The Art of Healing

Transforming Wellness: Dr. Tara Marsh on Integrative Therapy and Mindful Movement

• Charlyce Davis MD Reiki Practitioner

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This episode centers on the transformative intersection of physical therapy and yoga, featuring Dr. Tara Marsh as she shares her insights on healing and empowerment. Through her diverse experiences in various therapeutic settings, she addresses the complexities of chronic pain and the importance of patient advocacy in healthcare.

• Discussing Dr. Marsh's journey into physical therapy
• Exploring chronic pain and its multi-faceted nature
• The importance of cultural context in therapy 
• Integrating yoga into physical therapy practices 
• Mental and emotional aspects of the healing process 
• Announcement of Dr. Marsh's upcoming YouTube channel 
• Encouraging patients to actively advocate for their health


Join Dr. Marsh's 40 Days of Car Talk on Instagram: @marsh_therapeutix



Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community.  This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness.  This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities.  Learn more about:

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Speaker 1:

Okay, everyone. So thank you so much for joining us for a live recording of the Art of Healing podcast. I am Dr Charlize and I'm so appreciative for those of you that join us live. If, for any reason, you need to hop on or hop off, we absolutely understand. Of course we'll have question and answers, and if you do have a question, just put it in the chat, because we are recording this for the podcast. If you miss any part of this or if you have to hop off early, the Art of Healing podcast will have this episode go live and, if everything goes fine, we should be posting the episode on Monday. So nice to meet all of you. Some of you I've met before. Some of you I've known my entire life. Some of you I've known in past lives. Yeah, I'm so excited. So we'll go ahead and get started and then hopefully, I'll be able to give a little teaser of a really cool group program that is coming up. So if we are all ready and Dr Marsh, are you ready? You ready, I'm ready, oh, perfect.

Speaker 1:

Dr Marsh is a world-traveling physical therapist. Dr Marsh claims Oklahoma City and DFW Metroplex as home. She currently lives in Atlanta, georgia, and she works full-time as a school-based therapist with Atlanta Public Schools and as a small private practice that services early intervention patients. Tara received her Doctor of Science in Physical Therapy from Alabama State University. She has practiced physical therapy since August of 2003, so she's very experienced. Tara has experience with therapy in several settings in her career. With her initial start in outpatient orthopedics, tara continued her physical therapy journey, practicing in school districts, texas and Georgia Army Base Force Steward, as well as physical therapy in the Warrior in Transition Battalion, or what's called WTB, aquatic therapy supervisor for the WTB. In acute medicine. She works with therapy abroad as a clinical supervisor and skilled connections nonprofit, as a physical therapy board member and volunteer. Both organizations provide services in the United States and abroad.

Speaker 1:

Dr Tara Marsh received her RYT 200-hour yoga instructor certification in April of 2022 through the Kaivela Yoga Method and Mindful Purpose Institute. She has been certified as exercise physiologist through the Academy of Sports Medicine and is an aquatic therapist through Aquatic Therapeutic Institute or ATRIC. Tara's main passion is to empower individuals to live a fulfilled life and she finds joy in supporting families and service members to promote holistic health and wellness. So I asked Dr Marsh to join us because she is in the midst of launching her YouTube channel, and, in addition to her practice, she is in the midst of launching her yoga instructor practice, and so she's getting ready to really spread her message out there. She has got so much wonderful information to share. Dr Marsh, how are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me today. So great to see you and hear you Wonderful.

Speaker 1:

Can you remind us your YouTube channel and your website, if you have those live yet?

Speaker 2:

I'm currently working on the website. It should be live by the end of the weekend. Perfect, it'll be it's Yahweh-moveswellnesscom.

Speaker 1:

Okay For podcast listeners. If you sign up for my email newsletter, I will have all of her contact information that'll go out there. Can you share some about your journey in physical therapy and what inspired you to pursue physical therapy as a career?

Speaker 2:

I've always had a love of medicine and healthcare and I was an athlete in high school, fell in love with that side of things. So I thought, oh, sports, medicine and health that goes together for me, and that's what helped me pursue physical therapy. So once I got into physical therapy, I realized there were different types of therapy that you can do. It ranges from geriatrics all the way to pediatrics, and I've always loved children. I thought I was going to stay with adults and sports medicine, but somehow I ended up being on the floor playing with children. So I have worked in every setting and have enjoyed and learned so much through each experience. The important thing that I've learned through this journey is that functional outcomes are very important. Everybody wants a good quality of life and if you can show them how to get there, you just make the world a little better.

Speaker 1:

As a physician. I think that what I've noticed in my time of practice is that the amount that I end up leaning on physical therapists is massive and I come to take it for granted until something really shocks us, like wait a minute, I just did a lot of talking, but I wasn't the one that got them moving. That was the physical therapist that moved and I just talked about it. You have practice in a lot of settings school districts, military bases. You've practiced in the United States and you've practiced abroad. So how has the diversity of your experience shaped your approach to physical therapy?

Speaker 2:

It definitely makes you look at the person completely, at the person completely. It changes your mindset and helps you even eliminate some of your biases that you might have. It will make you ask yourself am I looking at this completely as the person? Because you do have to take into consideration that person's culture. You got to take into consideration what that person is telling you. You become a better listener, become more of an active listener when you work in different settings, especially different, even different cities, because the culture of one city or one town is completely different than another.

Speaker 2:

What's important to one person will not be important to the other based off of their family dynamic. Those things are really important when you're trying to get somebody back to moving, because you want to establish things that are based on what's important to them. What are your goals? What do you want out of this? Because what we do as physical therapists we encourage you to move, get up and do all the hard things that are painful or difficult in that moment, but it takes your effort and your motivation to participate and my goal is try to keep you motivated. So, yeah, definitely, I've learned so much. It's been such a great career and just learning about how to appreciate humans and human nature and how things worked. All for the good is a wonderful thing, so yeah, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1:

So you had a lot of years as a physical therapist. So what sparked you into yoga? What got your attention on yoga and even enough to pursue becoming an instructor?

Speaker 2:

My own health and wellness. Definitely, this job takes a lot of effort and work and mobility on my end. We learn how to transfer patients, get them out of bed, so it's a lot of work on our end, so we have to really take good care of ourselves in order to be efficient on the job. And then I really have a love for manual therapy and pediatrics. Both of those are my favorite specialties in physical therapy, and what comes with manual therapy is you're going to see a lot of people with chronic pain. You're going to see a lot of people with hip pain, back pain.

Speaker 2:

So I ended up teaching a lot of exercises that had half the yoga movements in them already and a lot of Pilates exercises, because there's a lot of core training and breathing is so important and I wanted to investigate it more, because we do understand the anatomy and the physiology on this side of the medical world, the Western side but I wanted to dive in a little bit more just to understand, and so I was really intrigued with yoga and I started performing yoga myself and I started seeing the benefits and realizing oh man, I'm gaining flexibility, I'm gaining strength, but not only that my anxiety is decreasing. You know, there's other benefits. It's not just the physical side. So it just made me want to research and learn more, and then I ended up becoming certified.

Speaker 1:

That is pretty interesting because you've already got that intense physical therapy training and then you get to use your body when you work with your patients. And then to imagine that another discipline adds to what you're doing, especially because you're already athletic, you're already active, that is kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting. So, as you started to kind of cross that bridge, did that start sparking certain questions within you and were there certain things that you began to wonder about? And I mean, keep in mind, we're the Art of Healing podcast, because we're pretty straight list now. We're going to get weird later on because we're going to get way into chakras, but we always start kind of Western a little bit and then we get Eastern where there's certain things, in particular with you yeah, it's laughing that you noticed as you were learning this or some of it, that was even a little like I don't know, like maybe scary if you were on started your yoga journey.

Speaker 2:

I believe that I always knew that physical therapy and I remember one of my professors telling me that physical therapy is an art.

Speaker 2:

And I was like really, you know it isn't an art. You know I'm coming in with my scientific brain and I do definitely have an artsy side to me, but I just never looked at it that way initially until I actually started working with people and started realizing how creative and how we as PTs we see people every day and we get to find out about their lives, what's going on. We get to know. They tell us some things that they won't share with anyone else because we become part of their life while we're treating them.

Speaker 2:

And so I knew that there was always this other side to wellness that existed, that it wasn't just doing a certain set of exercises and you're going to feel better, that it had to be more. And, of course, I know the physiological side, but there's also that emotional, there's also that mindset. There's also that mindset and I feel that when I tapped into more of the yoga practice, I was like you know, there's just more to this, and when you start involving the practice, in just really sitting down, listening to your body, listening to your breathing patterns and finding out exactly where the pain could be coming from, and realizing that your body is really intuitive to you if you would listen. I wanted to know more about that and see how I can help someone else find that for themselves. And I believe that movement is medicine and I believe that also it's empowering for anyone, and it doesn't matter how much movement you have. If you're able to move, you gain a sense of independence and ability to move, you gain a sense of independence and ability.

Speaker 1:

So I noticed on your Instagram you started I think they're the car talks it's going to be 40 days. Yes, yes, I love that. And you started right away in the discussion of chronic pain and I just I love that. And you know you and I have talked about chronic pain, the journey of chronic pain. Just give us sort of a rundown of your thoughts on chronic pain, especially as you are starting your yoga instructor practice, and when it comes to chronic pain, you are going to be the kind of the beginning, the end, the yeah. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 2:

Starting from. I don't even remember when I had my first experience with chronic pain. It was probably prior to working at Fort Stewart. We run into a lot of chronic pain there due to the nature of the military and what our soldiers have to do. And so understanding the mechanism of pain and that is an alarm system for our bodies, correct, and so it can keep going and it remembers that trauma, and that's been proven in science and you can see it in actuality.

Speaker 2:

But encouraging people to recognize that your body is telling you this, but I want you to look at it, see it, and I want you to move it and tell me if it's broken. And getting them to a point to be functional is so empowering for them and it's something that needs to be addressed because it's so complex and it has so many different facets. Correct, it has not only just the physical portion, the mental, emotional, but there are caregivers and practitioners that are ready to help people get to that point. But sometimes I feel like everything gets so scattered that people don't get what they need and they don't know how to empower themselves and they don't know what questions to ask their physicians. There's just so many questions out there, so I feel that it's an important topic because it's such a big topic that affects many people, because it doesn't just affect the person as we know. It affects their families, it affects their friends, and so providing information and even just practical knowledge like have a list of questions that you want to ask and make sure they're open-ended so that you can really get information, find sources and links that you can ask about and ask your physicians about that A lot of people just go and think, okay, well, they just told me what I needed to know, but I'm like you could have asked more questions.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes the physicians are extremely busy and forget to give you more. So sometimes you have to be that proactive person to ask, and anybody that's involved in your health ask, because the person needs to understand that they are an individual and they should be seen individually. They're not in a certain box. Know, this is your situation, this is your experience, and what do you want? What do you want to gain? You know and that's why I wanted to focus on chronic pain I've learned that even through yoga, through physical therapy, through manual therapy, all of it can help, but when you learn how to move yourself, that's going to be the most helpful, but all those modalities are used to get you to where you can be independent, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

That makes perfect sense, independent, if that makes sense, that makes perfect sense. So you said something, and so I will just be frankly honest, because you're so, you're so sweet, guys, she's always been so sweet. I've known Dr Marsha, tara, for oh, 30-ish years. She's so sweet, she's not going to say it. I'll say it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, when it comes to chronic pain, what happens? Allopathic or Western medicine can diagnose it Not always, but can get to the diagnosis. Modern medicine or allopathic medicine can offer surgical treatments, can offer medical treatments, but medications are going to be band-aids. You're just going to cover it up. But for when people begin to identify with chronic pain meaning I've had pain for over three months or six months and the doctor is telling me the cause of the pain is gone. Why am I still hurting? That is a point that you are abandoned by modern medicine. You are abandoned. You are alone. Unfortunately, we can calm the pain, we can quiet it out.

Speaker 1:

The scary things If there was a cancer, we found it, we treated it. If there was an inflammation or something that was glued to something else that wasn't there, we did surgery, removed it. But now your body's telling you something. So that's where Tara, dr Marsh, is inviting us to now get to know that part of the body and even move it. And speaking of move, because you are teaching yoga now you're actually going to be offering instruction in person locally, and then the biggest that I'm so excited about is that you are launching your YouTube channel, so you mind sharing with us some about that.

Speaker 2:

Definitely, I will be providing information poses. I'll be doing some of the flows on the YouTube. I plan to develop an online platform for online classes as well. Definitely getting exactly what you said out there Really acknowledging your body, getting it moving and alleviating your pain. Using active motion, awareness, breathing all of the above.

Speaker 1:

That is wonderful. That is wonderful. So the way we'll do this, because Dr Marsh is busy, she's practicing and she's teaching. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pressure her now to come back on the podcast because especially she gets into her YouTube channel and things. We want to make sure you all know where to find her. But if you'll see, in the chat there's going to be a link that takes you to a sign up page. That's for my email list and the email list is kind of the most reliable way that whenever there's a podcast episode that comes out, it goes out there first, and particularly for Dr Marsh's contact, because all of her contact info will go out in an email. And it's going to be over the next few days.

Speaker 1:

We have a few minutes if anyone has questions, because you've got a doctor of physical therapy here and a yoga instructor, If you don't mind taking a few questions, Dr Marsh. So maybe, even if you've got like a chronic pain somewhere, you might want a little bit of insight about a chronic shoulder pain. You know, I'll tell you. So I did my first physical therapy, Dr Marsh, when I started to have some arthritic pain in my right shoulder and I found it so fascinating once I went because we were working on like breath and then different poses and things, and then it got me to thinking about, like what even made me hurt here. It ended up being an arthritis in my AC joint, which I did physical therapy to work that out.

Speaker 1:

What would be your insight on? Like a physician that gets arthritis in her right shoulder Now I can kind of feel it when it comes up and you know I'll send a little Reiki to it I know for me, like if I'm midday working I'm getting really wound up and stressed out. It's like, and then the weather's changing. It kind of like it like knocks on the door, like hey, what's your insight on that?

Speaker 2:

I would definitely look at how you're sitting in front of your desk typing. It could be a postural thing. It could be how you react to stress. Do you rely on that side of the body more? Yes, your muscles and everything. You're going to react that way so it could be closing up that shoulder joint. Okay, it's also probably some postural going on there. If you're working at the desk quite a bit and at the computer you're leaning forward more, you could have some neck issues. You're going into that flexing position and staying there, so those muscles are just staying tight Over time.

Speaker 2:

Arthritis is mostly due to overuse and just working in that area, and so the good thing is to breathe, go into that extension mode, open up that joint and take breaks. Dr Charlize, you might need to take a few more breaks during your day and allow yourself to really stress that shoulder out. Once again, your body's telling you. You get stressed out, you tighten up here, everything over here locks up. I need you to take a moment at least a few times out of the day Breathe, open up, extend in, and that will relieve a lot of those symptoms for you. But once again, your body's telling you what it needs. I love that.

Speaker 1:

I love that. Yeah, you're exactly right, because once not that I believe I was invincible, but once I actually got the diagnosis of arthritis, I had some feelings about it. I was like I can get arthritis. Am I going to get arthritis all over Old? And then the one positive to it is that little arthritic spot is this perfect weather predictor. I used to remember like our parents would talk about that, and I think they're so old, but now I'll feel that shoulder wake up and it's like that weather's coming. So, Dr Marsh, can you remind us where we can find your social media handles? I have shared your Instagram, but can you just remind us the best places to find you and best way to get in contact with you in case we have questions? Yes, Yahwehmoveswellnesscom.

Speaker 2:

Also, yahweh Moves on YouTube. I'll be available there, and Marsh Therapeutics is open and ready. So and that's on Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful. I would encourage all the podcast listeners to tune in for Dr Marsh's car talks. They're so insightful. I have really enjoyed them.

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Dr. Charlyce

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