About Dr Teresa Leiva

A career shaped by curiosity about pain, perception and what helps people live better

I am Spanish, and I have worked in anaesthesia and chronic pain medicine since 1992. Few areas of medicine have changed as much during that time as the way we understand and treat persistent pain. That evolution has shaped my career.

When I began, pain management relied heavily on medication, nerve blocks and spinal injections. These remain important tools, and I continue to use interventional treatments when they are appropriate. But over the years I became increasingly interested in what else might help — particularly when pain persists despite procedures, scans and medication changes.

Between 1998 and 2001 I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine, with training in acupuncture, moxibustion and Chinese pharmacopoeia. This added a different clinical perspective to my conventional medical training and taught me to look more closely at the whole person, not only at the painful body part.

From around 2010, I began following the work of Professor Lorimer Moseley and the developing field of pain neuroscience education. I have attended many courses and continued to deepen my understanding of how the nervous system, expectations, previous experience and context can influence pain. This has given me a broad range of ways to help patients understand what is happening in their bodies and to make sense of persistent symptoms.

In 2016 I completed a Master’s degree in Mindfulness at the University of Almería. Mindfulness has since become part of both my clinical practice and my own life. More recently, I have been exploring pain as a perceptual process — particularly how people experience their bodies, and how that experience may be influenced or retrained.

How I work now

My approach is practical and individual. Depending on the person, I may help with medication review, supplements, a structured pain-management plan, acupuncture, soft-tissue injections with local anaesthetic and steroid, soft-tissue reconditioning, or selected interventional procedures. I also place strong emphasis on education, pacing, confidence in movement and helping people understand the factors that may be keeping pain active.

I do not believe there is one treatment that suits everyone. What matters is working out, together, which path is most useful for the person in front of me.

What I value most

The part of my work I enjoy most is listening. I like to understand how pain has changed someone’s life, what has already been tried, what matters to them now, and what they would most like to regain.

From there, we can discuss the available options and choose a direction that is realistic, evidence-informed and suited to that person. My aim is not simply to reduce a pain score, but to help people move towards a life that feels more functional, more manageable and more their own again.