Mandy began practicing yoga roughly 25 years ago. At that time, she had graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering and found herself bouncing around the U.S., from state to state and job to job, with a general sense of discontent. Once she began practicing yoga, what kept her coming back to her mat weren’t the physical benefits of her practice. It was the way in which her mind seemed to turn off during yoga. The “what next, what if” worries, concerns and chatter seemed to fade away. It was as if the physical postures took enough concentration to quiet her mind chatter, and before she knew it, she was even moving without thinking. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the answers to her worries would come. It wasn’t long before Mandy would turn to her yoga mat before making any big life decision.
In 2003, Mandy graduated from her first Yoga Teacher Training program and in 2008, became a C-IAYT Yoga Therapist. Over the years, yoga became a larger part of her life, until she left the engineering world behind in 2009, and began teaching and seeing yoga therapy clients full-time.
In 2014, with the birth of Mandy’s second son, her practice took a big turn. Suddenly Mandy found herself with intense back pain. While she had scoliosis for as long as she can remember, she was able to live pain free until this point. Mandy sought the help of a wide variety of professionals, both mainstream medical and alternative health: chiropractors, her family doctor, a specialized pain management doctor, massage therapists, an acupuncturist, a Feldenkrais practitioner, and a Physical Therapist. Nothing relieved her pain.
Fueled by her desire to truly understand the nature of her pain, she began to research Yoga for Scoliosis and jumped into learning with both feet. Mandy has studied with Rachel Jesien, Loren Fishman, Alison West and Elise Browning Miller. Through yoga for scoliosis, Mandy became pain free again.
This pain experience made Mandy have a greater appreciation for her body and ability to move. She began studying other movement modalities, studying with Stuart McGill (Backfit Pro), becoming a NASM Certified Personal Trainer and a Corrective Exercise Specialist. She’s also taken a variety of college courses on Anatomy, Biology and Physiology to better understand the human body.
Mandy wraps her engineering mind and movement body together to understand the biomechanics of a body with scoliosis – it’s lateral curves, accompanying rotation and possible hyper-kyphosis and hyper-lordosis.