JH Origin Story
Perhaps like a lot of PTs, I grew up in an athletic family, alternating between sports in accordance with the season of the year (for me, this was a mix of volleyball, basketball, soccer, and swimming, with side ventures of ballet, tap, and jazz as well as ice skating). I always valued fitness and play, and could generally be found outside running around in the dirt. But unlike a lot of PTs, and rather luckily, I never got injured.
My first exposure to a physical therapist was therefore not in the clinic during a rehab process, but in my high school’s Sports Medicine elective. A series of professionals presented to our class, exposing us to careers related to the sports medicine field. In walked Derrick. A private physical therapy practice owner of Chinese descent, Derrick outlined his philosophy of care, honoring both his Eastern familial and cultural traditions as well as his Western medical training, and the three guiding principles of his practice: 1) independence, 2) solidarity, and 3) the mind-body concept. This deeply spoke to me, and I consider that moment my call into the profession.
I moved from Southern California to attend The University of Montana, majoring in Health and Human Performance with an emphasis in Exercise Science. When not studying, I raced on UM’s triathlon team, and took a support staff job at a PT/OT clinic specializing in serving folks with chronic disease and disability. I then moved to Seattle, where I worked in a hospital for two years before moving to Denver, CO to enter the University of Colorado’s Physical Therapy program at the Anschutz campus. I completed my Doctor of Physical Therapy in 2013, and have been a clinician in the greater Denver metro since.
My career has been an assembly of different work that has caught my eye and heart, but seems to have always connected back to those 3 guiding principles of Derrick’s practice, which I have in turn adopted into my own practice. For the first decade, I focused on keeping folks independent - in the hospital helping our acutely ill get out of bed, dressed, and able to re-enter their home; in rehab centers and day health clinics ensuring our elderly remained able to engage life in the ways that mattered most to them. The COVID-19 pandemic hit and upended a lot of this work, leading to my own complex and layered trauma. Ultimately I stepped away from being a clinician, unsure if I would return, and began my own healing journey through regular EMDR therapy, one result of which is my memoir, Coronatide.
But the call to serve never left me, and once my body was able, I heard my heart telling me to get back among the people. Having seen so many injustices exacerbated in the pandemic, I returned to service with an additional flame of advocacy ignited inside me. In solidarity, I worked on teams supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, creating and engaging in spaces for these folks to participate fully in life through meaningful work, recreation, artistic expression, and relationships. I then moved into more ‘classic’ physical therapy work of the outpatient setting, supporting folks in all walks of life to move beyond their injuries from growing, weekend warrior-ing, and aging.
It was in this work with the general population that I began to understand how deeply our thoughts and emotions are affecting our bodies. Trying to work on my own embodiment since the pandemic, I’d spent the last 4 years reading books and listening to podcasts and in my own mental health clinician-guided somatic practice. It wasn’t until I experienced individual after individual walk into my treatment room and relay their story that I began to appreciate what embodiment really meant: ‘My pain is worst when I’m stressed’; ‘No, nothing happened that caused this - it just started. But that was around the time when my husband was diagnosed with cancer’; ‘My strength is getting better, but my motion is just stuck. Maybe it’s the way I sleep - I don’t sleep well anyhow as I have flashbacks of the accident’. These folks inherently knew what I was still trying to learn and put into practice - the mind and body can never be separated, and the only way to heal is to heal the whole. These individuals were my teachers: they came to me for answers, but it was they who identified the true problem. It then became our work to to piece the solution together.
I created Jigsaw Humanity (JH) to continue in that communal work, partnering with my fellow humanity to piece together what it means to heal. While JH provides a variety of both therapeutic and movement services, the touchstone for JH work is “How is this supporting the individual in moving toward their fullest expression of their unique humanity?” If what we are doing is providing strength to your body but not your engagement in the life you want to live, we are not doing enough. My commitment to all is that, through JH, I will continually build expansive somatic interventions into my practice, helping individuals find healing from the body in.
