Testimonials

“I am now one month out from my first appointment with Dr. Young and I can say with amazement and humility that I live pain-free. I can walk, sit, lie down, and stand without pain, something I had forgotten was even possible.”

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When I first started seeing Angel Young for physical therapy, I was emotionally at one of the lowest points of my recent life: a back injury from a workout class had slowly devolved over the course of six months. What began as lower back pain had evolved over eight months into sciatica, then pain while sitting, and then finally pain while standing — all while in the care of a physical therapist, then a chiropractor, then a sports medicine doctor, and finally another physical therapist. My sleep had deteriorated to two and a half hours a night; I worked exclusively laying on my back or stomach. Two days after my first appointment with Angel I had a consultation scheduled with a neurosurgeon for a potential microdiscectomy.

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Dr. Young’s appointment was an inflection point in my care journey. I credit this to her empathetic and holistic approach. She listened to my entire story and sought not just to address the immediate pain I was experiencing, but rather my whole experience as it related to my body.

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First was sleep. I explained to her my experience, which she recognized as insomnia: an inability to fall asleep. She first explained to me some basic principles of sleep hygiene but also went on to say things that don’t work (and things that I was doing!). She explained to me a simple technique that had proven efficacy and one that I applied starting that night. Without exaggeration, a few days later I slept for six hours continuously — something I hadn’t done in months!

 

Second was pain. She explained to me that pain is not just a physical sensation — it’s even more a set of emotions with which we respond to that sensation — and our emotions can both amplify and dampen the sensation we feel. She provided me with follow-up reading that helped me understand that I was amplifying my own sensations of pain, while providing techniques to undo some of those patterns. 

 

Third was life! I was deep in despair at the time when I first saw her; I was living a life where everything caused pain, where I wanted to avoid pain, and so avoided doing almost everything. The culmination of this was that I was very seriously considering cancelling a long-planned family vacation. She reassured me that I wouldn’t risk injuring myself further by going; she also encouraged me to go and helped me understand the positive aspects of going as it related to my healing journey. And sure enough, going on this vacation was overwhelmingly positive for both myself and my spouse.

 

Most importantly, though, was her treatment in the school of Stecco fascial manipulation. I had for many months bought into the narrative (created by the sports medicine doctor with the aid of an MRI) that my L4-L5 lumbar disc had been herniated, that this disc protrusion was compressing my sciatic nerve, and that this compression was creating the pain I was experiencing. During our first session of Stecco manipulation, though, Dr. Young was able to exactly create one of my pain sensations by massaging one region of my mid torso. I was genuinely flabbergasted by this! That manipulation had no physiological connection to my L4-L5 disc: it thus deconstructed the pain narrative I had created for myself (with the help of medical professionals). It opened me up mentally to the possibility of healing through non-surgical means because I could no longer credibly believe my disc was ever the problem in the first place.

 

I am now one month out from my first appointment with Dr. Young and I can say with amazement and humility that I live pain-free. I can walk, sit, lie down, and stand without pain, something I had forgotten was even possible. I fully credit Dr. Young with my recovery for two reasons. First, she treats her patients as whole people and their experiences as multi-dimensional, addressing each of them in turn. (This is sadly lacking from so many medical professionals nowadays, who in my experience suffer from professional myopia.) Second, she focuses not just on immediate healing or relief but on repatterning — on learning our mental and physical patterns that create suffering and working to unravel and retrain them. She is an adept, gifted physical therapist and I whole-heartedly recommend her!