INSPIRATION & EDUCATION

When I go for a summer exercise walk by the river, or climb my favorite neighborhood butte, I feel without time. Like I have always been on this exact road and I always will be. There is no work or struggle. There is only this. Everything in that exact moment is perfect; it is the vacation, but I haven’t even left my neighborhood. There is no road in Italy that is somehow better.

During a squat, with your feet planted firmly on the ground, dorsiflexion happens as your knees move over your toes. If you lack ankle dorsiflexion, you may unknowingly compensate by leaning forward with your torso to complete the squat. When the body compensates for dorsiflexion, a cascade of other dysfunctional compensations will travel all the way up the body.

What needs to improve the most in your life is the mindset that you take into your goals. The biggest self-improvement promise you can make to yourself this spring is to realize your mindset and gently nudge yourself to a greater sense of love. Love is the underlying current of every-single-change you seek. Literary, even if the change is taking vitamins, which kind of seems like a boring change. But even taking vitamins can be a practice in a routine of love. Some women a

Pronation and supination are two natural foot movements in the gait cycle. The gait cycle is the series of movements that occur when walking. Your foot needs to come off the ground, and your foot needs to land on the ground, and the muscles from the foot to the hip are coordinating those motions. Those muscles are making instant compensations, shifting to keep you moving straight forward. The foot needs to pronate, but overpronation is a strategy of the brain, trying to find

When we talk about hip movement, we are talking about the dynamic movement of the femur as it sits inside the pelvis. Hip motions are flexion, extension, rotation, abduction, and adduction of the thigh (the femur). The movement of the femur moves the pelvis. You can see this during the gait cycle (the walking cycle). When you move a leg backward (extend it), the pelvis moves backward on the same side. The pelvis and the sacrum have their own motions. The pelvis tilts and rota

Dorsiflexion happens when you raise your toes toward your shin. It also happens when your foot is firmly planted on the ground and your knee moves over your ankle, as in a squat position. Healthy dorsiflexion range of motion affects every motion in the body, even the swing of a volleyball players arm! The health of your feet and lower legs is vital to the health of the rest of your body! In my practice, I only work with women who are experiencing jaw tension, TMJ dysfunction,

In my practice, I treat women with headaches, migraines, ear pain, eye pain, jaw pain, throat tension, dizziness, and a variety of pain patterns in the face, neck, and head. For some women, even at that very first appointment, when they learn about trigger points, the mystery of the anatomy, how the breath affects their necks, and what else creates the symptoms that they have, they find relief. Most of these women have undergone many types of appointments, tests, and even MRI

Proper fitness boosts circulation of immune cells and strengthens the immune system’s ability to identify and prioritize triggers, which lessens the chances of the immune system overreacting. Moderate and consistent exercise also causes the body to release anti-inflammatory compounds, which also aids your immune system’s response. Exercise is a way to protect your tissues.

In my practice, I have seen this manifest in many ways. For instance, I treated a woman who was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia. She had intense face and ear pain (see ear below) and had been to the emergency room many times. She could not drive because of the medication. She was working with her naturopath, chiropractor, ENT, and others. She had taken rounds of antibiotics. What was missing was soft tissue manipulation of the neck muscles—so simple!

The overall state of your central nervous system influences local pain and inflammation and systemic pain and inflammation. If your system is already taxed, overwhelmed, and producing low-grade systemic inflammation throughout the body, you will have a weakened immune system. When new threats arise in another local system, a shoulder or elbow, your body will probably experience more pain, inflammation, and swelling than needed for the repairs.

Willow Health is an online drug company that masquerades as "for your health." Really, they are a company that aims to shape young girls' minds with shameful messages, creating body-dysmorphia and lifelong customers. This blog post contains still images from those ads. Due to their young age, I am blurring the faces with little brain emojis. A young girl grabs an acai bowl from the freezer. She takes a single bite and pushes the bowl away. She walks over to a mirror and holds

If you have had an acute respiratory illness, such as COVID, pneumonia, or just a cold with a bad cough, or a chronic respiratory illness, asthma, allergies, or throat irritating GERD, do a self-check-in with the muscles mentioned in this post.

To heal, you are thinking of reshaping your tissues, stretching and building strength, creating muscle balance in the jaw and neck. But you are also tapping into your nervous system; you are diving into the most important aspect of healing; allowing your nervous system to come to a place of rest. From a place of rest, the nervous system turns down pain signals. I know for sure: women who do these postures, and allow themselves to come to a place of healing rest, report chr

Scalene muscle dysfunction causes neck pain, headaches, migraines, head pain, TMJ pain, whole jaw pain, rib pain, and shoulder pain. The shape of the cervical spine is in-part determined by the health of the scalene muscles. Know this: it is only with gentle and consistent self-love—in the form of neck therapy, stretches, and breathing—that these muscles will take on a new shape, holding onto less tone and tension.

Understanding the function of the scalene muscles is vital to understanding your neck and jaw pain. It can also be vital in understanding your upper thoracic spine pain, rib pain, and shoulder pain.

By working with the top and bottom of the spine, the jaw joint, the upper cervical spine, and the pelvic floor, we are hitting places that mirror each other in tension. We’re observing which muscles are hypertonic and overworking, and which muscles are underactive, even if they’re also tight and sore. Direct physical touch therapy to the top and bottom of the spine is very healing.

Self-love is your untapped energetic potential. You came into this world open, loving, and complete. You came into this world capable of making rooted and intuitive choices regarding your health and wellness. Make no mistake: this culture has created the difficulty within many women. Society bombards women with messages that their stomachs should look flatter and their lips fuller. Advertisers—even those claiming to promote health—often create ads to shame you and then sell y

And yet, most pelvic floor issues result from tension and tightness. Pelvic floor muscles with trigger points (heightened zones of electrical activity) that are pulling on the structures above. A tight pelvic floor also pulls on the SI joint, causing low back pain. A tight pelvic floor pulls on the bladder, and it causes a lack of blood flow and alters the nervous system, causing bladder leakage and varied types of pain.

In this post, I will quickly name some of the TMJ muscles that we work on in a therapy session. In an hour-long session, we are working the head, neck, and TMJ muscles but we won't be able to get to everything. This therapy is slow and detailed, so we may get to different muscles during different sessions. As treatment progresses, more areas will "open up" and treatment can become "deeper."As we work together, we also address muscles such as the psoas, the QL, and the diaphr

You can turn to Ayurveda to understand your reactions, your current state of health and wellness, and how, moving into the rest of your year, you can slowly but dynamically improve your health. Ayurveda is a pattern, a predictable way to see the body and understand your reactions to everything.