and I can help!

You’re amazing at what you do. Look at how much you’ve already accomplished in your life. You’ve taken care of others — maybe kids, maybe your parents. You’ve worked and muscled through every challenge. You are, like me, an exhausted achiever. 

But when it comes to you — taking care of your body now that you have slid past that 50 year marker… well, you feel a little stuck.

You often find yourself daydreaming about what you always planned to do, but now, you are beginning to doubt yourself.  You wonder if this is what it means to age, and you fear it will only get worse from here. More pain, more tension, more fatigue, more cravings, more headaches. stiff and staying that way. That never happened before.  

And if you’re like most of my brilliant exhausted achiever clients, you want solutions. New solutions -- ones that work! But you’ve been struggling to figure out what that might look like in this new phase of your life. 

You’ve tried physical therapy, yoga classes, shots, acupuncture, but these “fix-it” solutions are short-term answers to a much bigger dilemma. 

You’re ready to find a new, whole-body, whole-life  solution that will open the door to the life you imagine ahead. 

No more living with long-term stress as the new normal. Let’s make it happen, together!

My Story

I Was Once Exactly Where You Are… 

At 50, as a professional, single mom, I was a stressed-out, sleep-deprived, achievement junky, suffering from constant pain and headaches. I could barely get through the day without popping ibuprofen for pain and overeating to numb my emotions.

My job, as an English professor and administrator at the University of Illinois, Chicago was exciting and challenging. I gave it my all. For many reasons, I wanted badly to succeed. I certainly needed to support my two lovely children. And, my work at the university — my research and writing — was fascinating and rewarding. 

I Tried Everything

I tried to stay healthy by going to the gym before work and then I bought a cross-country ski machine for my bedroom, so I wouldn’t have to go anywhere to work out. I walked and ran outside when the weather was good and when it wasn’t I used my indoor machines.

I didn’t realize how much stress I was carrying in my body and how much that contributed to the many symptoms I felt: pain, fatigue, worry, stiffness, inflammation, weakness, and even loss of intimacy.

As I got older, I realized that these old exercise and self-care solutions just weren’t doing the job.

And they couldn’t, because here’s the truth…

I now know that chronic stress along with the traumas that we’ve experienced getting to this point in life take a huge toll on the body. 

I got massages, which felt amazing at the moment and at least until the next morning. But then, the stress-related sympoms all returned. My low back hurt from too much sitting and my shoulders never relaxed.  I went to physical therapy. Same story — a little bit of hope, a lot of driving back and forth for appointments, and then the same old pain returned. 

The year I turned 50 was clearly a turning point for me.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with solving problems and finding solutions. That’s what I did in my university research and now I had a new problem to solve -- how to feel better in my body and feel excited about my life’s journey. 

Now, at 50, I said, “Enough is enough.” I was determined to find a solution that actually worked. 

Yoga Was My First Stop    

Initially, as so many of you have, I thought that yoga would cure all my ills. Looking back, I could see that yoga was something of a gateway drug: I went to classes 2 or three times a week and then I attended a variety of teacher trainings. 

Of course, my best exhausted achiever self would not stop until I had attained advanced certification in a very challenging yoga tradition — Ana Forrest’s Hatha Yoga — known for attracting ‘achievement junkies’ just like me (although usually quite a bit younger). 

Then, I studied Turbodog Yoga for years with Steve Emmerman and Talya Ring, going to retreats in exotic locations and deepening both my practice and my teaching. 

I followed my new teachers quite studiously, I now see. And they had considerable wisdom to offer: I learned about my breath and how to stay in a pose when my brain was screaming, “Enough! Uncle!” I learned specific poses that moved and strengthened my body. I saw how I felt better after each class, but, sadly, that feeling didn’t last. 

The day after a class, I’d find myself in that same stressful state as the day before and I didn’t have the tools to unravel the tightness that grew, day-to-day, inside my body. 

My Shoulder Started Screaming At Me

After five years of yoga, I was shocked to find my right shoulder frozen, sending brutal, fiery shocks down my arm and reducing me to a puddle of tears.

My exhausted achiever mind cried, “How can this be? I’ve been practicing yoga for five years? Yoga was supposed to fix this.” 

I lay on my bed drowning in despair with my arm tenderly resting over my stomach. Now I had to find another physical therapist or figure out who could help me out of this mess.

I was so desperate, I even tried a new kind of therapy in which hypodermic needles inserted a salt water solution into various spots on my badly injured shoulder.

To add insult to my injury, after this session, I put back on the gorgeous, cream-colored silk blouse I had worn for important work meetings that day and looked in the mirror to find that tiny spots of bright red blood had emerged through the fabric ruining my favorite blouse. 

I wasn’t used to feeling lost in the way I did at that time. I had hit rock bottom. I had invested myself in all of this yoga training to heal myself, but my shoulder still decided to show me that what I had done, with all my good intentions, simply had not worked. 

I dried my tears and took a few deep breaths. At this moment of quiet desperation, I reconsidered my approach.

I realized that I had been an excellent student of yoga. I had pushed myself to excel, just as I had done in graduate school and even in my job as a professor. 

I had done everything I was asked to do and believed that it would work.

That realization changed everything. 

My research skills and my familiar problem-solving attitude kicked back in and I began to ask myself what would change if I experienced — listened to —  my body, not through a teacher, but through the lens of my own experience. 

Fast Forward to my Wake-Up Call

This wake up call, asking me to, first and foremost, listen to my body became my key message to my FierceOver50 women students.

You see, as exhausted achievers, in this second half of our lives, we have accumulated so much stress and trauma in our bodies.

It's why we feel pain, tension, headaches. It's why my shoulder froze like it did.

I learned that things are different at this juncture in our lives.

We can’t just sluff off stress or trauma like we used to and keep happily movin’ on down the road. 

At this point, the stress, the tightness, the habitual worry, the headaches and backaches have become the new normal and they create symptoms in our bodies that are actually a cry for help. 

I took courses, traveled to retreat locations like Kripalu on the east coast and 1440 on the west coast to take trainings from Yoga Tune Up specialists.

Among my instructors and colleagues, I found former yogis, crossfit coaches, athletes, dancers, and trainers. I became certified in Yoga Tune Up® and the Roll Model Method®.

I learned about the long-term consequences of chronic stress in our bodies — the inflammation, the pain, the worry, the fatigue, the weight gain, the cardiovascular impact, the loss of intimacy. 

Most important, I learned that the solution is not in following a particular teacher’s class plan.

the crucial skill, we FierceOver50 women must learn is to…

listen to our bodies. 

Our bodies so want to heal

The new solution for our FierceOver50 lives, is to encourage a new relationship with our bodies — one in which we listen, notice, and get curious about stress-induced symptoms.  

These days, I am in constant conversation with myself, asking myself  if I’m holding on to stress; asking why that might be; and asking how I can reorient myself to the situation or the thought. 

Even though I have no more chronic pain in my body, I do still, occasionally, fall back into my exhausted achiever ways and overdo it.

If my back begins to hurt or my neck and shoulder stiffens up, I don’t approach this pain with a “fix-it” mentality. Instead I take a few breaths and get curious about my thoughts and my actions. 

Working from this perspective, I have become stronger, more mobile, more clear-headed, and more action-oriented than I could have ever expected in my 70’s. I want the same for you. 

How Do I Teach You to Listen to Your Body? 

Working with over 50 precious private clients, women in group classes, and in retreat programs I have developed a three-part system called the Body Vitality Method. 

Through my Body Vitality Method I guide you in flexing three sets of “muscles:” your outer muscles, your inner muscles, and your communal muscles. 

The Body Vitality Method  is the framework behind my private practice and the FierceOver50 Gathering, informing all the healing work I do.

• First, the Body Vitality Method will teach you how to listen to your body. You will begin to sense what it feels like to let go of stress. This is more of a self-healing, than a self-care process.

• At the same time, you’ll learn how to move your body, how to improve the range of motion in your joints, how to massage away pain. Have you heard all the buzz about myo-fascial release work? That’s what we do. I teach you how to use very special massage balls to hydrate our fascia and bring our tissues into full responsiveness.

• You’ll gain a surprisingly effective toolkit for letting go of worry and feeling centered, grounded, and vibrant. When your body says, “I am tense here, say, in my neck.” You’ll know how respond. If it’s something simple, you won’t need to run to your chiropractor or your therapist. You can engage your new-foundself-healing talents.

All of this creates a body that will carry you forward toward that next adventure with confidence and joy. 

Ready to Get Started?  

Here’s how we can work together: