Hi! My name is Jamie and I’m an RYT200 Yoga Instructor, ACE-certified Personal Trainer, Behavior Change Specialist, Health Coach and Group Fitness Instructor with specializations in Weight Management, Fitness Nutrition, Orthopedic Exercise, and Senior Fitness. I am also a board certified massage therapist, the highest attainable credential in the massage therapy and bodywork profession, through the NCBTMB.
I was fortunate to grow up in a house with an active mother who was always looking out for my well-being, not just as a mother, but also as an example of what it means to take care of oneself and treat the body as the temple it truly is. We only have one body for our entire life, after all. My mother taught me the basics of yoga and fitness, and even dancing (probably because, as a child, I couldn’t take more than two steps without tripping and falling).
And then… It started with my first aerobics class. The music and choreographed “dance” moves. I was hooked and fitness has remained a large part of my life ever since. A few months later, I started dabbling a bit with weight-lifting… and liked how it made me feel. I became a group fitness instructor and accidentally moved on to body building. I say “accidentally” because body building wasn’t ever my goal. I just loved working out so much that repetition brought results. Always up for a challenge, I tried the realm of running; first with 5k fun runs (for a t-shirt), then 10k events (more t-shirts), then half marathons every weekend (yes… every weekend… just for fun), and finally a marathon just to see what it would be like (and to get the finisher’s medal, of course).
Because life is full of twists and turns, I decided to go to massage school, which continued to fuel my desire to know how the muscles function. I got to take cadaver classes, which to some might sound gross, but to me, were both amazing and an integral part of knowing how to help people, with both massage and fitness. Not only can I help people train their bodies to move, but I coach and teach people to move correctly. This includes using proper form for proper function, and being able to correct many physical imbalances for better everyday performance.
This passion for learning about the muscles and how they function, coupled with being inundated with diet fads and trends about which foods are good and which are “bad,” led to me delving deeper into nutrition and how it affects us. (I personally have never dieted or changed my diet to match a trend. I have always eaten pretty much everything (except for what I’m allergic to… and lima beans)…. in moderation.) And because I believe that diet fads and trends have contributed to the population becoming more obese than ever before, I also became a health coach, in the hopes of teaching others how to think outside the box as they strive for ways to improve their health and well-being.
But it didn’t stop there. Remember I mentioned that my mother started me on this path of self-care? What she had engrained in me as a child, without me even realizing it, was a certain mindset. We always hear about diet and exercise, but we almost never hear about how powerful the mind is when it comes to sticking with diet and exercise. We hear about the latest gadgets or pills or supplements or invasive procedures, but Diet is more than following the latest diet trends or purchasing the latest pills or supplements. It’s more than blindly following what others say will work for everyone. And Fitness also goes beyond the flex in the gym. The body will go where the mind takes it. Take care of your temple and it will return the gesture. Knowing this, I discovered that my beliefs aligned with yoga in practice and philosophy. So I became a yoga instructor to help others remember that you are more than just diet and exercise.
To me, fitness is about being an individual, tuning into your body, feeding your body and mind with things that are good for you, and enjoying what you do and celebrating who you are in ways that work for your health and well-being.