Meet Katie

Katie has been working in the healthcare and wellness field for more than 17 years. Utilizing her degree in Exercise Science, she started working as a strength and conditioning coach for youth, adults, and professional athletes. Katie began noticing some challenges her clients were having with stiffness, flexibility, and recovery which led her to acquiring a license in massage and bodywork. In massage therapy school she was introduced to the importance of listening and responding to the body in order to tap into its capacity for healing. This deeper awareness of the mind, body, connection shifted Katie’s focus to working with more medically complex individuals. She worked as an exercise physiologist for Cardiac, Cancer and Pulmonary rehabilitation programs providing individualized exercise programs, stress management training, and lifestyle modification education. Katie began feeling pulled  to learn more about the world and health care. She spent two years as an international health educator and teacher in the Peace Corps. This experience fostered a better understanding of how every individual’s needs, values, and desires are impacted by their environment, culture, beliefs, and personal circumstances. Katie thus  stumbled upon her passion for helping others overcome challenges big and small. 

After returning to North Carolina, she graduated with her Master’s in Occupational Therapy from Winston Salem State University in 2013. Katie has experience as an OT in private pediatric clinics and home-based services specializing in sensory processing disorders, with adults in a skilled nursing facility, and in a psychiatric hospital working with patients across the lifespan.  Katie has also practiced as a licensed massage therapist for 16 years providing craniosacral therapy, myofascial release, medical massage, and pain management. She is a certified pregnancy and postpartum corrective exercise specialist as well as a certified Safe and Sound Protocol provider. Katie continues to be curious about the science behind how our mind and bodies function. She is fascinated about how that physiology manifests and impacts each of us in our daily lives as well as our communities as a whole.

Katie’s Story

As a kid in school, Katie was well-behaved, loved being the helper, and was very quiet. At home, she was in constant motion, climbed on everything, struggled to listen or follow directions, always attempted to negotiate other terms, and was easily overwhelmed with big emotions. As Katie grew up, she felt less and less like herself struggling with attempting to align how her body, mind, and nervous system urged her to be and how society expected her to behave and act. She was either playing “too rough” and “too loud”, or isolating in dark, quiet spaces or being highly reactive when people or things touched her. During all of this, she continued to be the quiet, helpful, studious child at school, but struggled to focus on homework and required lots of extra help, battling with parents over learning or completing assignments at home. Katie presented with frequent headaches, dizziness, stomach aches/nausea, neck/body pains, anxiety, low self esteem, exercise induced asthma, and allergies. Her parents were constantly searching for answers and made to believe it could all be in her head. Medical professionals were frequently baffled by all of the pains and symptoms of this otherwise healthy child. Her symptoms would often improve or at least be more manageable when she was engaged with something she loved such as camping, soccer, or dancing around to her favorite music. Katie has always loved learning, solving puzzles, and using her imagination. Her inner knowing helped nudge her to resolve the inner conflict and “unexplainable” health symptoms. As she got older and moved to the mountains for college, she began to notice that her symptoms were much less severe when she was out walking in nature or practicing yoga. This started her down the path of both personal and professional development that landed her with the opportunity and inspiration to create Integrated You.

Education & Experiences

  • Safe & Sound Protocol - iLS

  • Pregnancy and Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist

  • Myofascial Release

  • Practical Cupping, Gua Sha, and Acupressure

  • CranioSacral Therapy 1: Assessment of Central Nervous System and Fascia for Full Body Treatment

  • CranioSacral Therapy 2: Moving Beyond Dura for Assessing Acute and Chronic Conditions

  • SomatoEmotional Release 1: Full Range of CranioSacral Therapy tools for Supporting Gentle Trauma Resolution

  • SomatoEmotional Release 2: Intention, Inner Physician and Dialogue -Deepening Principles and Practice of Upledger CranioSacral Therapy

  • Touching the Brain 1: Stimulating Self-Correction Through The Glial Interface

  • Unwinding Meridians 1: Applying Acupuncture Principles to CST)

  • Beyond Behaviors: Effective Neuroscience based tools to transform childhood behaviors ( Dr. Mona Delahooke)

  • Taming Tantrums and Ending Explosions: Strategies to help parents, teach, and treat children with behavioral disorders

  • Evaluation and treatment of sleep problems in infants and toddlers

  • Primitive Reflex Integration: solidifying the foundation in you pediatric client

  • Sensory and Behaviors: Comprehensive approach to challenging behaviors

  • An Executive Functioning View of Poor Impulse control, motivation, and self regulation

  • CAN-EAT Approach (using medical, motor, and behavioral strategies in pediatric feeding)

  • Establishing realist food progressions for the most challenging eaters

  • Learn Play Thrive Approach to Autism

  • Incorporating Therapeutic Yoga techniques into the treatment of children

Get started with Integrated You, today.