I'm Ashley Everson, founder of Conscious Movement Lab.

I spent most of my life not listening to my body. Growing up, I was told what was right for me, what I should study, how I should look, what path made sense. And I learned to stop trusting my own knowing and start looking for someone else to give me the answer.

When I started getting low back pain and sciatic nerve pain around 14, I went to doctors looking for a diagnosis. They told me it was growing pains. I remember being at a friend's house, laying on her bedroom floor, asking my friends not to make me laugh because laughing hurt so badly it would make me cry. I became so afraid of the pain, even when it wasn't present, that I started bracing before it even arrived. Afraid that if I moved the wrong way I would be in pain for days.

By the time I started intentionally moving my body as an adult, bracing had become my default and it was severely impacting my movement patterns.

In 2020 I was lifting weights more regularly and realizing just how restricted my movement was. I was a flexible person, I always had been, but there was something going on that stretching wasn’t helping. I could touch my toes, but I could barely get to 90 degrees in a back squat. I added foam rolling into my routine and I would feel better for a night but then the next day it would come back. Then I remembered this Fascia course I had discovered earlier in the year and when the second lock down came around I decided to commit to it.

When I came back to the gym after that it was obvious how much this had helped my body, not only was I in less pain, but my movement was so much better that I had friends in class asking what I did. I was convinced the fascia was an important piece of the puzzle I had been missing.

Because I had discovered this course through a yoga platform, I decided to go through a yoga teacher training (YTT). Turns out fascia is really niche, I didn’t learn anything about it in training.

A year and a half went by before a friend from YTT sent me a flyer for a Fascial Maneuvers workshop near me. I had heard of the Fascial Maneuvers but hadn’t tried them yet, so I went. That workshop changed my life. The next day I started the Human Garage’s reset programs, I went through all of the content they had. I could feel my body moving differently again but it wasn’t only that, my body awareness increased and they brought in the emotional aspect to the programs as well. I started bringing Fascial Maneuvers into my yoga classes and offering Fascial Maneuver classes a few months later.

For a while I went all-in on Fascial Maneuvers, still looking for someone else to tell me what my body needed. And it helped, to a point. But what actually changed things was when I stopped outsourcing and started listening..I began to learn what my body was asking for and adapt my practice to meet it.

There’s no one method that works best for me. Some days I need more stillness, other days I need more movement. I needed a toolbox to reach into and grab what I needed on any given day based on what my body is asking for. Which is what led me to create my own Fascial Flow classes, which blend together fascia work (including fascial maneuvers), yoga, mobility work, breath, and stillness. It is a combination of the modalities that have had the biggest impact for me.

Take what you need, leave the rest behind.