I asked Sarah to be our spotlight this month. Sarah has been a true gift to our business. She is highly skilled with multiple talents. She designed our website, filmed and edited all our current videos and keeps us current with the latest trends in social media.  She is a wonderful writer as well.
In addition, she helps us out in running our office with all its various details. To top it off, she loves Aston Kinetics, for her body evolution and the theory applied to daily life.
Lucky us!

I taught in the inner city of Toledo for three years. My first classroom was a janitor's closet that I shared with another special education teacher. My grad school professors cautioned us about burning out in five years. It took me three. I felt the weight of the unbelievable needs of my students and recognized the toll it was taking on my body, mind and spirit. We vacationed in Tahoe in the spring of my second year and knew immediately that we needed to move to the mountains. I finished my third year and drove across the country the day after. 

When I applied for the office manager job at Aston Kinetics, I had just accepted a part-time position at a local middle school. I was looking to fill in my afternoons with something other than education. I needed a break. It was a wonderful balance: teaching in the morning and working with Judith and Brian in the afternoons. The small ergonomic tweaks to my office environment, the wedges fitted for my Jeep seats, the tiny tidbits of information about body mechanics blew my mind. My journey to a better self started. 

In January of 2014, I had a skiing accident that left my hip in bad shape. I was limping badly around the office and Judith decided it was time for my first session. I was overwhelmed with the difference: how my body felt, how it moved, how I felt about my body. As I continued to become more active, I became more aware of my body in ways I was never able to. It felt like a great awakening.  I was always telling myself that I wasn't able to run anymore because of knee pain. This wasn't the case anymore. I continued to push past my injury history, and farther in hiking, backpacking, skiing and trail running. It was exciting to be able to consult with Judith and Brian on how to optimize my movement even more with my new found love of mountain sports. 

My body evolution spanned beyond how I physically moved around my new mountain town. It permeated my life in such positive ways that I have been able to move into better health spiritually, mentally and physically. I started paying attention to what my body was telling me in yoga classes: this doesn't feel good, I'm going to change it this way. I could feel a difference in my hips when running, and was able to make micro-changes to prevent fatigue and soreness. I began eating mindfully and found a natural weight that helped me excel at all the activities I love. This naturally improved my sleep, my productivity, and fueled my creativity in ways I'm still discovering. I incorporated meditation into a daily practice and found an inner calm that I didn't have before.

Body empowerment is an incredible tool. There are so many systems that can create change in a body, but Aston Kinetics really gives people the ability to change it for themselves. As an educator, I appreciate the knowledge that this system gives. It is so incredibly valuable. When applied to all aspects of life, it's more than just a physical change. 

I have no doubt that I could truly balance a full time teaching career and my health this time around. The burned out teacher seems so far away. Aston Kinetics has given me so many self-care tools that I feel like anything is possible. For now, I'm really enjoying the work I do here, going back to my writing roots. I love seeing the change in so many clients, interacting with students that are hungry for more information and learning from Judith and Brian myself. It's profound how much Aston Kinetics can give you the power to really make decisions for your body instead of relying on someone else to tell you what to do, and how that power has the ability to transform your life.

To say that finding Aston Kinetics was life-changing is an understatement. I am grateful for the second chance I received when I landed here two and a half years ago, and I am beyond excited to see what's next.