I have suffered my fair share of pain in my life. Pilates has helped me greatly. I truly enjoy sharing my Pilates knowledge and working with my clients to help with their physical recovery, mental clarity, and overall wellness.
I have been working with clients to relieve pain since 1994, beginning with massage therapy and then incorporating yoga and movement shortly thereafter. I help clients understand their bodies, get stronger, and develop toolkits of simple self-care techniques that is life-changing for them, making their daily physical activities, sports, and hobbies easier. My work as a medical massage therapist trained her to help people recovering from injury, discomfort, and poor alignment. I am certified in Polestar Pilates, and my approach has a dual focus on creating the best dynamic alignment for each client and deepening the mind/body connection.
There are multiple ways to optimal health and support my clients in discovering their way. If I think my skill set is not a match, I will not try to sell you on my services.
I have been injured off and on my whole adult life. It probably started when I was thrown from a horse when I was about 13. Since we were at a 4-H show, I had to continue to take care of the horse… hobbling with full water buckets and lowering them to the ground, bending at the knees only with a rod-straight back and teeth clenched.
Fast forward to dancing during college and I had the typical knee and back pain, and therefore physical therapy, that many dancers experience. I was managing, though. Until…I lowered one small jug to the ground and swung my arm out away from me. I slowly crumpled to the ground and that was the beginning of my decades long romance with low back issues.
There have been treatments and therapies that worked intermittently, some better than others. I even thought I was cured twice. In my 20s, after the incident I received chiropractic and physical therapy and began doing yoga two to four times a week, 90-minute classes. I was pain free for years. Then, in my 30s I was playing tennis 5 or 6 days a week, plus weight training and stretching. Again, pain free. I really thought I was cured because tennis is pretty intense!
Then, in my late 30s I had two children, 19 months apart. Welcome back to Back Pain, which now included nerve pain and hip pain. I went to yoga once a week, still ouch. I went to PT with some improvement. I continued chiropractic and massage, some improvement but I was pretty fragile and had to restrict a lot of activities! Like running after my kids often. Jumping was out, and often even loading the dishwasher was painful.
Enter Pilates. No, not the arm pumping, feet over your head kind of Pilates. Actually, at first, I thought it would never work for me. There is so much forward bending (flexion) in Pilates that I thought it was kind of stupid for most people. What I ended up learning is that I there is so much more to Pilates than I ever knew. I gained a level of healthy spinal mobility and true core strength that I am to this day either pain free or can get myself out of pain with a much smaller time investment that other methods for keeping my back healthy. I was grateful for this because I had other health issues, like fatigue, that kept me from working out harder. I am still grateful, because there were times when I felt like giving up and felt completely resigned to permanent back pain.