Dr. Kristen Donohue is DA BOMB! And everyone on staff at MOTI is AMAZING. Friendly, kind, compassionate, patient, personable. I've worked with so many PT aides and I've never ever had one that was smeh, all of them are great!
It's weird that this is my 2nd time at MOTI for the same-ish "injury/pain" and I was EXCITED to come back. I don't have that experience for any other health appointments in my life even if I love the doc.
I was excited to come back cause Kristen is such an amazing physical therapist and also I just vibe with her as a person. Dunno if she considers me a friend lol but I would TOTES hang out with her outside of Moti haha! She has extraordinary bedside manner and great attention to detail about my personal life, remembers names of my nieces, plans/events I had going on, etc, asks me how they were, how certain people are.
The only reason I stopped my treatment the first time was because I was no longer having pain and Kirsten was going on maternity leave and I was SO attached to keeping her as my physical therapist and I didn't want to start with anyone else. But like I said the pain stopped and I was consistent with my at home exercises so we completed that program.
But holidays happened, feel off the wagon with my exercises. My shoulder started to flare up again, NOT at the level it was before where I wasn't even able to put on a jacket without pain but much more nuanced. AND perfect timing, right when Kristen was coming back from maternity leave this happened.
Kristen is great about being able to pin point the specificity of what you need whether it be physically with the literal exercises or emotionally with being able to tell you are being WAY too hard on yourself and you need to be able to connect to how much progress you've made, but she still pushes you the right amount that you need to so you'll progress.
For my fellow Human Design enthusiast Angelenos, she's a Human Design Projector, being one myself, it sounds silly but I prioritize finding projectors who have expertise in certain areas because they are natural guides. The amount of times I could FEEL she was just tapped into my energy of exactly whats going one sometimes without me even speaking. Sometimes she even finishes my sentences! She knows how to tweak / adapt my program as I progress. I didn't seek out a projector PT but I was just lucky I got paired with one serendipitously LOL.
She'll also drop truth bombs on you like I'll never forget the gist of something she said during I think our first or second session, it was something to the effect of, "Any sort of consistent pain is not normal." And it was so empowering and SO what I needed to hear at that moment. Because I don't want to live the rest of my life in pain and resigned like "Oh I guess this is just how it will be."
But working with Kristen I've gotten a lot of power in getting that a lot of my injury/pain has been years of improper posture and other misuse of muscles in my body so I have compassion for myself its not just about this specific injury/pass and having relief, its also about restrengthening and reteaching myself how to move newly and create good habits so that the pain doesn't come back.
Anywho Kristen rocks! Moti is awesome! Such a lovely safe space and environment to heal yourself which can be such a sensitive, vulnerable thing in the first place. You'll be in great hands! read more