Individualized Movement Program

Are you ready to MOVE out of chronic pain?

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Improving the underlying cracks in the foundation is crucial if you want to build a sturdy house that lasts.

Movement, like pain, is complex and unique - and so are the strategies we each need to truly improve it.

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First you build underlying stability, then you can scaffold strength on sustainably.

What usually has not been done, is scaffolding in exercise selection appropriately, giving the nervous system time to adjust. The movement program must not only be the right exercise selection, but the right dose response and organization from a pacing perspective. Building strength without reinforcing poor muscular patterning is the key to getting out of pain more permanently, but it requires an individualized approach and adjustments along the way.

If you’re a chronic pain patient, who hasn’t gotten the results they need, it’s not a matter of finding that one thing that fixes everything. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist. It’s about integrating neurological techniques that add a crucial piece to putting the rest of your movement puzzle together.

To kick through ceilings you’ve reached, you need to teach your brain there IS another option than what it has gotten used to in an effort to create the stability it lacks. To improve the increased tone, spasming, and weakness living with persistent pain results in, we must address the underlying muscular inhibition and and why your brain is stuck in that pattern to begin with - rather than just treating and down-regulating the output/what it results in. Once your brain has ways to feels safer and more stable using muscles it's learned to work around, it can engrain that new pattern and neuroplasticity can actually occur, rather the competitive plasticity that is often inadvertently engrained.

Traditional physical therapy and movement are hugely important, but can lack the sensory strategies to truly build new movement patterns. Weakness or over-training adds to pain, but you must have the right frameworks to overcome this. To get different results, you need a different approach.

 

Most people with chronic pain have tried all the things that were asked of them from a movement perspective. They graduated PT, did group classes, went to a gym, hired a trainer, and tried various approaches to movement - yet are still in pain. While manual techniques and corrective exercises addressing muscle length tension relationships are crucial, without a neuro approach, patients with complex pain and neurological conditions have a

hard time getting lasting results or are still pushed into flares. This is because your brain still defaults back to the same old movemement pattern if you don't improve the sensory information it is basing that movement decisions on. To change the motor output, you have to change the sensory input. How? By integrating a neuro lens that addresses your unique sensory deficts.

Individualized Movement Program

This is a completely individualized approach to movement tailored to your brain and body progressed in a way that reflect your unique diagnosis, compensations, fitness level and challenges - guided by someone who has lived this first hand. This is NOT like a traditional pain program or physical therapy.

You may have graduated PT and need help to bridging the gap to getting more active again in a structured way you can feel safe and confident is helping more than hurting you. Stability is the focus for patients who have the lifestyle factors more under control, but need better guidance with movement to decrease underlying compensations from weakness and neuromuscular inhibition we develop living in pain that lead to motor dysfunction and movement limitations.

You’ll learn how to better address the underlying inhibition and brain mapping issues that affect stability, walking, positions during daily life and in the gym, so you can improve movement quality, strength, body composition, and successfully progress exercise with less pain and flares. As we improve the underlying movement dysfunctions, we integrate more strength and resistance that will help keep you out of pain more.

Do you have chronic pain including:

  • Body part and nerve pain affecting your spine, low back, hips, neck, shoulders, lower limb/foot, or arm/hand pain that makes movement difficult

  • Chronic conditions that affect sensory information and motor control including hypermobility spectrum disorders or Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS)

  • Misunderstood pathologies like Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, long-COVID etc that create barriers to movement

  • Neurological conditions like brain injury, stroke, MS, Parkinson’s etc causing weakness, spasming, or hemiparesis rehab only helped so much

  • Have highly sensitized areas or areas areas of very low sensation you don’t feel or have good motor control over that impair movement

  • Implants like spinal cord stimulators that affect muscle recruitment and create inhibition and instability with some underlying issues

Are you struggling with::

  • Sitting, standing, or walking increasing back and hip pain

  • Pain and fatigue flares post exercise (e.g. crashes, post-exertional malaise) and unable to develop the capacity to integrate regular exercise successfully

  • Sensitive body parts with neuropathy or allodynia that are leading to increasingly widespread pain

  • Physical therapy helping a little but not enough, and hitting a ceiling that is not good enough

  • Becoming increasingly sedentary and needing to integrate a sustainable movement practice

  • Wanting to get back into more fitness and regular exercise but feeling overwhelmed and discouraged with what to do and how often

  • Function and mobility after amputation (due to CRPS or other conditions) that is limiting your life

There is the program you’ve been looking for with the techniques you’ve been missing to change the way your brain and muscles work together after years of persistent pain and compensation patterns it’s learned to use to survive.

“Exercise, and the right selection and progressions for you, are imperative to actually decrease the pain cycle.”

— Justine Feitelson

How the movement program is structured:

The individualized movement program includes both 1:1 calls, and customized workouts in between sessions. We work one-on-one, integrating unique sensory strategies that reflect your specific diagnosis and compensation patterns so we improve your biggest pain drivers from a movement perspective, and progress those strategies appropriately given your needs and goals.

We do an initial assessment and then meet every two weeks for an hour on Zoom. You get personalized workouts delivered to you in between based upon what we’re working on that help you stay on track and actually integrate what you’re learning, so you can build a consistent, sustainable movement practice with exercises and techniques that are completely unique to you and address the issues adding to pain and dysfunction that procedures and medications don’t address.

What the movement program includes:

  • 1 hour Initial Movement and Sensory Assessment

  • Two 60 min sessions/month on zoom to learn sensory strategies and tweak the program design

  • CoachRx app so you can integrate the movement strategies we practice on calls into your daily life and stay consistent with properly progressed stability, strength or aerobic workouts between calls

  • Call recording with lifetime access

  • Communication with Justine throughout the week

This program IS for you if you:

  • Have a pretty good handle on sleep, nutrition, energy and stress management but struggle with sensitivity and flares from movement

  • Want a personalized program to follow that is specifically designed for your body, challenges and goals that improves rather than worsens pain.

  • Don’t know what you should be doing for your body from an exercise selection standpoint and programming perspective

  • Keep flaring every time you try to work out more

  • Desire accountability/support but also the autonomy/independence to do workouts on your own

This program is NOT for you if:

  • You have widespread, intense pain with lifestyle factors not under control that are increasing it to a level we need to bring down first. Movement, even though crucial, is a stressor. When you have no recovery, overwhelming stress, inadequate fueling fueling and very high levels of intrusive pain, we need to address why that is happening first, before adding movement. Improving the conservative management strategies with complex pain, increase your capacity so that you actually have the room to integrate exercise sustainably. Please check out and apply for the MARS Mentorship if pain management rather than movement is the main thing you need support with.

  • Once we get on top of the factors amplifying pain so it is more predictable and under control, we can move you into the movement program.

Example of individualized microcycles of exercise planning that regresses and progresses the basic patterns of movement: squat, hinge, single leg, push, pull core depending on the advanced training age of the adaptive athlete.

Example of frameworks to progress aerobic exercise sustainably, respecting where one’s tolerance is at.

Pricing:

There is a 3 month minimum for movement coaching.

The individualized program is $550 per month, or $1400 pay in full (save 15%).

I know how scary it can feel to take a chance and have to put in the work, but betting on yourself is the best bet you can make because you have to learn how to manage your own body. Clinics that take advantage of patients desperation, tout unproven therapies, and lack truly individualized care will charge $12, $20, 50K+ capitalizing on our desperation.

I’ve been where you are and and understand wanting an easier way to just make pain go away with, as well as how stressful finances can be. Having to spend our precious expendable income on more healthcare is never what one wants, and medical trauma creates an understandable lack of trust and valid fear over another person overselling and underdelivering. My goal is to help you decrease pain and rely on the medical system less, so you can significantly decrease the overall cost of care going forward.

My clients find what they get out of my programs is beyond worth it. I know despite keeping costs as low as possible for the quality/care provided, individualized programs can still feel like too much. This is I why I offer other resources as well. How many other kinds of therapies have you spent money on or will continue to if you keep going like this? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Let’s change that, together.

Want to chat about your specific situation?

Apply for movement coaching

Lower cost programs and coaching options include CPP, or individual movement sessions. No-cost resources include the RWC Newsletter, my podcast with Dr. Dan Bates: It’s Not in Your Head, guest podcast interviews on special topics, and tons more on social media.

 

  • “Prior to me starting with Justine, in 2022 I had a really hard year with CRPS. I ended up with multiple hospital stays due to dehydration, medication complications and CRPS flares. My biggest change in 2022 with Justine came with me identifying I had purpose, I had meaning and I just needed a little bit of structure and support in the way I interacted with life. The biggest thing Justine was able to accomplished for myself, was allowing me to consider my life with CRPS differently and know that I still had value and meaning, and I could push through it be the rockstar I knew I was. I’ve lived with CRPS for 7 years now and honestly if you have any question, or doubt, take the leap. It’s in you, you know you’re in there. You’ll be able to get places with Justine you never thought were possible. The mental challenge, the fun, the guidance is there. You just have to believe in yourself. ”

    — Matt B.

  • “Justine cares about helping people with CRPS. Her kindness and empathy comes through loud and clear. This is a very rare commodity in the medical community. She’s very intelligent and intuitive and is great at problem solving. She is able to adjust treatment so it will be effective and suitable for your condition; she has certainly done that for me. Unfortunately for her (but good for you) she has lived with CRPS and other unfortunate medical problems and understands what it takes to endure and more importantly help you live a good quality of life. Her system is designed to address the physical as well as psychological aspects of living with CRPS i.e. exercise, nutrition, mental health and personal relationships. The things that made the biggest difference for me was her understanding of my physical and mental challenges, positive attitude and solid communication skills, correct stretching and breathing regimen, matching the routines with my overall ability to accomplish goals, and looking forward to the variety of movement, strength exercises and helpful breathing techniques. My core has become much stronger which has helped me to keep moving, swimming and kayaking. Your breathing exercises have actually improved my lung capacity along with decreasing coughing. Your sense of humor and positive attitude helps me stay on an even keel…no trivial thing when living with the medical issues I have. Simply put, you’re a very good coach. You know what you’re doing.”

    — Richard R.

  • “If you are on the fence about working with Justine I’d say 100% go for it. She works with you and the hard times that come outside of chronic illness as well. I was hesitant as I didn’t know if I would be able to ‘keep up’, but it isn’t like that with her. She works with you and what you need, she listens and adapts everything about the program according to what you need as a person. There’s no judgment and she is just a wonderful person that just wants to help and share her passion! When I first started my biggest struggles and frustrations were pain. I have CRPS in my lower back and both legs/feet and overall just a ton of body pain and soreness. The two most helpful things I have put into practice would definitely be release techniques and deep breathing. These really help me dial back and ground myself throughout the day. Since I started working with Justine, life certainly hasn’t given me a break (as it doesn’t for many of us) and having these tools in my toolbox has been so incredibly helpful. Having someone keep me accountable but in a good way has been a game changer. I overall feel much better as I have more of a schedule, feel stronger and more grounded and secure in what I’m doing. Justine is always willing to answer questions with no judgement and will listen to what you have to say!”

    — Lauren C.

  • “As someone who has prioritized exercise their entire life, I thought I'd know how to cope and incorporate movement into a this new life with chronic pain. As it turned out, I didn't know where to start and felt overwhelmed. Justine's MARS ID program was exactly what I needed to get my confidence back, and to learn how to move properly with pain. She makes sure to address specific strengths and weaknesses, compensation patterns, and creates a uniquely tailored program for each individual. I learned more from her in 3 months than I did in a whole year of PT. The fact that she has CRPS herself gives her not only in-depth knowledge, but her understanding and empathy is so much more than I ever experienced in traditional PT. Can't recommend her enough!”

    — Shelley R.

  • “Justine is by far the most knowledgable person I’ve ever met who offers 1:1 coaching. I did not realize how much there was in my life that I can actually change, right now. Since I’ve been working with her, I’ve been to the beach more times in a few weeks than probably the entire year. It’s wild. Thanks to Justine, I now have daily attainable goals and tools. She’s helping me become unstuck, find solutions to the big things even if they are little, but most importantly she’s giving me hope. Thank you Justine.”

    — Jen H.

  • “Having 1:1 coaching with someone who has CRPS and understands that each person is different is incredible. You come up in so many conversations, especially with my doctors; everyone can tell I’m doing so much better. Justine helped me change my mindset. Having CRPS for so long, I had almost given up. In my head, it was just going to keep getting worse. If it wasn’t for your program, I wouldn’t have the confidence to ‘do’ normal things again. Thank you Justine for helping me see that I can do anything. You literally changed my life.”

    — Steph K.

  • “Honestly, you have already been an answer to my prayers. It’s so much easier to figure out this new way of life when I have a guide. Someone who understands what i am going through. The doctors, therapists, etc. don’t have their own experience of this illness. Just following your account opened me to understand more, and to have the opportunity to work with you - the best! I am not interested in the final results that much anymore. The whole journey is the thing. I don’t have to know what might happen or not happen. I am more at peace. I remember the pain and tiredness during the cramps. I will never forget it. But if it happens again, I know I will survive and I can help myself get back. It is empowering! And for that, I am grateful to you. You were there for me, even if it was the weekend. I will never forget it. “

    — Karla T.

  • “Justine is amazing! I was almost bed bound when I started working with her. Now I’m watching my granddaughter (3 years old) 1 day a week and I can recover from it. I couldn’t watch her on my own for so long and now I’m keeping up with a 3 year old! I still flare but now I have solid tools to use to help me. I am recovering much better than I ever thought possible! It used to be do one thing and be in bed for the week. Now even after bad flares and meltdowns I’m still able to regulate my nervous system and be OK to do more. Justine changed my life. She’s the link you really need to live with CRPS”

    — 1:1 client

  • “It was such an amazing consult. She was very receptive, thorough, and had such great energy that made me even more excited. The individual focus on each person that you coach is amazing.”

    — Ashley M.

  • “I have had the pleasure to work with Justine for a couple of months. It has been the best decision I have done since I got CRPS. Justine is a true professional in her field. MARS ID Method covers all the areas of life that CRPS affects on. If you want to learn how to live your best life with CRPS, are ready to make some changes, and are looking for someone to guide you on the way, you should book a call with Justine.”

    — Karla M.

  • “Friday was the day I got my first workout since the accident that led to CRPS. And man it felt good! Before the accident, I used to move around a lot. The last two years have been a weird time for my body. Been thinking I need muscle and body control for a long time, but when nerves don’t work properly, it feels impossible. Two months of persistence and daily preparation under Justine’s guidance brought me to this point. It has taken commitment and faith that the MARS I.D. Method works…At the beginning of June I spent two nights in the hospital with seizures and massive pain. I realized I am all alone with my situation because no one seemed to help me…I finally realized I need to take my healthcare back into my own hands. Fortunately, a little before that moment I had decided to hire Justine to help me. She helped me even when I was in the hospital, directing me through different exercises to calm my nervous system. From that moment on, Justine has guided me gently but purposefully down a path I had only dreamed of. In addition, my mindset has completely changed. I no longer focus on where I want to end up. I’m focused on what I have right now. I trust that life will carry on, when I have the courage to surrender to the path. There are plenty of mountains and stones ahead, but being afraid of them won’t help me.”

    1:1 client

  • “This is like learning a language again that I’ve been able to speak years ago. Familiar but different at the same time. My brain is working like crazy trying to figure it out. It is really like a challenging puzzle, but also fun. I think I have never enjoyed training this much! And I loved it also before.”

  • “My goals have changed from what I originally thought I wanted. I was ready to figure out how I was going to get back to everything I was doing before - working out was my priority. But now I’m really learning about slowing down and learning new ways to handle my condition. Breathing, pacing, release techniques - these are all things I had no knowledge/appreciation for. Now, I’m more focused on honing in on those skills. I’m definitely moving towards my goals.”

    — Dawn H.

  • “I am so happy we got here. The start of working together was not easy because of my massive flare up. But it doesn’t matter that we had to wait for this because with CRPS there are so many other aspects to tackle. Thank you for helping me get here. This was a huge win for me. “

  • “You have changed my life. You have shown me a path next to the one I was walking on. I know I am finally going where I have wanted to go. There are hills and big rocks ahead, I know. but with your help, I finally have the proper tools to get over those barriers. You are a star.”

Frequently Asked Questions

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.