Are you tired of coping with aches and pains when you move?


Have you stopped an activity you love because you’ll regret it the next day?


Is your world getting smaller because you’re moving less and less?

 

Do you want the freedom to enjoy moving until you want to stop, rather than your pain telling you to quit now?


Do you want the confidence to try a new activity without dreading how you will feel the next day?


Do you want the world you move through to get bigger as you grow older?
 
One day you were fine and then…

It happened…

 

An unexpected injury that still hasn’t fully healed. A life-changing condition that’s depleting your quality of life. Or maybe you’re just experiencing more and more aches and pains as you get older.

Whatever it is, you took action. You did all the “right” things: Visits to the doctor, the massage therapist, the physiotherapist.  You committed to new health-boosting regimes, like taking supplements for joint pain and rebuilding your strength through exercises.

Yet, despite your best efforts and intentions, you’re still not quite back to normal, not even close.  And you find yourself talking a little more about what you used to do and a little less about what you are planning to do next.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

 

Hi, I’m Cheryl…


When I talk to people who first come to work with me, they are frustrated and can feel like failures because what they have tried hasn’t worked. Specialists say they can’t do anything more to help. These people are not ready to throw in the towel on living a full life but don’t know what to do next.

I have been there myself.  I had always been active; hiking, working out, gardening, and training karate. I feel better when I move.  In my 30s, I would wake up and feel stiff for no good reason. Working long hours to build my career, I sat more and moved less.  One day, I found I couldn’t turn; my back felt like a rigid plastic corset.

I was 38, in a leadership role and I could hardly move.  I turned to Pilates to build my core strength and mobility but something else happened that I didn’t expect.  I learned to listen to my body.  Rather than moving mindlessly, I learned to move in a way that nourished my body. 

That discovery led me to study movement through the martial arts of aikido and Tai Chi, to become a Being in Movement ™ practitioner, and an Integral Master Coach ™ so I could support my clients to use their body as an intelligent ally in moving past limiting beliefs, moving past trauma and past injury so they can move through their lives freely and fully.  I am a certified Feldenkrais practitioner,  so I can support my clients to learn from their own movement, to use movement as a vehicle for positive neuroplasticity so they can move more with less pain.

It is more than just moving better. It’s in our choices.

  • Choosing not to move because you are in pain.
  • Or choosing to push yourself no matter how much it hurts until you injure yourself.
  • Often choosing to leave your inner adventurous self on the shelf.

I offer my clients another choice – to learn how to move so you can move more without regrets.    


With better movement, I help my clients expand their world as they grow older, rather than surrendering to perceptions of “what I can’t do now” that shrink their world of possibilities. 

Make new memories of your best adventure ever, rather than letting the memory of your last adventure fade a little further away in your rear-view mirror.


If that sounds like something you’d like for yourself, I have good news for you.

Introducing
Move Freely

 

  • Identify movement habits that lead you to feel pain.
  • Interrupt those habits to learn more functional ones.
  • Discover the movement freedom that is possible for you.

Move Freely is
a transformative 6-month program.

 

With Move Freely, you’ll:

  1. Improve how you move so you can move how you want.
  2. Decrease the pain that happens when you move.
  3. Discover how you can learn from your movement so you can care for yourself while you do the activities you want.

~ Enjoy the freedom to move until you want to stop, rather than stopping because it hurts.
~ Feel confident to try a new activity, knowing you can feel great the next day.
~ Step into a world that grows bigger as you grow older.

What you learn in my Move Freely program will restore your ability to move and function in your life and build your ability to keep moving across your whole life.

How it works

We start with a 60-minute consultation session to explore the issues you want to address, your personal history with movement and pain.  We work together to improve the quality of your movement.

Based on the results of this consultation, I recommend a 3- or 6-month program to:

  1. Identify movement habits that lead you towards pain. We have unconscious movement habits that cause us to overuse ourselves in some ways and stop moving in others.  To change your habits, you need to discover your movement habits that lead you towards pain.

  2. Learn new ways to organize your movement so you can move better.


This is more than doing new movement forms.  You will learn movement in a way that creates positive neuroplasticity so your movement will create positive changes in your brain and nervous system so your learning becomes part of you going forward.

Grow your ability to learn from your movement so you can create your own new movement habits.


You will learn a process to learn from your movement every day so you can do this process for yourself, creating movement that leads you away from pain and toward freer movement.

Bring your new movement habits into functional activities in your life.

I work with you to bring your new movement habits and learning process into the activities you want to do in your life so you can improve how you move and function in your life.

Your 6-month program also includes:

  • A free one-month membership to my new Peace and Power site.  This is a hub for information and like-spirited people to learn together how to move towards wellness and wholeness and away from wearing out.

Is Move Freely right for you?

If you’re….

  • Clear about what you want to improve.

  • Curious and willing to act on your curiosity.

  • Committed to weekly work to build your movement intelligence

  • Willing to experiment with what you learn in your life. Every movement is an opportunity to learn.

..Then, yes!

Move Freely is a perfect fit!

However, you will not be successful if you expect me to “fix” you in one session or expect to be transformed by dropping in once or twice every 3 months.

Here’s what others say about working with me

Improved balance – “Fall mitigation has been my goal for the last 2 years but I still have issues with balance. We addressed more in these few weeks working with Cheryl than I have working the last couple of years with trainers and the walking process. You have to have balance when you are moving. It is ok to work on balance when you are standing but that is not when you fall.”  ~ Marlene

 
Awareness of movement – “I fell a few times catastrophically after having chemo. Working on my journey to regain the muscle mass and a lot of strength I lost at that time. What I was surprised with – the outcome was different than the goal. My goal was to be better balanced. I met my goal but that became almost secondary. I needed to be more aware of how I was moving.  This has become for me, some me-time, an hour just to focus on learning to slow down and move properly.” ~ Dawn

 
No longer feeling powerless – “I am working through a medical diagnosis for a chronic condition. I feel uplifted and hopeful after working with Cheryl. She has this way of offering possible paths of relief while accepting my physical reality.  Using a wine metaphor, I’d describe Cheryl as hopeful with an aftertaste of pragmatism. She respects my need to be in charge of my life and my abilities to handle the situation. Together we explore what might be possible.  This is really helpful to me – it is easy to feel powerless, to believe my condition will only get worse. I may have what I have, but I feel like it doesn’t get to have me. ~ Sharon

This call is an opportunity for you to:

  • Talk about the issue you have with movement
    and pain.

  • Clarify what your issue is about.

  • Learn what can support you to improve your movement and reduce your pain.

Frequently Asked Questions

 

I am in a lot of pain – how can I learn about movement when it hurts this much?

I work with very small, gentle movements to create positive changes in your brain and nervous system.  This approach can reset your internal pain system.

I’ve been told that I can’t expect to improve any further – why would this help?

I support you to use your personal learning tools: your attention, curiosity, senses and self-visualization to learn from and improve your movement.  These practical neuroplasticity tools helped you learn to walk, to learn a sport, a new language or any new activity you didn’t know how to do.  Many therapies leave out this learning process and focus on your physical movement alone.

My knees joints are damaged or my neck vertebrae are fused – how could this help me?

I support you to find your best possible movement, with whatever structural conditions or limitations you have.  We can’t change what has happened; we can work together to learn how you can move to function better in your daily activities.

You can choose.  You can continue to cope, doing what you can to manage your pain, to limit your movement to what feels comfortable.  This is how your life gets smaller, how the limit for your movement today changes the course of your life from here.


When you rediscover what it feels like to move freely again, to do your favorite activities without pain coming from your movement, to have the confidence to try new activities without regretting it the next day.


Remember, with just an hour a week of gentle movement, you can learn to move with strength and stamina… and without fear of straining or injuring yourself.


You can reverse the widening gap between your willing spirit and your hurt or aging body.
The Move Freely program will help you discover how you can move more with less pain so you can keep living fully in the way that you want.


Find out if Move Freely is right for you…