Canvas Rebel Interviewed Me; They Wanted to Know What Makes Me Different

CanvasRebel, a magazine that interviews Entrepreneurs and pattern breakers in various industries, reached out to interview me about my practice, and what makes it unique.

I've known that the way I think about things has been different, and I've spent the last few years ignoring what things are "supposed to" look like, and focused on what feels right to me. It's allowed me to create something beautiful, and awesome, designed for neurodiverse folks, for people with Hypermobility Specturm Disorder (HSD) and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), because I found there simply wasnt' something out there designed for them. I made it, not because society had an idea of what it should look like, but because it was what I wished had been around for me.

Here's an excerpt from the interview --

"My practice is built around compassion, and the hard core science of rehabilitation and strength training. But I’m not just interested in telling people what to do. I’m too neurodivegent for that; I personally hate being told what to do, and it triggers a fight or flight response of adrenaline in my system. So I do things a bit differently; people who succeed with me are curious about what’s going on in their bodies, and I spend huge chunks of my time not just teaching folks about their bodies, but helping them feel the knowing of their body. It’s not just about lecturing about a piriformis muscle; it’s about, can I help you feel that muscle, put you in a position to target it, put a finger to feel it, and cue you to feel it working, and know the difference between one muscle and another when you’re going about you’re day to day. That’s a level of embodiment and awareness that I care about, and I don’t see many PTs attending to. I also think it’s the foundation that leads to long lasting change.

This embodiment is rooted in science, anatomy, and physiology, but also presence, and this in-body knowing is a skill that people can take with them. I’m not just trying to solve the problem in front of me. I’m trying to teaching people how to move. I joke with my clients that really, I’m just running a movement school, teaching people skills they can take with them for the rest of their lives and apply to any practice they come to next. That makes working with me more than just PT; it’s a new way of being, embodying, and movement.

I specialize in hypermobility, because it takes this level of discernment and embodiment to stabilize and engage in a hypermobile body. One of the beautiful things about hypermobility is the sheer possibility of movement patterns and styles, recruitment patterns that can show up in our hyper-elastic tissue, so with great motion, comes great responsibility. My teaching style can work for everyone, but it’s a necessity in extra bendy zebra beings, because hypermobile humans so often rarely feel the muscle groups that are “supposed” to be working during an exercise because we’re brilliant compensators. We use whatever muscle we can to stabilize whenever we can, because our ligaments are like rubberbands, rather than duct tape, so we’re working overtime to hold ourselves upright. This results in a lot of unique motor patterns, toes trying to stabilize ankles, backs trying to lift legs, and necks trying to stabilize shoulders. That means we can’t just train the movement. We have to train the recruitment; we have to change the way we move, to stabilize in the most efficient way possible. That’s what sets me apart/. I don’t care about achieving the movement; I care about how we’re achieving it, and laying a strong foundation for efficient movement that can sustain us for the rest of our lives."

For the full article and interview, check out the link below: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-jj-hurst

Shout to the CanvasRebel for taking the time to elevate that what I'm doing is special.

Photos by @ShootWithBliss, the amazing Bliss Floccare