Twenty years of listening to bodies.

Bodywork is intrinsic to my upbringing. I was raised by a massage therapist who started teaching me about therapeutic touch before I reached primary school — so the idea that hands could ease pain and change how a body feels was never abstract to me. It was just what our family did.

That early foundation gave me a real advantage when I formalized my training. I trained as a Licensed Massage Therapist through the Wellness Education Center, and worked in soft-tissue practice for close to a decade — watching closely what helped people and what didn't.

What I kept running into was the limit of what soft-tissue work alone could reach.

Someone would come in with low back pain, and the back would release — but the hip pattern underneath would still be there. Or a shoulder would loosen, and then three weeks later the same restriction would return because the ribcage above it was still locked. The work was helpful, but I could feel there was more to understand.

My search for deeper understanding led me to craniosacral therapy, visceral manipulation, muscle energy techniques — the gentle, subtle approaches that seemed to affect change at levels soft tissue couldn't reach on its own. I studied each one seriously, brought them into my sessions, and watched results improve.

What I didn't realize at first was that all three of these modalities originated in osteopathy. Once I understood that, I knew I had to study the source directly. I enrolled in the 2,200-hour program at the National Academy of Osteopathy and graduated with my Diploma in Osteopathic Manual Practice.

The formal training gave me the theoretical framework for what I'd already been observing in my hands for over a decade — the concept of restrictions, the interconnection of every system in the body, the principle that structure and function are inseparable. It named things I'd been working with intuitively, and gave me tools I hadn't had before.