it happens, which makes it easier to deal with physical symptoms.
This is a commitment to making changes in my daily life that will need to be ongoing after the course ends, but it is a commitment that is definitely worth making. I wish that I had discovered Sarah and her Vagus Nerve work sooner!"
- U.M.
If you’d like to learn more about how these tools and techniques could support your recovery or wellbeing goals, get in touch to book a free consultation call.
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