in movement
and beyond.
What if exercise was about deepening your mind-body connection rather than ignoring it?
What if you stopped living in the "glory days" of the past or the fantasy of a future body and started actually living in your body today?
What if you didn't dread starting a workout, you didn't fear stopping halfway, and you spent more time in the feelings of Good rather than the feelings of Not Good Enough?
My job as your trainer is to help you develop a relationship with exercise that is rooted in the intuition of your body. No before-and-afters, no measurements, no diets. Concentrating on the external is inherently limiting: it creates a hierarchy of body size that drives discrimination and a lack of safety for fat bodies, it puts contingencies on the extent to which we can feel good at the gym by pushing our focus to the future, and it is a recipe for living in an all-or-nothing space, which is a big reason we so often end up doing nothing.
If you fear, dread, or resent movement, you likely have a very valid reason — a reason your body remembers.
Fortunately, your body also remembers what it felt like before exercise became a chore or a punishment. Attuning to this wisdom can set the stage for a newfound freedom, one where you can feel safe, confident, and aligned in your choices around movement.
Somatic Experiencing is a body awareness and present moment processing modality that helps you find your anchor, both internally and externally.
While I have incorporated mindfulness into personal training for several years, I am now offering stand-alone sessions of SE. Just one session can often open up a new perspective to a busy mind that has gotten used to intellectualizing its worries and circulating through the same thought loops. Repeated sessions begin the process of breaking cycles of over-activation, avoidance, and stuckness, and re-train the attention to come back to Now.
A.L.
I got my master's degree in social work from the University of Southern California before shifting to fitness coaching. Initially a CrossFit coach, I have since become a Certified Personal Trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and acquired my certificate as a practitioner of Somatic Experiencing.
I have been a fitness enthusiast, from competitive running to weightlifting to pole dancing, since I was 14 years old,. A Texas native, I have lived in the Los Angeles area over ten years. I am hevily involved in advocacy and explore my own creativity through improv comedy.
Education:
Somatic Experiencing - completed 2026
National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer - since 2021 (renewed 2023 and 2025)
Senior Fitness Specialization - 2025
CPR/AED/First Aid Certified - updated 2025
Girls Gone Strong Pre- and Postnatal Coach 2023
Burgener Strength (Olympic Weightlifting) 2018
CrossFit Level 1 2017
Master of Social Work, University of Southern California 2013
Bachelor of Psychology, University of Virginia 2006
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