I’m Stella tomlinson (she/her).
I’m a Solution-Focused Hypnotherapist & Psychotherapist and Author supporting women in midlife and beyond through anxiety and change.
My work offers a calm, supportive space to help you reduce anxiety, settle an overactive nervous system, and feel more grounded, clear, and like yourself again.
My approach
Your struggles are not a sign that something is “wrong” with you.
I believe that chronic overwhelm, 3am insomnia, and constant mental static are simply reflections of a deeply perceptive nervous system that has been under too much pressure for too long.
Through Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy, we work in a gentle, practical way that combines talking therapy with guided relaxation to help your mind and body move out of anxiety and into a more balanced state.
This approach is grounded in modern neuroscience and focuses on helping your brain create new, more helpful patterns - so change feels possible, manageable, and sustainable.
My Background
My path to this work has been shaped by over 25 years of personal and professional exploration in emotional wellbeing, mind–body practices, and inner development.
Since 2011, I have been writing books and teaching in these areas—always with a singular focus on helping people feel more connected to themselves and their inner experience. My background includes practicing and teaching meditation, mindfulness, menstrual cycle and nature-based awareness, grief tending, and inner child work.
Over time, this naturally led me toward a more grounded, therapeutic focus on how the nervous system and brain science shape our emotional experience.
A shared felt-sense
I deeply understand what it is like to hold a massive amount internally, to think deeply, and to feel the physical toll of stress. I spent my thirties and forties living with IBS, experiencing firsthand how a full stress bucket directly destabilizes the body.
Now in my early fifties, I am moving through my own peri/menopause transition. I know intimately the physical shifts, the mental static, and the profound existential reorientation that this chapter demands.
This deep personal and professional journey is what led me to Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy. It provided the exact scientific missing piece I was looking for: a gentle, effortless way to help fellow deep-feeling souls calm the primitive alarm, reset their default programming, and find a lasting sense of ease.
How I work now:
My focus is grounded and therapeutic.
I now support deep-feeling women in their 40s, 50s and 60s who are experiencing:
anxiety and overwhelm
overthinking, procrastination and rumination
stress that shows up in the body as tension, discomfort/pain and fatigue
emotional burnout or feeling “stuck”, empty or even lost as you navigate this chapter in your life
difficulties relaxing or switching off
Together, we work gently with your nervous system to empty your stress bucket and create a spacious, grounded everyday reality.
My way of working:
I bring a calm, compassionate, and down-to-earth approach to this work.
You will find our time together to be practical, structured, and entirely supportive, helping you feel safe, understood, and not overwhelmed by the process.
No pressure to relive the past. You don’t need to talk about past trauma or share anything you are not ready to. We never dig up old pain.
Future-focused. We focus entirely on your preferred future, introducing small, achievable shifts that build new neural pathways over time.
Sessions are designed to be an effortless sanctuary of gentle enquiry and deep restorative rest - not another chore on your to-do list.
Other qualifications
Energy Emotional Freedom Technique Master Practitioner (Guild of Energists), April – June 2018.
Energy Emotional Freedom Technique Foundation (Guild of Energists) – November 2017.
Jikiden Reiki Zenki (Shoden) Attuned – July 2017, certified by the Jikiden Reiki Institute.
Restorative Yoga Teacher Training (30-hour immersion, September 2016) with Adelene Cheong, Senior Assistant to Judith Hanson Lasater. Certified Restorative Yoga Teacher.
Dru Meditation Teacher Training with the International School of Dru Yoga (2014 – 2016).
Dru Yoga Teacher Training: 200 hour teacher training course (Dip DYT) with the International School of Dru Yoga (2010 - 2012).
Other Trainings, study & Personal Development
Total Yoga Nidra Immersion Experience with The Yoga Nidra Network, autumn/winter 2024.
Grief Through The Elements with Nici Harrison of The Grief Space, spring-summer 2024.
Path To Second Spring Group Mentoring with Kate Codrington, Feb-June 2024.
Foundations of Wellbeing, online with Dr Rick Hanson, 12-month course, 2023.
Practices for Grieving and Heartache, online with Ancestral Medicine, winter 2022.
Coping with Grief and Loss, online with Dr Rick Hanson, winter 2022.
Positive Neuroplasticity Training, online with Dr Rick Hanson, summer 2022.
Menopause, the Great Awakener, online with Red School, autumn 2020.
Bardic Grade of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, self-paced course March 2020 – summer 2021.
Priestess of Brighde/Brigantia Training (with Priestess Marion Brigantia,Glastonbury) January 2018 – January 2020, including the Elemental Goddess Healing modality (and membership of the Clan of Brighde-Brigantia and The Orchard of Avalon).
Menstrual Cycle Literacy, online withRed School 2017-18.
Hormone Harmony online with Red School 2017.
Practised and studied Yoga Nidra since 2016.
BA(Hons) English Literature (1996) and MSc Econ Information and Library Studies (2000).
Hypnotherapy qualifications
Hypnotherapy Diploma Course with Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training (CPHT), October 2025 - July 2026. I have gained the Diploma in Solution Focused Hypnotherapy (DSFH), awarded by CPHT (5 July 2026).
Additionally, I am currently (summer/autumn 2026) completing the Hypnotherapy in Practice Diploma (HPD) awarded by the NCH, the largest Hypnotherapy Association in the UK and considered the gold standard in UK Hypnotherapy qualifications.
I am a member of the Association for Solution Focused Hypnotherapy and a registered student member of the National Council for Hypnotherapy. I am fully insured and have an Enhanced DBS.
Other Hypnotherapy study
Understanding the Gut-Brain Axis, CPHT, April 2026.
Uncommon Hypnosis with Uncommon Knowledge, summer 2025
My story: The threads that bind my work
I live in Hampshire with my husband, having moved here in 2011.
Before that, life took me across the UK — from the West Midlands where I grew up, to London for university, Aberystwyth for postgraduate study, and then numerous years living and working in Cardiff then Staffordshire.
Outside of work, I value quiet, nature, and slow living. No matter where I have lived or what chapter of life I have been in, I’ve always been drawn to the same underlying thread: how we find our way back to ourselves when life feels overwhelming, fragmented, or disconnected
Early work and beginnings
Before stepping fully into my clinical practice, I spent many years working in digital and internal communications within higher education. Navigating those busy landscapes was where I first began exploring practices to help make sense of my own inner world — meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and later, more embodied and nature-based approaches to wellbeing.
From 2011 onwards, I taught yoga, meditation, and relaxation regularly, alongside writing and developing workshops focused on rest, awareness, and reconnection.
Over time, my focus naturally began to shift away from physical practice alone, and towards the deeper patterns that sit beneath how we think, feel, and respond —particularly how anxiety and emotional overload are held in the mind and body.
A deepening path
From around 2015, I began exploring more cyclical and nature-based perspectives on life — including seasonal rhythms, menstrual cycle awareness, and earth-based spirituality.
I was also initiated as a Priestess of Brigid in 2020, following a two-year training, which reflected a period of deep personal exploration and connection to meaning, archetypes, and the seasonal energies of life.
During this time, I devoted myself full-time to writing and teaching, exploring themes of emotional depth, seasons and cycles, and the ways we navigate change and transition.
I’ve always been a reader and a seeker - drawn to ideas that help us understand the inner landscape of being human.
Today, I am in my early fifties and moving through my own menopause transition.
This brings its own shifts in both mind and body, and a deep existential reorientation of how we relate to ourselves.
This profound threshold allows me to hold a safe, fiercely supportive space for women navigating their own sacred unravelling.
Writing, reflection, and creative work
Writing has been a long-standing part of my life and practice.
Over the years, I’ve written and published several books exploring themes of emotional wellbeing, inner resilience, and the deeper rhythms of female experience. These include works on navigating difficult times, finding steadiness within emotional overwhelm, and exploring the transitions of midlife as a time of inner change and reorientation.
My writing has always been a way of making sense of lived experience – both my own and what I witness in others – and of exploring what it means to move through life with more awareness, compassion, and inner connection.
What has remained constant
While my work has evolved over the decades, what has never changed is my absolute fascination with sensitivity, emotional depth, and the lived experience of being someone who feels things strongly — sometimes to the point of complete overwhelm.
I recognize intimately what it is like to hold a massive amount internally, to think deeply, and to feel the physical effects of stress shaking both mind and body. I spent my thirties and forties living with IBS, experiencing firsthand how an overflowing stress bucket directly destabilizes our physical health.
Over time, this profound understanding naturally led me toward a more grounded, therapeutic approach — one that focuses entirely on the nervous system, somatic emotional regulation, and helping people find a greater sense of ease in themselves, and purpose in life.
Where I am now
Today, I bring together everything I’ve learned over the past 25 years into the focused, practical, and highly effective framework of Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy (SFH).
While my rich literary and psycho-spiritual background remains the bedrock of how I understand the human heart, my clinical practice bridges that soulful wisdom with modern, science-backed precision.
My work is now centred entirely on helping deep-feeling women who feel anxious, overwhelmed, or internally over-activated to settle their systems. By calming the Primitive Brain (the amygdala), leaning into the clear positive and creative Intellectual Brain, and putting the vast Subconscious Mind to work, we calmthe internal static.
I help you rewrite your default programming and secure your boundaries — so you can think more clearly, feel more balanced, and stop simply getting through life, and step fully into A Life More Alive.
Influences & Inspirations…
Alongside my formal training, I’ve been deeply shaped by the work of writers and teachers who explore emotional depth, inner experience, spiritual connection and the human psyche, including Sharon Blackie, Lucy H. Pearce, Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, Mary Oliver, Elaine Aron, Susan Cain, John O’Donohue, Rick Hanson, Bill Plotkin, Francis Weller, and Tim Freke.
These influences continue to inform my appreciation of sensitivity, reflection, and the inner life - even as my work has become more grounded in neuroscience and therapeutic practice.
A final note…
At its heart, my work is about helping people feel more at home in themselves again.
Not by becoming someone different - but by gently coming out of survival patterns, and back into a more settled, connected way of being.
You’re very welcome here
If you’re feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or simply not quite like yourself, you don’t have to navigate that alone.
This is a space where things can begin to feel a little steadier, a little clearer, and a little more manageable - one step at a time.
