WHY I do this work
As a health clinic owner and Registered Acupuncture practitioner, I spend a fair amount of my time holding space for patient's emotional and physical pain.
Compassion and Curiosity are always present into the room with me, as it’s thanks to the grace they both allow that I’ve been able to access healing of my own.
There is magic in my lineage and medicine in my hands.
My decades of learning and integrating have come together into this body of work: Meaningful Movement.
A kinesiology degree followed by years of fitness instruction merge with my study of Chinese Medicine and the thousands of hours I’ve spent witnessing people’s stories through their bodies. to form a new lens on health and wellness
My lived understanding of childhood trauma and nervous-system regulation has joined forces with my disordered exercise history for the express purpose of taking down the culture that perpetuated it.
Most joyfully of all, my nine-year-old self’s dream of becoming a writer aims to be fulfilled as I share my story and do my part to disrupt what I know in my bones needs disrupting.
How i got here
I’ve been an Acupuncturist for 25 years and a clinic owner for 10.
Before that I was a personal trainer and fitness instructor working in the belly of the beast: a private, pushy sales–style gym, run by a deeply traumatized and body-obsessed owner.
At the tender age of 19, I cut my teeth in the industry as a receptionist at a gym that was a downtown hot spot. That gym was owned by a sexual predator who used his business to ogle young women in their workout gear. Yes this was the 90's though I'm not so sure it's any better now...
As a collegiate athlete studying kinesiology and psychology, the leap into the fitness industry after graduation was a natural one. The over-exercise I participated in was normalized—celebrated even—and I had no idea there was any other way.
At age 30 the life I had so carefully curated around my trauma and my disorder collapsed. It was from that wreckage that my true journey began.
The last decade of my life has been one of deepening into genuine self-care and compassion. I learned how to create safety in my body enabling me to spend more time fully inhabiting it. I also began separating my worth as a human from the aesthetics of my body, an almost Hurculean task as a female in this culture. In short, I found a way to get FREE.
