Three Doctors. One answer. I refused.
You are only as young as your spine is flexible.
Joseph Pilates
Long before I discovered Pilates, I spent years teaching aerobics, step and cycling — often while hurting through every class.
In my mid-twenties, I was diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, a condition in which one vertebra slips forward over the bone beneath it.
Three doctors, including an orthopedic surgeon, gave me the same recommendation: spinal fusion.
I chose not to have the surgery.
What followed was nearly twenty years of searching for another answer.
I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I followed the recommendations. I went to chiropractors. For years, I was adjusted three times a week and paid for every visit out of my own pocket.
Not because I was getting better.
Because it helped me function.
There were nights I slept on the floor instead of in my bed because it was the only way I could keep my back stable enough to rest. I would get temporary relief, only to have the pain return again.
And through all of it, I was still teaching fitness.
Aerobics. Step. Cycling. High-impact movement. Standing at the front of the room, counting out the beat, motivating everyone else to keep going — while quietly pushing through my own pain.
I knew how to help a room full of people move their bodies.
But I could not figure out how to heal my own.
Eventually, even my longtime chiropractor became concerned. He told me he was no longer comfortable adjusting me and referred me to a pain clinic.
That is when I began receiving epidural injections in my spine — at a cost of $2,500 each.
The injections came with medication, and after living with pain for so long, the relief felt like a gift.
But within weeks, I was dependent on Norco.
I began taking one first thing in the morning just to start my day. My pain management doctor told me to stay ahead of the pain, so I did.
For about a year.
Until I realized I was no longer dealing with pain alone.
I was now dealing with dependence too.
So I quit cold turkey.
The next five days were some of the hardest of my life.
I stayed curled up, shaking, sweating and praying. At times, it felt as though my ribs were coming through my skin.
But somewhere in those five days, something became very clear to me.
I did not want to spend the rest of my life managing my pain this way.
“I believed God had more for me than a life spent managing pain.”
That belief changed the direction of my life.
When I found Pilates, I experienced movement differently than I ever had before. After years of pushing my body harder, Pilates taught me how to work with my body instead of constantly fighting against it.
For the first time, I began paying attention to what my body was trying to tell me.
I took what I was learning through Pilates and began studying other approaches to holistic pain management — stretching, pressure points, myofascial release, breathing techniques and simple ways to release tension and restore movement.
Slowly, I stopped overriding my body.
I started listening to it.
And little by little, my life changed.
Today, I have been pain free for more than five years.
It is now rare for my lower back to flare at all. And when it does, I know how to respond. Most of the time, I can address it within a minute or two — without reaching for so much as a Tylenol.
After spending nearly twenty years believing pain was something I simply had to live with, that still feels extraordinary to me.
The pain I lived through — and ultimately healed from — became part of my purpose.
I know what it feels like to build your life around pain.
To wonder whether this is simply how your body is going to feel from now on.
To keep searching for relief, only to find that the relief never lasts.
I also know how powerful it is to finally understand your own body and realize that you may have more options than you thought.
What I teach is not a miracle cure.
It is not complicated.
And it is not reserved for people who are already fit or flexible.
It is a collection of simple, practical tools that helped give me my life back — tools that can be adapted for different ages, bodies and fitness levels.
Because after living in pain for nearly twenty years, I know this much:
Pain may be part of your story. It does not have to be the end of it.
