Hey! I'm Sam.
Nice to meet you.
At a very young age, little Sam developed patterns that were detrimental to the way I navigated throughout the world. I started injuring my low back, time and time again for about ten years (most of my 20s). I felt as though I was not able to live life to the fullest. I felt trapped and my worldview grew smaller. After my worst injury, which prevented me from being able to get rest or sleep for 3 months, I needed to take matters into my own hands and learn a lot about the body. After teaching yoga, I wanted to be more hands on and further my education. So I started practicing "Fascial (Frederick) Stretch Therapy". I was hungry for more growth and education! So I finished all levels of FST, learned more about soft tissue manipulation, and learned to train in modalities to help with low back pain, and to train mobility.
Today, through this journey, I finally got to a place where I finally feel liberated, can make authentic goals, and can relish in life. So it is my passion to help others get to the same place.
Fascial Stretch Therapy
Fascia is an interconnected soft tissue system in our bodies. As we move throughout the world, we develop obstacles that influence how we pattern our bodies. These patterns are sometimes habit-based, from an injury, different forms of trauma, and so on. Our soft tissues start to adapt to these patterns and cause a physical shift in our bodies. Due to how interconnected all of this webbing is, a shift somewhere in the body can cause chronic pain in other parts of the body.
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Fascial Stretch Therapy utilizes techniques that comply with how the soft tissue needs to be manipulated. In my sessions, I advise you to treat our time together as a chance to go in your body and see how it feels for someone else to move you. I will cue breathing throughout the session and we work together in order to propel you further where you want to be
Injuries
When we get an injury many things happen in our body. One of which - our tissues (muscles, fascia, joint etc) start to adapt and cause restrictions to protect the injured area. This is an amazing thing the body does for us. However, it only serves us for so long. We often keep holding onto these new restrictions and patterns way past what is necessary. We need to re-adapt to more balanced movements.
Chronic Pain
There are so many reasons why we have may chronic pain. Some of them may have stemmed from little injuries in the past. Without getting too deep, a lot of our chronic pain stems from traumas, and not just physical ones. The way we were raised and influenced in childhood influence how we learn to move throughout our world. Fascial work and corrective exercise help address chronic pain by moving the body in ways it hasn't tapped into in many many years. It helps let go of some patterns and, as an added bonus, move past old bullshit that doesn't serve us.​
Training
I am a firm believer in expression through movement, and also goal setting. It is healthy to have gym goals, find peak poses in yoga, work on your handstand, get better at a sport, spend more time in the mountains (the list is endless). Why have these bodies if we can't express ourselves in them? FST, and the training I offer, helps reach these goals by increasing range of motion, decreasing time feeling crunchy and sticky, working through restrictions and pains, and getting more in tune with our bodies.
Information about Training
Manual Therapy is one part of an equation for the body to move through some its hindrances. The other is training and learning how to move your body.
I have been certified in personal training, a postural/back pain modality of training called "Foundation Training", and joint mobility work called "FRC" or functional range conditioning, and something called ELDOA (postural/scoliosis/spine training).
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Almost all of us have some sort of scoliosis. It may not be structural (From birth + a beautiful lifelong practice to work against it), but we get it from imbalances learned over the years. My definition of "the core" is the ability to strongly move from an informed spine. Thus, looking at our spine is important for a strong core and a strong life.
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Furthermore, I have worked with amazing physical therapists for many years and have learned a lot about how to move through movement to help the body.
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I am here to help you, and am happy to offer anything I can help with. If you do not want advice for exercises, please speak up! Our time together is for you.