Leighann has over 15 years of experience and 7 years of education and training in her field as a Somatic Educator and Bodyworker. She teaches and mentors other bodyworkers at massage therapy colleges and structural integration colleges. Leighann is also a public speaker and workshop presenter. Additionally, Leighann is the founder of Artemis Movement, an organization that offers body-based self-awareness and self-empowerment workshops for adolescent girls and their parents. Artemis Movement workshops work with the self-image, increasing confidence and instilling a trustworthy inner authority from which students are able to make choices in their lives that are congruent with their highest good.
Leighann holds certifications in The Feldenkrais® Method, Rolfing® Structural Integration, the Pilates Method and is a licensed massage therapist. Her comprehensive background is uncommonly found in her field, and she is one of the extremely few practitioners in the U.S. who is both a Rolfer® and Feldenkrais Practitioner®, offering both structural integration and functional integration. She addresses structural limitations in the body, the movement patterns that coexist with them and the awareness necessary for lasting change. Unlike therapies which tend to address the body in parts and pieces, Leighann works in a comprehensive paradigm to organize and integrate the whole self toward optimal function and ease of well being.
Leighann has worked with athletes, dancers, vocalists, and musicians, as well as people who have autoimmune, arthritic or degenerative conditions, chronic pain and loss of function or sensation. Leighann works with clients who have experienced trauma by helping them restore more optimal nervous system and autonomic functioning. Working with trauma at the body level, or through a bottom up approach, often can be a gentler approach and produce exceptional results. Leighann is a practitioner for other healing professionals, working in great depth with other bodyworkers, movement practitioners and psychotherapists. She not only shines light on knowing the self more wholly, but broadens practitioners’ capacities in their own practices, as well. When working with clients, Leighann uses a compassionate, educational model, alongside trauma informed care, while creating an environment that empowers her clients and honors their inner authority. She crafts sessions that guide her clients toward optimal function and greater ease in their experience of life. Using techniques that increase the odds of lasting neuroplastic change, Leighann creates experiences that take full advantage of our innate capacity to kinesthetically learn and apply what has been learned. Whether her client wants to address alleviating pain and discomfort, breaking through a plateau, gaining strength and flexibility, learning to perform a specific movement better, increasing self-awareness, or just feeling greater ease in general, Leighann can help.
Educational Background
Leighann studied The Feldenkrais® Method with Movement Educators in Santa Fe, NM under the tutelage of Diana Razumny, who holds a specialty in working with children. She studied Rolfing® at Ida Rolf’s school, The Rolf Institute® for Structural Integration in Boulder, CO with a variety of perspectives from leading instructors in the field. Leighann studied The Pilates Method under the guidance of Amy Taylor, Rachel Taylor Segel (second generation teachers trained by Romana Kryzanowska) and Debora Kolwey (second generation teacher trained by Eve Gentry) at The Pilates Center of Boulder, CO, a world renowned school dubbed “The Harvard of Pilates Schools” by the Pilates Method Alliance. Leighann will tell you, her training has no end, as she is always thirsty for knowledge. She keeps her education relevant and current with leading pioneers in somatic education.