07/09/2026
Aging is the inevitable result of not dying — a triumph, honestly. But it does come with some new physical plot twists. Swipe for what’s actually happening to your body and some useful strategies to combat it... 👉
Is staying strong and mobile as you age something that you’d like to learn more about?
06/18/2026
A few weeks ago I reposted an infographic about a recent study contradicting many of the claims made in the very popular book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk.
I really appreciated the study and its contribution to our understanding of trauma and its physical effects but some of you pointed out that the arguments made in the post did not take into account the importance of fascia in managing chronic pain.
Then Bendy Bodies from Linda Bluestein MD (hEDS / HSD spc) , which covers research and treatment of Hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos, popped into my inbox with an article about how important fascia is in understanding the complex, seemingly unrelated symptoms for HEDS folks and I nerded out hard and wrote this week’s newsletter on fascia and pain.
The cliff notes: while fascia may not “store” trauma, understanding fascia is essential in the treatment of chronic pain and tightness. Historically we thought of fascia as just a scaffolding for muscles and organs, but it is actually packed with sensory nerves that are constantly feeding information to our brain. Fascia is also home to the interstitium, a network of tiny tubes that circulates all sorts of good stuff like hormones and proteins through every bit of our body. This means that the fascia is like our body’s fiberoptics system, providing essential communication that our brain uses to make critical decisions.
I go into more detail in the newsletter and provide links to some great resources, but the main takeaway is that the brain’s patterns may be the seat of chronic pain and tightness but the brain makes its decisions based on input from the body, fascia included. The divisions we set between “mind” and “body” aren’t always useful.
Hope this is helpful and yay for nuance
06/03/2026
In my newsletter this week I am getting deeper into the potential harms of aspirational advertising that promotes the Pilates Body.
In my last post I talked about how the manosphere has pounced on the Pilates Girl trope as a coded way to indicate their idea of a desirable woman. Using fitness as means of control and restriction of women is nothing new, but it’s even harder to slip out from under these concepts when we do it to ourselves.
When we approach fitness it is important to understand what it can and cannot do for us. The fact that many people who do Pilates are skinny has much more to do with who feels welcome in a Pilates class than the ways that Pilates actually changes your body.
I’ll say it again: weight loss is a potential side effect of exercise. There is no direct correlation between working out and getting skinny.
I’m putting so much thought into this because Pilates is very important to me. I credit Pilates with helping me stabilize my joints, reduce my back pain, and prolong my performance career by many years. I want other people to enjoy those benefits in classes that are welcoming and don’t set up expectations that are impossible to fulfill. This is what I worked to create when I had a studio, and it is work I see happening in many other spaces as well.
You can sign up for my newsletter if you want my full exposition on this subject. And if you have thoughts or experiences, or people who love who are expanding the idea of who Pilates is for and what it can do, I’d love to hear them!
05/13/2026
This new research brings it home. I read The Body Keeps the Score along with Waking the Tiger and I’ve been struggling ever since to understand the science behind fascia holding on to trauma. I think Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion comes the closest by bringing in peptides but in all the flexibility coaching and training I’ve done over the last 20 years I can say that says it beautifully:
“Healing is not excavation it’s exploration”
The way out of chronic tightness and pain is by having a relationship between the brain and the body that builds confidence, trust, bravery, and resilience.
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