about me

My fitness journey started at the age of 3 in a ballet class. By the time I was 8, I was attending the School of Hartford Ballet on a scholarship and touring with the professional ballet company. Outside the studio, I never did any traditional workouts, until college – and I did not like them.  

When I entered my 30s, I had 3 beautiful children, but the slender ballerina was long gone. I despised running, standard gym workouts bored me and personal trainers were far too expensive; plus most things hurt my hyper-mobile body. I wasted time and money until I discovered circuit training classes designed for moms which meant that it worked for my schedule and my body. With this new routine I had an instructor who kept me accountable and I found myself enjoying fitness for the first time since ballet. After a 3rd international move, a handful of abdominal surgeries, and a husband who started traveling extensively for work, I didn’t feel like myself. After consulting with my surgeon, I was advised to find something that would aid my rehabilitation such as pilates, yoga or barre.

That’s when I found myself and my contribution. I started moving in a way my body loved. And then things shifted in an unexpected way.

I‘ve spent a good amount of time with body noise monopolizing my thoughts. That’s what I call the sound of my negative self thoughts, some where I am posturing, some where I am collapsing… All of it stems from the assumptions I imagine other people are making about my body.

At some point in my work as a personal trainer I got curious: What if I treated my body the way I treated my clients? What if I gave my body the same amount of care and positive attention I was giving other people? What if I put the same amount of thought and intention into my body as I was putting into their bodies?

I began thinking about and treating my physical form like a person I loved and depended on. I started nurturing it like someone I wanted to take care of. The results have been gentle and extraordinary. My body has become my ally, I have experienced less loneliness, and the magic of my somatic connection deeply enriches my relationships with others.

Don’t get me wrong, my “body noise” is still here, but now when I think about how I occur in the world, that “noise” isn’t the only sound or even the first sound I hear. I don’t love the way I look all the time; it requires effort to embrace the whole of what my body is. Which is human – and imperfect. With that in mind, if I want to change my body, I try to approach it from a place of service instead of punishment. And instead of viewing my aches and pains as inconveniences, I take them as opportunities to tune into and access an inner wisdom that has an intelligence it wants to share with me.

I want to provide an invitation, a BOLD possibility, to anyone who wants to work on cultivating a similar somatic bond and use your body as a portal to emotional conversations you haven’t yet accessed.