EquiVita - Week 1

Client Stories
As EquiVita reached a major milestone in celebrating their 10th anniversary, they gathered some important moments from its ten year history that highlights what makes the clients so special. So sit back and enjoy reading through some of these cool stories.

At this point in the 10 year reflection it occurs to me that EquiVita came to be, in part because of my story as a person in business.

10 Weeks to 10 Years: Week 6

Week 7

Week 5

Since the earliest days of my work life I have always been an entrepreneur. While I was offered positions, from several facilities, to manage staff and run the facility I did not accept because I had no desire to be a manager. In fact I left facilities and turned down positions with well-respected organizations because management was the only growth option. I didn't want to manage others. I wanted to become better at my craft and work with others who were also the best in their field.

I suppose what that means is that I have never seen myself as a leader; I see myself just as someone making the way that seems right to me. In fact, at one point I had a leadership assessment and the results showed exactly that: that I was a leader simply because there were people who saw the direction that I was headed and decided to go along with me.

This seemed like the right time to admit this because the first 3 years that the business was in our new 3000 sq ft facility was a time of great growth and, for me, a time of significant challenge. My idea had been to bring together professionals that would all work together as a team - all fairly self-directed.

Rather than detail the specifics of my trials and errors of learning how to get people to work together, I thought this might be the right opportunity to discuss stress.

Prior to starting out on my own, I had worked with people in various states of healing and one of those states was chronic pain. Chronic pain can be the continuation of the physical cause or it can be the pain cycle repeating itself even after the cause is gone (sometimes the pain recurs even when the cause has been surgically removed from the body). Working with these clients who suffered chronic pain, I learned that the effective process is about disrupting the pattern. If a client with chronic pain was able to find a state of quiet and relaxation, the pain could be reduced. This, of course, is far easier said than done. We live in a society that is all about stimulation, not to mention the amount of consistent distractions the brain will create whenever you try to quiet it.

Without delving further into the research and specifics of stress responses, here is a secret that I have often used when it comes to dealing with stressors: just don't give a shit. Think about the things that are taking up so much of your energy and focus and imagine...what if you just didn't care?

This idea was particularly impactful for one of our clients, so much so that she actually had some bracelets created. So, if you would like a J.D.G.A.S. bracelet which might prove beneficial especially during this time of year, just stop in and tell us that you don't give a shit. Free bracelet for you!

And you should wear that bracelet proudly! Let the concept provide the role I had to take as the business grew and challenged me in new ways, making me thankful that I had as much experience and understanding as I did. After all, once you let go and change your perspective you find opportunities you never knew were there.

Meet one of our clients: Joanne
When you're experiencing recurrent pain in a specific part of your body, exercise often is the last remedy most of us seek out. But since the spring of this year when her intermittent back pain led her to EquiVita, Joanne Corrotto has learned that in her case, exercise is exactly what the doctor should have ordered.

A nurse at Mt. Carmel and a licensed massage therapist at Kneads For You, Joanne, 55, underwent the 5Keys Fitness Assessment with Adam Milligan and shortly after began working with trainer Chris Yeoman two days a week. "I just needed a jump start," Joanne said. "I needed someone to get me going. I had been reluctant to do anything because I was having a lot of back pain and back pain led to less and less exercise. I had back pain on and off for about a year and the more my back hurt the less I did."

The assessment, Joanne reflected, honed in on her gait, her hip strength, her posture and other body mechanics that, to her, didn't look like conspicuous contributors to her pain. "I really wasn't aware of how bad it was until Adam put it all together," she said. "It was like, 'Wow, how did I get this way?' It's fascinating how your body adjusts over the years so that you can just keep walking."

Joanne, who occasionally used to work with personal trainers at gyms with varying results, said she thrives at EquiVita because "it's not like your normal every-day-go-to-the gym/trainer workout." "The EquiVita Transitional Fitness Trainers," she said, "know how the body works and how it moves and what it's supposed to do in its correct alignment."

"If I was to go to a gym and they were to say, 'Here, walk on this treadmill' - that is not going to work for me because I can't walk because my back hurts. At EquiVita they really know what they're doing. I'm just really impressed. I'm telling everybody to go here because it's a different kind of training. It's subtle (movements) but it's intense. It's not going to a gym and someone saying, 'Ok, hey do 20 reps on that thing over there.' Chris said that if I would do 20 reps on a regular machine I could injure my back more because this muscle is underdeveloped and this one is overdeveloped."

She's enthusiastic now but will she keep going?

"Oh, absolutely," said the nurse of more than three decades. "As you age, if you don't take care of your body things get worse. Then you get into this chronic condition and you go to a doctor and they give you a pill and it's like 'I'm not doing that'. The approach here is very different, very hands-on. They're always stressing if you don't eat right, sleep or drink enough water you're not going to get good results. Chris will text me and say, 'How's your water intake today?' which blew my mind the first time. I can't say enough good things about Chris. He really cares and he really knows what he's doing. All of them do."