Eco Psychologist, Associate Lecturer (Medical Education), Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner
Specialty: Family Medicine
Rich Thorpe is a Registered Psychologist and Associate Lecturer in Medical Education at the University of Newcastle, with postgraduate qualifications in coaching psychology, sport and exercise psychology, and social health and counselling, and is a yoga teacher in the Krishnamacharya lineage. Rich came to lifestyle medicine by an unusual route. While researching a PhD on incorporating nature into virtual reality, he realised that what he was trying to recreate in simulation, he wanted in the real world. He withdrew from the doctorate and trained as a Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) instructor under Dr Qing Li. Drawing on years of clinical practice through his private practice No Worries Psychology, he now channels that work into Rich Eco, an ecological lifestyle medicine approach centred on our relationship with the natural world. Rich argues that social health belongs alongside movement, sleep, and nutrition as a pillar of lifestyle medicine — and that mattering, the experience of feeling valued and adding value, is what makes it clinically actionable, extending even to our bond with nature. He has published in the Bhutan Health Journal (2025) and received the University of Newcastle Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Health and Safety. With an infectious grin and a certain set of ears, Rich bears a marked resemblance to Wallace of Wallace & Gromit — and, trained as an engineer, shares his instinct for assembling ideas into something that works. Which is perhaps why lifestyle medicine feels less like a career move than an arrival. At a garden shed, naturally.