Don't give up on future you.
I get it, you’ve tried everything and feel kind of lost in space with how to manage poorly understood diseases like Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (formerly known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy) or the culmination of multiple other chronic diagnosis. You’re doing your best to use your affected body parts as much as possible in the hopes of decreasing pain, but continue to feel stuck and hopeless with little guidance and support.
I know, because I’ve been there.
But what if I told you it doesn’t have to be like that? That there are ways to take your power back to create more predictability and less pain?
And I can help.
I know finances are often difficult. Having to spend more on something that isn’t our fault is never fair. My goal is to help patients be more self-sufficient and taken advantage of less. Besides all my Instagram content, you can also join the free RWC community newsletter below, which I send out every week-ish with chronic pain tips, personal perspective and announcements around upcoming programs and partnerships. For more education, please also listen to It’s Not in Your Head podcast - available on all podcast players and YouTube.
PROGRAMS FOR PATIENTS
Need help with an individualized exercise plan and support designed just for your challenges, problem areas and goals?
Learn unique brain based sensory strategies to improve underlying weakness and compensations.
Learn the MARSMethod and how to actually treat the different buckets of central sensitization with other warriors just like you.
Fill out an assessment and get answers to your pain related questions whether movement or lifestyle related in a one-off session.
Hi, I’m Justine.
I work with complex pain patients who want to get off the medical interventions hamster wheel and are looking for better solutions to chronic pain and illness.
Living with a rare, chronic, progressive, difficult to treat, poorly understood diseases is unfortunately beyond what the medical system is designed to support. It often lacks the communication and individualized attention that helps patients understand what they can control and what affects the way we experience pain outside of medications and more invasive treatments. Doctors often don’t have the time or ability to cover and address the vast majority of variables in patients lives that are dramatically impacting their quality of life. Their job is to manage treatments and interventions, your job is to manage everything else about your life. My job is to help you identify what those things are and teach you how to do that more effectively.
I hope by being a leader and connector in the chronic pain space, I can help other complex pain patients and those of us struggling to get quality care with chronic illnesses create a sense of purpose and understanding despite the shared suffering, and find the joy and skills to live larger lives.
How did I get here?
I was born and raised in sunny San Diego, CA, and always loved being active, competing at high school varsity & AAU level basketball for four years before college. 5 months after getting my B.A. in Marketing at Washington State University, I was in a car accident suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Over the next 9 years, I went through a very slow and difficult recovery often in a cognitive haze, struggling through tolerating various severe treatments like electro convulsive therapy and tolerated over a hundred medication changes to combat the persistent insomnia, depression, chronic pain, and gastrointestinal issues. With the fortitude I developed as an athlete, I continued to persevere during this lengthy healing process and started regaining my independence cognitively and physically, developing the self care I’d lacked when so sick. As I got healthier, by June of 2019 I began running regularly. Unfortunately what began as a mild pain in my lower left leg turned into excruciating agony radiating from my shin. My left leg was covered in bruises and scalding hot, feeling as if my bones were freshly
shattered with an immense pulsating pressure. My skin from the knee down through my toes felt like there were bugs crawling on it and just the smallest bit of cycling at the beginning made it feel like my tibia was literally splitting and muscles were tearing. The spasms and contractures were relentless and constant limb guarding was the only way to survive. After months of not being able to put my foot on the ground, a bone scan in February 2020 finally confirmed the diagnosis of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). I was started on typical medications for neuropathic pain and received repeated lumbar sympathetic blocks with minimal improvement, finally making the decision to have a DRG Spinal cord stimulator (SCS) implanted in 2021. Although the SCS reduced symptoms, living with it while being as active as possible came with its own set of challenges, leaving me with the question, “How do chronic CRPS patients actually live with this disease once there are no more treatments to try?” That’s what I’ve learned to do, and have turned that experience into helping others do the same.
Let’s work together!
1:1 Programs
In Private Neuro Movement Sessions we focus on a brain-based approach with sensory neuro strategies so you can address underlying weakness, inhibition, brain mapping issues, sensory challenges etc.
With Individual Design Exercise Programming you get individualized stability, strength and aerobic programming, incl. monthly consults.
In the MARSMethod Mentorship we create a truly individualized program based on your unique medical and training history, daily routines, habits, stressors, resources and goals so you can develop more predictability over your symptoms, and sustainably decrease pain.
Base Camp Group Program
Struggle with sensory sensitization, sleep disturbance, extreme fatigue, brain fog, dysautonomia, anxiety/stress or other weird motor symptoms? You are dealing with the central sensitization piece of complex pain. This is a 4 month curriculum that improves all the foundational factors that decrease pain and particular amplify it, leading to these additional buckets of symptoms. If you want to learn the skills I teach patients in my 1:1 Mentorship at a fraction of the cost, this is the program for you.
Patient Evaluation
This is a single, 90 minute patient evaluation where Justine will evaluate your pain and movement patterns and create a step by step plan for success. You’ll fill out an assessment in advance and then use the time to improve whatever you want to get primarily addressed - whether a movement, lifestyle, or pain management related question, and leave with an organized approach to addressing your primary concerns.
Clinician Consult
This is a 60 min consult for other professionals - PTs/physios, movement or fitness pros, physicians or other practitioners, to get advice on their clients. You’ll fill out some questions in advance and then join me for an in-depth breakdown of their case and how to move forward, whether more movement or lifestyle medicine related. You’ll leave with an organized list of tasks to implement with them, a deeper understanding of what’s going on, and be able to better assess future clients with similar issues.
On-Demand Masterclasses
Masterclasses for you to learn about the importance of diaphragmatic breathing, how to progress movement with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and better understand and treat central sensitization - topics critical for complex pain patients to understand so you can better manage your nervous system and increase activity without increasing pain and flares. There is a way to make pain and symptoms more predictable and less intense over time, but without these concepts, it’s very hard.
Or, you can also get free content on Instagram and join the no-cost RWC community newsletter, which I send out every week-ish for more chronic pain tips, personal perspective and announcements around upcoming programs and partnerships!