This was never my intended career until it became the best solution to life’s problems at the time. Nor was it my choice to leave New York City. I chose Tucson for many practical reasons. I’m a fan of practicality. In retrospect, there have been many transitions that I didn’t intend, all of which brought me to this unexpected career and really, a vocation, and finally a passion. I’ve been working with the human body since 2004. It’s a complex system.
I care deeply about language. Words and phrases carry a universe of meaning for me, and I want to share how this perspective shapes the work I do now with body training, or body renovation as I like to think about it. The training I perform, teach, and share is highly personal, extremely specific, and grounded in meticulous research, study, and observation. I thrive on complex systems, they are curious puzzles—language being one of them. It has been a source of strength in my life. One can ground 
themselves by inhabiting orderly systems when life seems like a door unhinged. Precision helps to defend against chaos.
Throughout university, I deconstructed texts for literary analysis which is process of traveling through time and complexity of the human condition via a crafted story. Another complex system is the organization of data, which led me to design databases for fun in the 80’s as a substitute for playing video games which I reluctantly admitted to myself were a big waste of my time.
In the ’70s, I analyzed data while studying to become a geochemical engineer. I studied inorganic structure, changes in same, the chemical and the other forces dramatic enough to form the Himalayas and the Grand Canyon. I worked in the Mineral-Separation age-dating lab at the University of Arizona for a year. My fascination with structure, time, dynamic change and consequence of same extended to a geological level from the previous studies, the ethereal world of language and story, in essence, Humanity and its environment.
I come from a family rooted in craftsmanship. My parents were trained in NYC trade schools in the 40’s: my father, a master carpenter and mechanic; and my mother, a master seamstress. Our life included making things, fixing things, taking things apart. It also included a great number of animals. My father bred show pigeons, dogs, and tropical fish. We had dogs, cats, birds of various sorts, lizards and more. Once my father brought a Canadian Goose home that he’d wounded while hunting. He was waiting to see if its wing would heal enough to fly. It lived in our powder room off the kitchen for 3 days until he determined it would never be able to fly. Then one morning he took the goose to the basement. That was the end of the goose – it was the first and only time I ever saw my father weep. Any family is certainly a story, a complex historical narrative of their lives. For everyone. And of course, our bodies come along for the ride and enable us in the story of our own lives.
A BIG PART OF HOW I GOT HERE:
Well, if you do a lot of the things I’ve done, you don’t really exercise much, although work is movement of a sort. I read a lot. I sat a lot. I was athletic but inactive. I was a middle-class/working-class kid in public schools who lived in Suburban America of the 60’s. television, minimal adult supervision, pretty good schools – few aspirations for career that I can recall. The only consistent goal was to read and to write. However, from the age of 12 and for 30 years, I lived with chronic pain, which is now recognized as Fascial Dysfunction and repetitive strain injury. At the time, it was diagnosed as simply having an “awry neck,” meaning crooked neck. There was no investigation into the source or cause. I endured countless days relying on ice and heat packs, sometimes for up to five days straight. There were frequent episodes for the next 30 years until my early 40’s when I discovered what I teach now.
Anytime I tried a new movement strategy there was the inevitable lapse into pain. Through this history, I learned to listen to my body—I had little choice. I didn’t understand what was causing these problems. I took a lot of ibuprofen. Then I discovered Fascia even before I knew what it was called. A masseuse I saw often leaned over one day and said, ‘Arlene, you can do this yourself.’ I began what I thought of as rubbing it out. Then it all changed at 48 when I began studying anatomy.
I began exploring modern anatomy and its challenges through a Pilates education. My personal experiences with pain, along with innumerable unsuccessful visits to doctors, chiropractors, and other medical professionals, ultimately led me to develop what I now teach: Post-Rehab Pilates & Body Flossing®, my methodology for Self-Myofascial Release. I came to fascia first through my own long journey searching for a way to get out of own pain. I was a Pilates client for 12 years (and what’s called a special population myself) in NYC before I proceeded to train to become a teacher at The Kane School which is now part of Kinected Pilates in NY. There I received my initial education into anatomy, movement and pathologies. It was my introduction to the inner universe, the complexity of the ‘vehicle’ I inhabit and how it relates to other peoples’ physical journey, the means to integrate Mind with Body toward a harmonious life.
My intention was transformed again. I arrived in the desert to establish a home for myself and my children in 2006. I had to reconstruct a life after the Chaos of 9/11 and a divorce. I opened my first practice on my property and took a year to work with old friends and acquaintances. I didn’t charge anyone for that year. I no longer had the community of my NYC Kane School fellow graduates. Seemingly no one here had begun to focus on the fascia. Even if I had had a fascia community here, I wouldn’t have been able to orchestrate study with them because I was building a life here with my children and creating a home. I studied in place.
Left to my own devices, I worked with these ‘volunteers’ sometimes for 2 or 3 hours. They didn’t mind. I didn’t want the clock to determine what I was doing. I didn’t want to stop until I figured out what was going on. I needed to learn deeply. I needed the time to ‘finish my thought.’ I was fortunate that I had that luxury then.
Generally what I’ve learned is that examining complex systems requires time and patience. This is often prohibited in our culture due to the urgency to ‘finish on time’ or get to the next client. There is this overriding message that compels us to hurry, find the quick or easy solution. This is counterproductive when it comes to complex systems, especially the system called the human body.
There are ways to develop speed and efficiency in working with the human body. However, we must go through the steps and take the time to consider, observe, and contemplate. We are not machines. Without these freedoms our work is incomplete, it is abridged,and shortened. We miss the finer elements when we don’t take our time and allow the puzzle in front of us to reveal itself.
We are all sensate beings within a biological structure. This is complex, so our efforts to understand it need time to unravel the complexity of our miraculous human selves. Each person, each body has a story. The story informs what we see, feel and discover about each other. The language of this story unfolds within us. It is the language of biology as expressed through the mysteries of movement and structure that is not linear—it is organic, electric, and a live, moving symphony. Each of us creates a unique symphony of our own. The notes are different. Sometimes they are discordant. Sometimes, if we focus deeply, we can create harmony amongst the many moving elements that create all of us. Each of us.