1. What do you love about your profession? My favourite thing about my profession is the opportunity to help people move and feel better.
2. Why did you become an Osteopathic Practitioner? I found osteopathy as an athlete struggling with back pain that wasn’t responding to any other interventions. Getting osteopathic treatment not only alleviated my back pain for good, but also changed my understanding of how ALL systems in the body work together. I knew then that osteopathy was something I needed to explore.
3. What specific tools/training do you use in your practice that people might want to know more about? I often get asked what the difference is between technique-driven osteopathy vs principles-based osteopathy. To me, It’s like the difference between a cook and a chef. Cooks are taught techniques – they often require a recipe and can follow it with precision, but may not fully understand why each ingredient is included. Chefs understand the principles of cooking – they know how salt, fat, acid and heat combine to create incredible meals, which allows them to develop and adapt their own recipes.
With a principles-based education, we learned the fundamentals of anatomy and physiology so that we are able to cater treatment to EVERYbody. This type of education is intensive, requiring 4 years and thousands of hours of hands-on practice.
4. If you weren’t an Osteopathic Practitioner, what would you be? Prior to becoming an osteopathic manual practitioner, I was a professional contemporary dancer – I even got the opportunity to perform in Shanghai, China! If I weren’t an Osteopathic Manual Practitioner, I would love to be involved in the arts again in some capacity.
5. Tell us one thing you are passionate about outside of your work 🙂 Outside of work, I’m an avid reader. I love escaping to a new world with a fantasy novel, or following my curiosity with a new non-fiction book. My goal this year is to read 52 books – 1/week.
Bonus question: Favourite food? My favourite food lately is pasta. This year I’ve started exploring homemade pasta and it’s become a weekly meal in my household – so yummy!