Ashley is a clinical social worker living in Northern Virginia (outside DC) with her spouse, Mi, and huge-ass dog, Maple Bacon. She both facilitates group work at a large public high school, and sees therapy patients as part of her private practice.
Moving her body has been a huge help to Ashley's overall wellness and ability to continuing doing her job. “In social work, I always say that one of our occupational hazards is sitting all day and the busier you are, the more sedentary you get. When I first started working in schools in particular, I was sitting so much during the day that I developed really unpleasant lower back pain. And I am not a person who likes to exercise at all. I really like to long distance hike, but that is not a convenient every day activity. So integrating functional movement and actually feeling my body be stronger and more supportive has felt amazing for me both inside and outside my work.”
As I was talking to Ashley to write this, she was super pregnant…6 days past her due date! She and Mi are expecting their first baby…. literally any day now. “That’s been, like, a body journey.”
Mi has been training with me a long time. They were my first client EVER. (SQUEEEEEEE!!! I love Mi so much!) But when Ashley and Mi started their fertility work, Ashley started training too. Ashley and Mi do one session per week together and another session each week separately. It was important for Ashley to be more in her body, feel stronger, and feel generally more healthy when she started undergoing the fertility process.
“I did NOT want to stop training during pregnancy and fertility stuff, Sam has adjusted for what my body’s needed, which has been really healing and helpful.” Some days we did a regular resistance workout, some days we FaceTimed and walked outside, adding some squats or cardio every few minutes, other days we just stretched and did more restorative movement.
Ashley and Mi are two of favorite people and neither of them adore exercise ("I don't hate working out anymore." -Mi's review of ieFitness on Google), but they love working out together…most of the time.
“At first it was hard to get into because our preferred date night would be nachos at the local pub. But we can do both! It’s been a really nice activity for us to practice encouragement and have humor and its really nice for me to spend time with my partner in a different way. Now we take walks together, which we never used to do and I really genuinely look forward to seeing them in spandex.”
To health and parenthood, friends! You got this!