My Core Values:

Body positivity

Body Positivity is the idea that all bodies are deserving of love, admiration, and care.

Society teaches us that we should aspire to be thinner yet more muscular, prettier, and more graceful. Society tells us that we’re too much, and simultaneously not enough. In fact, the diet and beauty industry depend on our personal dissatisfaction with our bodies.

If you’ve read this far, you probably already know: society’s beauty standards are bullshit. They were engineered to sell you products. You can choose to reject them, and work to unlearn them.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re thin or fat, able-bodied or differently abled, brown, black, queer, neurodivergent, healthy, sick, or in chronic pain – your body is a good body.

Your body deserves love. Your body deserves admiration. Your body deserves care.

Body autonomy

Body Autonomy means that your body belongs to you, and you alone.

No one can tell you how your body is supposed to look or how you’re supposed to use it.

That means that we each get to define fitness for ourselves, based on our own personal values and aspirations.

Maybe to you, fitness is the ability to carry children and climb mountains. Maybe it’s being able to spend all day grinding away over a canvas to make your art. Maybe you just want to be able to work a desk job for 40 hours a week and not be in pain at the end of each day. Maybe you want to climb mountains or run your fastest ever. Maybe you want to chain smoke cigarettes and stay up late drinking on a Friday and still be able to get up early to go hiking on a Sunday.

Your body deserves to move and feel better, no matter how you choose to use it in this life.

Long-Term Health

People work out for all different kinds of reasons. For myself and the people I train, fitness is about functionality and long-term health.

We prioritize the preservation of our bodies’ functionality for the duration of our lives.

Many of my clients wouldn’t mind losing a few pounds or toning up a bit, but it’s not usually their main motivation for working out.

Many of them find that when we start to focus on what their bodies can do, instead of how they look, their relationships with their bodies change. They start to be motivated to care for their bodies from a place of love and admiration instead of criticism and negativity.

Because let’s face it, our bodies are amazing. They are the tools through which we experience the world. They enable us to feel the grass underneath our feet, breathe in the crisp, fresh air, smell the sweet aromas of flowers in the spring, and hug and kiss our children and grandchildren and lovers and friends.

Let’s take care of your health so that you can enjoy those things for a long, long time.

Growth Mindset

When most people think about fitness and health, they usually think exclusively about the physical health of the body. But, emotional and mental health are just as important.

It doesn’t matter how strong you are or what the number on the scale reads if you don’t love yourself.

That’s why I work with my clients to develop a growth mindset and to break the habit of negative self-talk.

Having a growth mindset simply means that you believe in your brain’s ability to change. The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, which is the idea that people never change: we are who we are and we’ll always be that way.

Both kinds of mindsets are self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t believe you can change, you’re right! If you do believe you have the power to change your mind, your paradigms, and your life, you’re also right!

Part of how we work on a growth mindset together is by looking at negative self-talk. “Ugh, I’m so fat.” “I look so tired today.” “I’m a lazy sack of shit who will never amount to anything.” You’d never allow someone to say this to your best friend or your child! And yet, many of us talk to ourselves like this every day.

Ancient wisdom tells us, “your thoughts become your feelings.” Neuropsychology has explained how it works: “the neurons that fire together wire together.” What that means is that the more often you give power to your negative thoughts, the more you’ll believe and feel them to be true.

Making a choice to shut down your inner critic is an important first step to on the path to loving yourself, your body, and your life.

Inclusivity & Social Justice

The fitness world -- and the world at large -- value some bodies over other bodies. Thin bodies are valued over over fat bodies, white bodies over black and brown bodies, able bodies over differently-abled bodies, cis bodies over trans and nonbinary bodies, straight bodies over queer bodies, rich bodies over poor bodies, neurotypical bodies over neurodivergent bodies, and the list goes on.

Like all intersectional feminists, I wish I could wave my magic wand and dismantle all the systems of oppression, but alas, I cannot.

What I can do is make a commitment to living by the words of the great Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

I’m not perfect, but I promise that I will not assume your fitness goals, your gender, your body goals, or your past experiences. I promise that in my studio and in my life, I will work to create and maintain a body-positive, non-judgemental space that is safe for survivors of trauma, and for everybody. <3