ABOUT ESTHER
How strange, to have an aging body but not an aging spirit.
You have places to go, things to make, people to love, and a life to keep participating in. Your body is the fusion of your plans.
WHY PEOPLE COME TO ME
You can do all the “right” things on paper and still not understand the nuance of what your body needs.
You walk everyday, lift weights, show up for yoga… you don’t need someone to tell you to “just be more active.”
What keeps getting in the way is the wrist that twinges after an afternoon of crocheting. Or the hip that barely tolerates 30 minutes in the grocery store, then wakes you up at night whenever you roll onto your left side. Or the plateau you hit after a year of lifting weights.
The wrist that twinges after an afternoon of crocheting.
The hip that barely tolerates 30 minutes in the grocery store, then wakes you up at night whenever you roll onto your left side.
The plateau you hit after a year of lifting weights.
MY PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE
My passion is getting you out of pain and integrating movement as a way of life.
That can look like lowering yourself to pick something up without a second thought. Getting you back to the two mile walk that used to be a regular part of your day. Staying mobile enough to work in the yard, travel, make art, or show up joyfully for the people who count on you.
“
I could not raise my arm past a certain point. The physical therapist dismissed me and told me to go back to my doctor. It’s 99% better since Esther worked on it.
- JANE C.
WHO ARE YOU?
Injury has made me different, but it has not made me less.
Early on in life, I was a competitive runner and equestrian. Movement was about performance, achievement, and pushing my limits (and I loved it).
Then, at sixteen, I tore my hamstring. For the first time, I found myself on the treatment table instead of the starting line. Incidentally, it was also the year I discovered modern dance, and many of my dance projects channeled my frustration about my injury into expressive movement.
This, plus working with a physical trainer, restored my ability to move, and also introduced me to something I had never considered: healing could be just as fulfilling as performance.
WHY THIS WORKS
I became captivated by the process of mind, body, and soul fusion that has to occur in order for healing to occur.
So I pursued a degree in kinesiology and Sports Science. I also studied Dance and Social Justice, Nutrition and Art History.
For the past fifteen years, I’ve studied movement via yoga, dance and immersive theater in order to show up as a healer who is not only committed to the science of how the body works but the mystery that holds us in balance. All so that I can help people recover from pain, restore function, and reconnect with themselves.
Yoga Alliance Certified 200hr Teacher, 2008
BA Kinesiology, University of San Francisco, 2012
Certified Massage Therapy Practitioner, McKinnon Massage School, Oakland, 2012
YOUR VALUES
What if injury is simply a guest in our house? What if aging was alchemy instead of decline?
Most of society believes that our failures and our collapses must be “fixed,” and that if we are broken, then we are “less” than where we started. I disagree.
Rather, I believe that an injury has a message: an invitation to adjust the way we move; a lesson on pushing ourselves too far; or a collapse of a pattern that no longer serves us.
Injury is an end, but it is not a death. It simply gives us an opportunity to get curious and creative about what to do next.
“Well, you can either see menopause as a possible ending or you can see it as a possible beginning. Arguably, it should be a bit of both. The ending of one phase of life, but also the beginning of a whole new journey — a challenging but ultimately fertile journey across the threshold of elderhood.”
— Sharon Blackie, Hagitude
ESTHER, THE PERFORMER
So, where does performance come in?
In my performance practice, I tend to center my personal healing, in a process known as Ritual Theater. Storytelling and ritual are powerful mechanisms for healing that have been used in every culture throughout history.
Sometimes an injury can take on an identity or personality that gets stuck in our mind as much as it does in our body. With ritual theater, I am able to metabolize the grief of an identity, or a part of myself that could no longer continue how it was.
Injury has made me different, but it has not made me less.
Without injury I would not have discovered art. Without a break from my external validation I would not have discovered the internal curiosity.
Like Kintsugi pottery, the cracks in my body are how the light gets in.
“
After making two ER visits, two appointments to the pain management clinic, and various pain medications, it was the care and attention I received from Esther that got me back on the right track. I am no longer in pain. No medications needed. Meeting Esther was the best thing to happen to me.
- SYVLIA