Because living well starts with breathing well.
Specialist respiratory physiotherapy and rehabilitation for adults living with chronic lung disease, delivered at home across Nairobi.
What is respiratory physiotherapy?
A specialist area of physiotherapy focused on improving breathing and managing the symptoms of chronic lung disease, through structured exercise, education and lifestyle change.
Living with a respiratory condition doesn’t mean you have to stop doing the things you enjoy. With the right support, you can improve your confidence, your independence and your quality of life. Treatment programmes are evidence-based and built around your needs and your goals.
What it involves
- A comprehensive one-to-one assessment with a specialist respiratory physiotherapist.
- Safe, supervised exercise — monitored throughout using oxygen saturation, heart rate, symptoms and breathlessness.
- An individualised exercise programme, with goals set around what matters to you.
- Disease-specific education: breathing control, airway clearance, energy conservation and more.
Conditions we work with
Respiratory physiotherapy helps people living with a wide range of conditions that make breathing, or moving, harder than it should be.
- COPD
- Asthma
- Bronchiectasis
- Interstitial lung disease
- Pulmonary fibrosis
- Post-TB lung disease
- Pulmonary hypertension
- Long COVID
- Long-term oxygen use
- Recovery after pneumonia or severe chest infection
- Before or after lung or abdominal surgery
- Neurological conditions affecting breathing, such as spinal cord injury or MND
- Neuromuscular conditions
- Persistent breathlessness
- Reduced exercise capacity
Not sure whether this is right for you? Get in touch and we’ll talk through your symptoms — no obligation to book.
Every patient is individually assessed before treatment begins, to make sure respiratory physiotherapy is appropriate and safe for them. Where necessary, and with your permission, we may liaise with your physician about your health needs.
What to expect
Three simple steps.
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01
Assessment
A comprehensive one-to-one assessment to understand your symptoms, physical capacity, goals and rehabilitation needs.
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02
A plan of your own
Your physiotherapist builds an individualised programme around your needs and the goals that matter to you.
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03
Progress and support
Weekly or bi-weekly one-to-one sessions, with oxygen levels, heart rate and blood pressure monitored throughout to guide intensity and keep exercise safe. Progress is tracked using validated clinical outcome measures, and your programme is adjusted as you improve.
How we work
Specialist-led
Care is delivered by a physiotherapist who specialises in respiratory rehabilitation — not a general practitioner of physiotherapy.
Individualised
Treatment and rehabilitation plans are built for one patient at a time, around their condition and their goals.
Evidence-based
Assessment and treatment follow established respiratory rehabilitation principles, with validated outcome measures.
Patient-centred
The aim is for you to become more confident and more independent in managing your own condition.
To help people living with lung disease breathe better, move more and live fuller lives.
Breathe Easy Kenya began as a home-visiting service because that is where the need was most immediate. The longer-term ambition is a formal pulmonary rehabilitation centre in Kenya — a place where structured, supervised respiratory rehabilitation is simply available, the way it is elsewhere.
In the meantime, every session works towards the same three things: fewer symptoms of breathlessness and fatigue, more physical fitness and independence, and fewer hospital admissions.
Isabel Heinel
Founder & Specialist Respiratory Physiotherapist
A physiotherapist specialising in respiratory care and rehabilitation.
Isabel completed her BSc in Physiotherapy at the University of Southampton before joining the NHS in the UK, where she developed her expertise in respiratory physiotherapy. She went on to work as a Senior Respiratory Physiotherapist across intensive care, respiratory medicine and community-based pulmonary rehabilitation, supporting people with a wide range of acute and chronic respiratory conditions.
Through Breathe Easy Kenya, her aim is to widen access to specialist respiratory rehabilitation in Kenya, and to help people living with lung disease stay active and independent for longer.
- BSc Physiotherapy, University of Southampton
- Physiotherapy Council of Kenya (PCK)
- Respiratory Society of Kenya (RESOK)
- Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), United Kingdom
Questions before you book?
If you’d like to talk something through first — whether this would suit you or a relative, what a session actually involves, anything at all — send a message and we’ll come back to you.
Book an assessment
Every patient starts with a full one-to-one assessment, so we can check that respiratory physiotherapy is right for you before anything else begins.