About Joanna
(she/her)
Hi, I’m Joanna. I help people reduce pain, develop greater embodiment, and restore balance.
I want to tell you a little story…
A little over a decade ago I went through a portal…
Working as a digital collections librarian at a prestigious liberal arts college was my dream job. Until...it wasn’t anymore.
I loved working with faculty and students but disliked sitting in a chair dissecting data for hours at a time.
I had found myself with rotator cuff tendinitis and cervical arthritis. Committing to PT for my shoulder and neck pains was just the beginning. I was waking up to the fact that I had been pretty dissociated from my body for a long time.
I knew something big had to shift.
Drawn to push my edges in a way I hadn’t done since childhood, I began training in martial arts. I went to boot camps. Did CrossFit. I lost close to 25 pounds and gained muscles I had never seen in the mirror before, plus greater strength, dexterity and confidence.
More importantly, I began to truly come home to myself.
Through a blend of personal growth work and mindfulness practices, I came to realize that an even deeper change was needed. After enrolling in massage school, what I had envisioned as a side hustle rapidly morphed into a new and fulfilling career path.
But while my big pivot did offer some big benefits, both physical and psychological, I’m afraid modern Western adulting is too complex for a simple happy ending story.
In the years following my career change, I found myself with a different set of chronic pains. When a pattern of chronic lumbo-pelvic-hip tension culminated in a low back injury, I was diagnosed with a bulging disc (L5/S1). And I was struggling with fatigue and mounting GI issues.
Why was all this happening to me?
Both entrepreneurs and healers often face a very real struggle to maintain work-life balance and avoid burnout.
Massage therapists face a high risk of chronic injury if we don’t learn and maintain effective body mechanics.
It turns out I had a lot to learn about how to balance mobility, flexibility and stability in order to avoid injury.
Life in the fast-paced Bay area was taking a toll, leading me to acknowledge some things about my own nervous system.
As if all that wasn’t enough, I had begun the long, slow descent into menopause, otherwise known as perimenopause, and I was also clinically diagnosed with ADHD.
Here’s the bullet version of a complex story…
It was a lot to navigate…
I feel deeply blessed to have discovered and specialized in Hendrickson Method®, which, through its powerful mechanical and energetic foundations, offers a sustainable method of practicing clinical bodywork. I became a personal trainer with a corrective exercise specialization in order to better understand functional movement and the prevention of injury. And I have firsthand experience with, as well as an evidence-based understanding of, the profound healing capacities of breath work, and mindfulness and restorative practices.
Overall, through experimentation, and with a lot of support, I learned that healing chronic pain and restoring balance in the face of complex challenges does truly require a personalized holistic approach. An exhaustive list of the modalities and practices that proved most effective for me is not the point of this story. Rather, I want to convey how my journey contributed to the integrative view of health and wellness that I hold, and that I in turn offer to my clients.
And while certainly painful at times, I wouldn’t trade my challenges away—they have pushed me to continually seek out my roughest growth edges, to tap deeply into my own strengths, and to find my own path toward sustained wellness.
Which, as it turns out, is a great foundation from which to help others.