Physiotherapy

As a physiotherapist, manual therapist and occupational therapist and being trained in the Mulligan and McKenzie therapy, I underwent quite some training through the years and I was fortunate to built over 20 years of working experience by now. Next to the mentioned and other educations, I also am specilised in the treatment of tailbone and pelvic pain, breathing disfunction and stress- and workrelated problems. Naast als fysiotherapeut ben ik ook als trainer in het bedrijfsleven actief. As a physio a and also as a trainer I also work inside companies.

You can easily make an appointment with me by sending me an email. The info about where I work you will find below on this page. There more and more people value and request more info in looking for a therapist, I will give you more background info about me as a therapist below and will explain what you can expect when you are in treatment with me. Completely down on this page, you can find reviews and evaluations, placed on independent sources, of the people that had therapy with me.

Do you like more specific info about one of the topics below, click on the button. For more about me as a physio, keep reading below that.

As a therapist I of course primairily analyse the physical and mechanical health problems. The circumstances in which they emerged and present themselves are extremely importnat though. The complete picture doesn’t only give an indication where the balance got lost and problems occurred, it also determines how to solve them and restore the balance.

The startingpoint for my treatments is solving the problem instead of curing the symptoms, which unfortunately mostly is the western approach of problems in medicine. Where fortunately more and more doctors and therapists look at physical (and mental) problems this way, most of them limit themselves mainly to their own discipline within our highy specialised care system. I myself like to look for connection with what other specialists and disciplines have to offer, in the West as well as the East. Next to specialising myself also outside of my profession the last years like in mindfulness and meditation, breathwork and working with stress and energy, I have a broad range of specialists I like to refer to when I feel I am not getting to the root of the problem. In my network I have good collegues in acupuncture, osteopathy, chiropracty, podotherapy and orthomoleculair therapy.

My development path as a therapist

During my career as a physiotherapist, I moved from a deepening my knowledge and skills, to a widening of my perspective on health. At the start of my career I was the technical therapist that used the skills I learned in school. Along the way I started to realise how important the person behind the physical problem was, especially for the healing process. Here I really had to catch up and I think that people that I haven’t seen or spoken to after I turned thirty, probably will be very surprised if they would see how I am working no and how and in which direction I developped as a therapist and human being.

So after going deeper into the mechanical approach and learning about manual skills and clinical reasoning, the focus moved more and more to a holistic point of view towards the health problems where people consult me for. That mainly happened because, as the years passed, I noticed that my physio-manual therapeutic skill set didn’t lead to the complete solution for a lot of the muscular and joint problems. Not only were there problems that did not or insufficiently resolve after treatment, even with a wide range of training, education and experience, also people where the problems disappeared after the treatment sessions, often returned after a certain period of time with the same or a related problem. Also I saw more and more that there often was an underlying problem, where mental and relaxation components played an important role. Something that I wasn’t educated in.

It became more and more clear to me that the western medical and paramedical approach, is mainly aimed at and effective for acute problems. In this area I of course still love to help my patients and do we as physio’s have a beautiful profession with a wide range of skills. I missed something though in my skills and mainly when it came to more chronic or complex problems and that is something where the more holistic eastern medicine has more to offer.

In this period I also began to see more and more patterns with the explanations from eastern medicine for physical problems that my patients consulted me with. It already was and increasingly became an area of expertise which attracted my curiousity. And I started to really understand the importance of prevention and life style on health more and more. Not only in the physical way, also when it somes to mental relaxation and our energy levels.

By implementing my increasing amount of knowledge and training in areas outside of the classical physiotherapeutic spectrum into my therapy, I noticed pretty quickly that I was able to help people better and in a more lasting way and that they felt even more understood and helped. The more holistic approach also led for me personally to more fulfillment in my work and I now implemented it into my way of treating and approaching the problems people consult me for.

Nowadays I view physical discomfort as your body that is giving you feedback that something isn’t going like it optimally should. That can be mechanical (body), but also emotional (mind) or energetic. It is important to understand the feedback to adjust where necessary so there can be ‘flow’ again. For the mechanical part I am well educated as a therapist. Mind and energy are closely connected to that and these became a part of my approach.

Of course people are still more than welcome if they want me to help them with an acute ‘mechanical’ problem like an ankle sprain. Just know that there is also openness for a wider approach of the physical problems if that is what you are looking for or interested in.

What can I do for you?

Physiotherapists are pretty all-round when it comes to physical health problems in relation to posture and movement. That means you can consult me for analysis, treatment and advice for a wide range of complaints in the body.

The manual therapy education gave me a specialisation in joint problems, mainly of the spine. A specific area of expertise I developed around the tailbone, something where still only few therapists have knowledge of or know how to effectively treat it. As an occupational physiotherapist I have expertise relating to work related problems and due to my many other educations and courses I have a wide range of treatment options. See below for more info.

How does it work?

I work at Fysiotherapie van Bree at the Dufaystraat 19 (in the former schoolbuilding at the 2nd floor) in Amsterdam Zuid, close to the Vondelpark and Hilton Hotel. The website of our practice you can find through this link. Please note that we don’t have a contract with all the insurance companies. If you have an insurance with one of these, part of the treatment won’t be covered and will be for own costs. More info about that, you can find here.

If you would like to book an appointment with me, send me an email with your availability or telephone number at roel@roelwilbers.nl. You can also call us at 020 6629348.

Why can I help you?

Because of my experience and educations. I work already more than twenty years full-time as a physiotherapist and did this in the Netherlands as well as abroad (nine months in Germany and volunteer projects in Nepal, Peru, Colombia and India). Is am fluent in Dutch, English and German and able to help you in Spanish as well.

An overview of my most important educations:

• Physiotherapy at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (1995-1999)
• Manual therapy Maitland Concept (2001-2005)
• Occupational physiotherapy at the Saxion Hogeschool (2007)
• McKenzie A and B (2013-2014)
• Mulligan Concept A – B – C – treatment of pelvis (2009-2010)
• Medical taping (2013)
• Treatment of coccygodynia (2018-2019)
• Mindfulnesstraining for people with chronic pain or stress at the Hogeschool Leiden (2014)
• Breathcoach through Buteyko International and Annete Weers (2021)
• Pelvic pain around pregnancy (2022)

This besides the other courses and educations I did otside of the physiotherapeutic spectrum, like Reiki (master degree), many meditation courses and holistic pulsing.

What patients say about me

The experiences of people that were in therapy with me, are probably the mist valuable to someone looking for a physiotherapist. For this, I like to refer you to the reviews people left at the independent sources and to which I have little influence.

During the year the QDNA gives every therapist an overview of the patients evaluations. This is based on the so called PREM questionnaires that every patient receives after the therapy has ended.

In 2022 there were 201 therapy cycles started and ended by me. Of those, 35 people filled out the questionnaires and this is the average it ended up in.

The website ZorgkaartNederland.nl is the biggest and probably most important website for healthcare workers in the Netherlands. It is an independent organisation that has evaluations of all healthcare workers. See here for my actual score and below for some of the reviews that were posted on Zorgkaart Nederland about me over the last few years. On their website you can view them all.

My thanks goes out to all the patients that contributed to this.