Tord Helsingeng

Tord Helsingeng is a bodywork therapist and mindfulness teacher with 15 years of experience, specializing in chronic pain and stress disorders. His approach combines evidence-based practices and systems thinking with compassion and kindness.

He left university studies in 2002 to train as a bodyworker, focusing on shiatsu and acupuncture, and became an instructor of taichichuan. Wanting to understand why some patients improved and others did not, he continued his education in Stockholm, Oslo, New York, São Paulo, London and Vienna. After developing chronic pain from repetitive strain himself, and growing disheartened with the quality of science in bodywork, he went back to university and graduated as an English teacher. He later found the online pain-science community SomaSimple, learned from physiotherapists Diane Jacobs and Barrett Dorko, and returned to bodywork. He now runs a clinic in Elverum, Norway.

Tord has practiced mindfulness since high school. He became a personal student of Shinzen Young and went deeply into his Unified Mindfulness system, and in 2008 he began teaching it in Norway, as the first there to do so. He has taught mindfulness at the Norwegian Sports Academy for physical education teachers, to students and teachers in primary school, in corporations, to his patients, and in retreats. Besides mindfulness for chronic pain, he offers interpersonal focusing for emotional issues, video guidance in movement therapies such as taijiquan, and individually tailored deep mindfulness for seasoned meditators.

He lives with his family in a small village near the forest in the Norwegian countryside, and enjoys permaculture gardening, playing the guitar and making music.