What I Do

I hear this A LOT:

"So, I don't think I actually understand what it is you do..."

Frankly, how the hell should you know? I don't even know how to explain it half the time. But here I am, attempting it, for all of our sanity :).

I think to understand what I do now, it helps to know what I did to get to this place. If you don't agree with needing the back story, skip ahead a smidge and get to the nitty gritty.

After being engulfed in sports all throughout my childhood and teens years and totally enamored with sports medicine after a high school course, I took the big leap to the U of U and pursued an Exercise Science degree. I got to live all my meathead dreams. I worked interned everywhere, with the athletic department as a strength and conditioning coach, in the physiology lab - personal training, physiology testing, etc. Oh, and I worked out....a lot. Too much. Well, I was addicted actually. And I was getting quite a bit of validation for this addiction. I was pretty revered, sadly. 

It was near the end of my undergrad that I fell into one more internship; yoga. I started taking a class to help me stretch my over-worked, muscle-bound body. I hated it, truthfully. I dreaded it every time I went to class, but felt euphoric each time I left my mat. Maybe, just maybe there was more to this very difficult stretching hobby. 

I was able to land a yoga teacher training program as a final capstone for my undergrad (no clue how I finagled that situation, but I'm grateful everyday I did). Long story short, it shifted everything. I had to sit with some hard things. I had to learn to sit. I fell hard into a relationship with myself and I got all sorts of beat up on the way down. 

After some traveling and a dedication to yogic philosophies that helped me heal my body and my soul, I applied for the U of U's graduate program in Exercise Physiology: Coaching Wellness. It was the perfect combination of body science geeking with an emphasis on whole-person/whole-body wellness. Finally, an accredited program that teaches health practitioners how to listen, how to see the individual, how to teach principles of balance. 

So, not sure if that helps, but that leads to now:

Nitty Gritty

I work primarily one-on-one with clients. I prefer the individualized focus and the honesty that comes when it's just you and me. What I do is so hard to explain because it ENTIRELY depends on the person. I use yoga, personal training/weight training, meditation, mindfulness, behavioral psychology, and nature to help (that's right, HELP, not TELL) a person unveil their own wellness plan. 

We are taught everywhere that we can't trust ourselves. You can't trust your body, it doesn't know how to move. It's lazy. We can't trust our stomach, all it wants is brownies if left to it's own devices. We can't trust our intuition, that's just emotional nonsense. These are all messages that get engrained into us from a fitness industry that relies on our fear of ourselves. Fitness=lies for $. Health/Wellness = truth. 

I am not a genie or witchdoctor full of crazy promises. All I do is take the experience and knowledge I have gained in realms physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual and we use those to figure out how to regain your trust in self. Sometimes, we sit quite a bit and we learn how to process. Other times, we get the heart rate up, sometimes that means doing a body-aware workout outside, or a yoga sequence full of strength and stretching. We always breathe. I'm big on the breathing thing. 

In summation, no one knows your body/brain as well as you do. No matter what any industry tells you, no one has been in your body as long as you have. Your wellness plan should look different than anyone else's, because you ARE different than everyone else. I'm here to help you remember what you are telling you. Most sessions begin with, "what do you need?" At first, that question is terrifying and confusing, over time.... you gain that relationship back, and not only is the question not as scary, you begin to know how to answer.