Individual Sessions
“Wellness is illness but with a ‘we’ instead of an ‘i’,
because WE can do this.”
This is a completely individualized approach where we create a comprehensive plan to implement together. This is NOT like a traditional pain program or physical therapy. We identify what are the biggest needs and dial movers for you from a movement and/or lifestyle perspective if necessary, and create a sustainable step-by-step approach to improve the factors unique to your situation that are impacting pain most. We’ll then progress and implement those conservative pain management strategies at whatever pace or frequency is appropriate for you.
This program is for patients who:
Have chronic back, neck, or joint/limb pain
Have chronic conditions like hEDS or hypermobility spectrum disorders or complex pathologies
Have persistent pain like Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, neuropathies and other more widespread pain pathologies like Fibromyalgia and central sensitization. You may also have symptoms of nervous system dysfunction including:
Sensory sensitivity, sleep disturbance, extreme fatigue, cognitive impairment, mood disturbance, dysautonomias (IBS, POTS etc), motor dysfunction (inhibition, myoclonic jerks, dystonia)
Have highly sensitized areas or areas areas of very low sensation you don’t feel or have good motor control over that affect movement
Neurological conditions like brain injury/stroke, MS, Parkinsons etc.
Implants like spinal cord stimulators that affect muscle recruitment and create inhibition
Have exhausted medications and interventions and need to improve the amplifiers of pain to lower pain output and improve capacity
Want to improve sleep, nutrition, energy, stress and other factors that amplify pain
Individual sessions include:
55 min Zoom call(s)
Working on movement live and/or implementing lifestyle strategies as appropriate
Conservative pain management resources as needed
Recording with lifetime access
Integration of strategies into your daily life outside of calls
You may go session by session, or at whatever frequency we talk about being effective for your specific situation and goals e.g. every 2 weeks, etc.
Traditional ortho PT can be of great help, but typically lack the sensory strategies to overcome inhibition and truly build new movement patterns. Pain Programs can get people moving more and coping better, but often lack the individualization in the patients own setting and daily challenges to most effectively integrate the education. To get different results, you need a different approach. Resilience and capacity can be earned through truly individualized movement and lifestyle medicine. And are the most critical variables that impact long-term outcomes we impact as patients
No matter where you're at, we're working on and prioritizing the pieces of pain that are affecting you most. Lifestyle factors amplify pain and may need to be optimized to create more capacity for movement. Inhibition and instability contributes to pain output and need to be improved so you are not fighting increased tone, spasming, and weakness as a result of living in pain. While things that help us feel better and downregulate the nervous system have tremendous value, the challenge complex patients often have, is the changes don't last and you end up in the same movement pattern that creates pain.
This is because your brain still defaults back to using the same old information if you don't improve the sensory input it's basing movement decisions on. To break through platoes, you need to teach your brain there IS another option. Once your brain has ways to feels safer and more stable using muscles it's learned to work around, neuroplasticity is built and progress can happen. But releases, corrective exercise, and pain science or PRT alone won't get you there. To change the motor output, you have to change the motor input. How? Through a neuro lens and individualized integration.
What Do You Impact As a Patient?
Movement
Individualized movement strategies tailored to your unique brain and tolerances including desensitization and release techniques; proprioceptive, visual, and vestibular sensory strategies to improve stability; and strength and aerobic progressions as appropriate as you progress into more exercise.
Awareness
Increasing your awareness and agency so you can begin to identify what triggers affect pain. Positively impacting the intensity of symptoms with mindfulness and diaphragmatic breathing is also crucial, so anxiety, depression or stress create less positive feedback loops that amplify and perpetuate pain.
Recovery
Unfortunately without predictable, dependable recovery, you don’t give yourself a chance because you have no capacity or fuel. Improving circadian rhythm, sleep/wake cycle, nap hygiene; pacing and energy management; and meal quality, timing, and sourcing are critical to improve capacity and pain.
Stress
Pain is inextricably tied to our sympathetic drive and allostatic load - or the accrual of various stressors, including other diseases, on our pain threshold. Learning how to understand and decrease that, increasing your bodies sense of safety and capacity so you can sustainably layer more in.
“Improving the underlying cracks in the foundation is crucial if you want to build a sturdy house that lasts on it.”
— Justine Feitelson
Movement piece of the MARS Method
This piece is emphasized for patients who want to work on underlying instability/compensations and get increased pain from working out, but have the lifestyle factors more under control.
This is a truly individualized, brain-based approach to movement. We work one-on-one on Zoom together, integrating sensory strategies that reflect your unique diagnosis and compensation patterns from living with persistent pain. You’ll learn how to better address the underlying neuromuscular inhibition and sensory issues that affect stability and walking (gait), and plan and progress movement and workouts with less pain and flares.
You may have goals like:
Improve walking (gait)
Increase tolerance to sitting and standing
Becoming more active/independent in daily life with sustainable movement strategies that actually stick and aren’t overwhelming
Restore function and mobility after amputation
Improve/progress more than you’ve been able to in physical therapy
Flare less from exercise and understand how to layer it in sustainably into your routine as you progress
Lifestyle pieces of the MARS Method
If you’re also struggling with sleep, nutrition, energy, anxiety/depression or stress amplifying symptoms, we work on those dial movers as appropriate, finding the right balance between addressing the most impactful pieces while layering in movement strategies, or creating the capacity to next.
You may have goals like:
Improve energy, make nutrition more simple and efficient, fall asleep easier and get better quality sleep, be less impacted by stress and mood and know how to keep it from spiking pain
Flare less often and create more predictability with symptoms
Develop habits and routines that allow you to do more and live more life with less pain so you have more usable hours of the day
Lower sensitization and how intense or widespread pain is before doing additional procedures that would otherwise flare you
Become less reliant on medications, or make the medications you are on more effective
You will master strategies for:
Mindfulness and nervous system strategies: Manage your nervous system and down-regulate on demand with various breathing and mindfulness we progress so you can lower your sympathetic, get stress out of our bodies better, separate from stressful thoughts easier and decrease anxiety as a global sensitizer. Your perspective with pain matters. This is a safe space to talk about the challenges it creates with connection and other things we love but struggle to sustain, and how to work around that better so depression has less of an impact too.
Sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm: We deal with the physical and mental challenges around sleep. How to fall asleep easier, anchor your sleep cycle better, nap less. We’ll audit daytime behaviors that are inadvertently making it tougher to fall asleep and improve your environment, so you get better sleep quality, wake up with more energy and have less dips during the day forcing you to nap.
Meal quality and timing: We all know we need to eat better, but how to get healthier food easier and more consistently isn’t easy with intense symptoms. You’ll gain strategies to make sourcing food easier and develop systems around prep with limited energy or standing capacity. We also take specific common challenges/needs into account like protein with hEDS, gastroparesis, nausea, lack of appetite, food aversions and intolerances.
Energy management and pacing: The daytime side of recovery. Pacing is not a dirty word. You’ll learn how to better manage allostatic load, progress activities properly, organize yourself more sustainably, know when to ‘push’ and when to ‘listen to your body’, and integrating the pressure release valves and built in flexibility needed that actually allows you to do more over time. As I semi-joke, “it’s not about doing less, it’s about being less stupid”. How you organize yourself matters. Pacing = Planning. As you gain capacity with increased recovery and lower stress, you earn more freedom.
Individualized pain science education: The challenge of chronic pain is deciphering what pieces are due to identifiable causes like physical drivers, amplifiers like sleep or mood, contributing factors like de-conditioning or instability, and our individual experiences and nervous system state. The crucial part is teasing out all the inputs resulting in the pain output the patent is experiencing, and systematically addressing the ones that are both most do-able and most impactful. Understanding what pieces of pain we are treating with what intervention, is crucial to better understanding what is going on in your body, and what you can do about it.
Individual Sessions are $175/each
Schedule a Discovery Call to chat more about your specific situation and how we’d approach it based upon your unique needs, priorities and goals.
For more free resources, follow me on social media, join the RWC Newsletter, listen to various podcast conversations, and check out my podcast with Dr. Dan Bates, It’s Not in Your Head, for even more chronic pain education.
Frequently Asked Questions
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In the MARSMethod Mentorship we evaluate the previous weeks/months goals, troubleshoot stressors/challenges from previous period, go over exercise programming, cover resources/handouts, learn new movement techniques, and discussing medical/pain aspects of care. This is a real relationship, and I take a whole person centered approach to my care.
In the Individual Design Program consults we go over exercise program design related issues.
In Private Movement Sessions we focus on brain-based neuro movement strategies
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We will typically have a scheduled recurring time to meet that works or you. That being said, this is life with chronic pain and treatments and if there wasn’t some flexibility we wouldn’t be successful. That’s why you have 16 weeks to complete the 12 session in the Mentorship.
In other programs, please cancel at least 24 hours in advance.
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To start, just some basic, accessible items so we can guarantee proper exercise selection, appropriately progress movement, and implement release techniques and sensory strategies. I'll provide a list of recommendations for mobility tools and bands, and based upon your unique situation and goals, discuss anything additional you may need as we progress. There is no need for a gym membership nor any expensive equipment to start.
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Yep! You can pay in full to receive a discount, or in monThly installments for the MARSMethod Mentorship or Individual Design Program.
Private Movement Sessions can be paid for by appointment as you go, or in regular chunks if preferred.