The Prism Perspective: Meet Malia 🎶

Hello Friends,

Meet Malia - Fajardo Method® client with a story that too many might relate to:

I was fortunate enough to enter my adulthood with a lot of vitality and enthusiasm for life. I wanted to soak up as much of the world as I could. This led me to many places, working as a music teacher, ASL/English interpreter, and yoga teacher amongst various odd jobs.

I eventually settled in Alaska in my early 30s after falling in love with its beauty and continued to immerse in studies and practices as a movement educator. However, life had other plans, and what ensued was a great derailment of any future I'd wanted or worked towards. 

My challenges began about 2 decades ago with a traumatic brain injury from a car accident, followed by a parasite that wreaked havoc on my body. In the following years, I lost capacity to recover from routine dental work, a minor fall, travel, stressful events, and eventually I lost my ability to work.

My life condensed immensely as I became increasingly intolerant of everything; smells, sounds, lights, movement. Standing up was hard, and doing anything with my upper body felt impossible, as if the space around me was not air but heavy sand I had to move through it. At times, I was bed bound, at times housebound, and other times I'd work on walking 30 steps out my door and back. Years of seeing regular doctors made things worse, and I was extremely isolated and alone in my journey to make any sense of what was happening.

About 7 years in, I learned about POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) and ME/CFS (Myalgia encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) and why I couldn't function. This led to spending tens of thousands of dollars with specialists and weeks at a time at clinics around the country. I'd move to areas where I felt I could get help. If there was a specialist in this area of invisible illness, I would find them. I lived in the basement of my parents, my siblings, and other people when I could not function on my own. I left no stone unturned, from highly clinical allopathic medicine to alternatives that were pretty out there.

It was about 15 years into this journey when I'd contracted severe long covid and had been evacuated from a home I'd rented that had severe mold, that I felt like I had to give up. The cost of going to a doctor's appointment wasn't worth the tax on my body. And the emotional whiplash of getting my hopes up after seeing a new practitioner always led to a gutting depression after not getting the results I'd desperately hoped for.

It was around this time that I first heard Alicia Fajardo speak as an interviewee on a podcast I'd regularly listened to. I found it fascinating, but didn't look into it. Later, I heard Amy speak in a group about her work, and it rang a bell. I decided to look into the Fajardo Method of Holistic Biomechanics®.

My journey began slow; I did not notice much after a few sessions. I stopped and then started again a few months later. Something nudged me; I knew it was different from all the other somatic education I'd had, and that intrigued me. 

About 6 months into regular sessions, my symptoms began to shift (noticeably to me; I am sure they were shifting from the beginning).

After a year, I was doing classes and feeling like a whole new person. I was starting to get my life back.

I'm now coming up on almost 3 years of practice and my body has changed so radically it feels miraculous.

I still experience some physical and mental discomforts. However, I now enjoy the privilege of being social, taking long dog walks, traveling, eating all the foods I couldn't tolerate for so long, learning new things, laughing (laughing used to hurt!), going to events that would've been far too overstimulating in the past, doing daily tasks without collapsing, and so much more.

Given how sick I was, my body is constantly going through new processes as I map and change. It's not always easy to read what's going on. But at the end of each day, I cannot deny that my life has become so much bigger, easier, more interesting, and fun since I began practicing FMHB.

I'm forever grateful for the ways I've been empowered to take my health back, and overjoyed by the ways my quality of life has improved over the past few years.

Onwards, Malia

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This content is for entertainment and education. Not medical advice, not therapy. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical, psychological, or health condition. Every topic here is basically crowdsourced from your lives, your stories, and your “please explain this chaos” requests. Thanks for all the brilliant newsletter ideas.