New Heights Physical Therapy

I can do physical therapy, and I do it well.

But I am not the person I would hire to rehab your sprained ankle or do the body work you need for your knee pain or progress your exercises for strengthening your core.

That's because my depth lives in helping you see the pattern your body is stuck in when you think your chronic pain is being driven by something structural in your body.

My expertise might be backed up by eight years of physical therapy education and a doctorate, but my real depth is in connecting with people in chronic pain at a level that allows me to not only see your patterns, but interrupt them—by creating the right amount of tension that actually makes you think and move differently.

Working with me is fun, but it's not comfortable. And that's why my clients truly become the authority over their own body and see results that last longer than the next scheduled treatment.

#ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄᴘᴀɪɴ

Hi, I'm Hannah.

🌱 I love a simple life and that carries through to my work in that I definitely think less is more.

🏕️ Unless we're talking about fall camping trips or dark chocolate, then more is more.

🍫 My husband has to tell me to stop eating chocolate chips before dinner as if he were scolding a child.

🐶 I have two black labs who have the softest ears in the world - have you ever pet a lab's ears? It's the most relaxing thing ever.

🔥 If I could spend all of my time sitting by a campfire, I would.

🏃🏼‍♀️ My favorite form of exercise is running. I've run 4 marathons, but I've been retired from that for a couple years now. I'm definitely mad about my body needing more strength training instead of running now that I'm in my mid thirties. I hate strength training.

🐦 But I love listening to audiobooks while watching my bird feeders and crocheting... so maybe my body actually thinks I'm a lot older than 35? 😆

👀 I struggle with all the same things you probably do, like chronic pain, body image, and trying to balance everything perfectly across my days, even when I know it's impossible.

Now that you know a little about me, let's talk business. A lot has changed in my PT practice since I last introduced myself, so let's talk about it.

I have lived with chronic pain for 12 years. I believed it started with a herniated disc because that's what the MRI said. As a practicing licensed athletic trainer and a student in PT school, I was certain I would be able to use all my tools and knowledge to fix it. After all, I was smart and young and my body should be resilient.

Spoiler: I couldn't fix it.

Over the years, I saw multiple providers, got injections, worked with peers and colleagues through my years of PT school and beyond, implemented all the tools, yet I didn't respond to any of it - the pain kept getting worse. It intensified, it changed and morphed and took up more space in my body. Low back pain became sciatica became shoulder blade pain became nerve pain that spanned the entire right side of my body from my head to my fingers and toes. The constant pain was frustrating, all-consuming, and infuriating.

Eventually, 4 years ago, I had a brainspotting experience that made me rethink my pain. For the first time in years, my pain went from constant to completely gone for 3 weeks... just from looking at a stupid spot in space and processing "trauma."

By this time, I already knew pain science. I already understood that multiple factors contribute to pain and a whole-person, multifactorial approach is needed. I had already started to learn about "trauma being held in the body." But I'm not sure I really believed or understood the trauma thing until my experience changed basically overnight. Until something completely non-physical changed my entire physical experience.

And then I started to see it every day while treating my clients. Just like when you think about a red car and start to see them everywhere. I started to truly see and feel the threads running underneath my clients' explanations and stories. The themes that had nothing to do with the structure of their body at all.

And so I had to question myself and my profession. Let's be clear: everything I learned wasn't a lie (although I thought I was duped for a good chunk of time there). What I finally understood is that for someone living in chronic pain like I was, everything I learned in AT and PT school wasn't enough.

I learned that for someone in chronic pain, the problem isn't your body. It's the pattern your body is stuck in.

What I mean is, it wasn't just a herniated disc and nerve impingement that made me suffer for over a decade (and still hangs around at times like a little ghost). It was also everything I kept pushing through, ignoring, or overriding. Each time I pressed the override button, my body spoke louder. And each time it spoke louder, I came at it with another tool, practitioner, or treatment. Ultimately, that cycle became part of the trauma, and then not being heard, understood, or able to be fixed added right to it. But all along, my body really just wanted me to take a breath and listen to what I kept overriding.

When I started to work with clients on what was happening underneath their physical symptoms, the physical work we were doing started to land differently, too. Results stuck around longer, they needed fewer sessions, and the changes became something they could actually maintain.

So that's the work I'm doing at New Heights now. I'm helping people stuck in patterns driving chronic pain understand their bodies, rebuild capacity physically and mentally, and learn to trust their bodies again.

Now I'm rebuilding my own capacities, too. After 12 years, the physical work is finally sticking for me. My physical treatments and tools are finally working for my chronic pain because I actually have the foundation and capacity to feel my pain without immediately reacting to get rid of it. Because of that, I can hear more clearly what my body needs when my pain flares. I still have some pain, but my pain doesn't run my life anymore.

While sharing all of this publicly is quite scary for me both professionally and personally, I'm proud that I can say I actually trust my body and trust myself to respond to it now. I've never been more excited to help others who have suffered like I have learn to trust theirs, too.

For years I believed pain was primarily a physical problem to solve. "If something hurts in the body, then something must be wrong in the body."

Then my body stopped responding to everything I had been trained to trust. And that forced me to confront something deeper.

What I've learned through treating hundreds of people—and living through chronic pain myself—is that many people aren't stuck because their body is broken.

They're stuck because they're caught in a pattern they can't see.

My work has evolved significantly over the course of my career, and in the past year, this is the deeper work I've been increasingly pulled towards helping people understand.

So, you'll start seeing more of that reflected here.

Welcome in 🌱

#ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄᴘᴀɪɴ