Move More... With Less Pain!
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An unexpected injury that still hasn’t fully healed. A life-changing condition that’s depleting your quality of life. Or maybe you’re just experiencing more and more aches and pains as you get older.
Whatever it is, you took action. You did all the “right” things: Visits to the doctor, the massage therapist, the physiotherapist. You committed to new health-boosting regimes, like taking supplements for joint pain and rebuilding your strength through exercises.
Yet, despite your best efforts and intentions, you’re still not quite back to normal, not even close. And you find yourself talking a little more about what you used to do and a little less about what you are planning to do next.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
When I talk to people who first come to work with me, they are frustrated and can feel like failures because what they have tried hasn’t worked. Specialists say they can’t do anything more to help. These people are not ready to throw in the towel on living a full life but don’t know what to do next.
I have been there myself. I had always been active; hiking, working out, gardening, and training karate. I feel better when I move. In my 30s, I would wake up and feel stiff for no good reason. Working long hours to build my career, I sat more and moved less. One day, I found I couldn’t turn; my back felt like a rigid plastic corset.
I was 38, in a leadership role and I could hardly move. I turned to Pilates to build my core strength and mobility but something else happened that I didn’t expect. I learned to listen to my body. Rather than moving mindlessly, I learned to move in a way that nourished my body.
That discovery led me to study movement through the martial arts of aikido and Tai Chi, to become a Being in Movement ™ practitioner, and an Integral Master Coach ™ so I could support my clients to use their body as an intelligent ally in moving past limiting beliefs, moving past trauma and past injury so they can move through their lives freely and fully. This year, I am completing a 4-year Feldenkrais practitioner program, so I can support my clients to learn from their own movement, to use movement as a vehicle for positive neuroplasticity so they can move more with less pain.
With better movement, I help my clients expand their world as they grow older, rather than surrendering to perceptions of “what I can’t do now” that shrink their world of possibilities.
If that sounds like something you’d like for yourself, I have good news for you.
We start with a 60-minute consultation session to explore the issues you want to address, your personal history with movement and pain. We work together to improve the quality of your movement.
Based on the results of this consultation, I recommend a 3- or 6-month program to:
This is more than doing new movement forms. You will learn movement in a way that creates positive neuroplasticity so your movement will create positive changes in your brain and nervous system so your learning becomes part of you going forward.
Grow your ability to learn from your movement so you can create your own new movement habits.
You will learn a process to learn from your movement every day so you can do this process for yourself, creating movement that leads you away from pain and toward freer movement.
Bring your new movement habits into functional activities in your life.
I work with you to bring your new movement habits and learning process into the activities you want to do in your life so you can improve how you move and function in your life.
..Then, yes!
Move More Without Regrets is a perfect fit!
However, you will not be successful if you expect me to “fix” you in one session or expect to be transformed by dropping in once or twice every 3 months.
Improved balance – “Fall mitigation has been my goal for the last 2 years but I still have issues with balance. We addressed more in these few weeks working with Cheryl than I have working the last couple of years with trainers and the walking process. You have to have balance when you are moving. It is ok to work on balance when you are standing but that is not when you fall.” ~ Marlene
Awareness of movement – “I fell a few times catastrophically after having chemo. Working on my journey to regain the muscle mass and a lot of strength I lost at that time. What I was surprised with – the outcome was different than the goal. My goal was to be better balanced. I met my goal but that became almost secondary. I needed to be more aware of how I was moving. This has become for me, some me-time, an hour just to focus on learning to slow down and move properly.” ~ Dawn
No longer feeling powerless – “I am working through a medical diagnosis for a chronic condition. I feel uplifted and hopeful after working with Cheryl. She has this way of offering possible paths of relief while accepting my physical reality. Using a wine metaphor, I’d describe Cheryl as hopeful with an aftertaste of pragmatism. She respects my need to be in charge of my life and my abilities to handle the situation. Together we explore what might be possible. This is really helpful to me – it is easy to feel powerless, to believe my condition will only get worse. I may have what I have, but I feel like it doesn’t get to have me. ~ Sharon
I work with very small, gentle movements to create positive changes in your brain and nervous system. This approach can reset your internal pain system.
I support you to use your personal learning tools: your attention, curiosity, senses and self-visualization to learn from and improve your movement. These practical neuroplasticity tools helped you learn to walk, to learn a sport, a new language or any new activity you didn’t know how to do. Many therapies leave out this learning process and focus on your physical movement alone.
I support you to find your best possible movement, with whatever structural conditions or limitations you have. We can’t change what has happened; we can work together to learn how you can move to function better in your daily activities.