About Lise
Helping Women Embody the Inner Work They’ve Been Doing for Years
Through Pilates-based movement, breathwork, and relational mentoring, I help thoughtful, accomplished women live in their bodies, not just their heads.
Therapy gives you awareness of your mind, you understand your patterns. Physical work gives you awareness of your body, you feel stronger, more connected to yourself physically.
But neither bridges the gap between intellectual insight and embodied transformation. And that's where it gets sticky: understanding what needs to change but not being able to actually live differently.
Through Pilates-based movement, breathwork, and relational mentoring, I help you integrate what you know into what you embody, so your inner work translates to your outer life.
What women are saying
"I don't know how you do what you're doing—I feel so supported by you even though you're going through all this." — Said by multiple clients during my cancer journey, showing that authenticity and vulnerability create deeper holding.
Why This Work Matters Now
The Shift That's Happening
We're living in an increasing fast paced world pulling us further away from our true nature and our connection to our bodies and ourselves.
For decades we treated the mind and body as separate, therapy for emotional healing, pilates for physical fitness, spiritual practices for inner growth. But what we’re learning from neuroscience, trauma research and somatic psychology is that real transformation requires integration across all dimensions.
Your patterns aren't just mental constructs. They live in your nervous system, your breath, your muscle memory, your automatic responses.
You might understand why you react a certain way with your kids or your partner. But when the moment comes, you still react the same way. You still struggle to say no to something you feel obligated to do. It feels hard to prioritize yourself. And you feel exhausted from managing it all.
Why I Focus on Integration
Understanding alone doesn't change the pattern.
I’ve watched too many accomplished, self-aware women spin in the gap between knowing and doing.
This place, between intellectual insight and embodied living, is where I focus. Because you don’t need more information. You need integration. You need to bring you inner work out of you head and into your body, your nervous system, your daily life.
That’s what this work exists to do.
My Background
I'm Lise. For over 25 years, I've been helping women reconnect to themselves through pilates-based practices. In the last five years I’ve begun integrating breathwork meditation, and relational mentoring to this movement practice. I work with therapists, coaches, educators, and professionals. Women who are building meaningful careers while managing motherhood, partnership, and their own continued growth.
That journey brought me first to Pilates, to understanding trauma not from textbooks but from the inside. It taught me that healing isn't just about understanding what happened, it's about sensing what your body needs and feels and the connection between your thoughts, emotions and your body sensations.
For many years, I’ve helped clients primarily through physical practice, Pilates and somatic movement, helping people feel more embodied, stronger and aligned. But I started noticing patterns: women who didn’t realize their level of stress, their boundaries, their needs, and couldn't seem to prioritize themselves. Who kept pushing through instead of listening to their bodies.
How I Arrived at This Work
My path to this work has been anything but linear. I came to it first through necessity.
At 28, a car accident left me with a traumatic head injury that changed everything. After, I spent years feeling like I wasn't the same person, navigating deep physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing.
Then in 2014, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Facing mortality clarified everything. I realized for myself that the physical practice alone, while valuable, wasn't addressing what was underneath. The chronic stress. The inability to prioritize myself in my work and relationships. The lack of trust in myself and disconnect with my own intuition. I understood what I saw in my clients was a reflection of what I was living.
The turning point was recognizing that I needed to create a relationship with myself. It was learning to come back into my body, to trust my own inner knowing and myself. That shift, from overwhelmed and disconnected to intentional, grounded, and genuinely myself, is the lens I see my work through.
I bring my training in original somatic work, passed down to me from my teacher who worked with the first pioneers in somatic and neurological movement. My start began with this work in the dance classroom from 2- 11 years old, and I moved deeper into the work after college graduation. My lens is also formed through my intensive dance, pilates, rehabilitative nervous system and breathwork training and study in biology and chemistry. I bring over 25 years of experience supporting women through profound life transitions.
What Make my Perspective Different
I bring a unique combination of scientific foundation and embodied wisdom.
Pre-medicine degree: I understand physiology, neuroscience, how the body actually works
40+ years of somatic practice: Pilates, yoga, dance, breathwork—I've been deeply in my body since I was young
Lived experience of trauma and healing: I've walked through the fire myself—head injury, breast cancer, rebuilding from the ground up
Trauma-informed training: I've studied with trauma specialists and understand how the body holds what the mind can't process
My Educational Foundation:
Pre-medicine degree (University background in biology and chemistry), Special Study in Dance Performance, member of the University of New Mexico Contemporary Dance Company
Post graduate study in original somatic and neurophysical work, work of Lulu Swiegard, Mable Todd and Barbara Clark, via Joanne Emmons
Comprehensive Pilates certification (25+ years of practice and teaching), Physicalmind Institute, Ellie Herman, The Pilates Center, Boulder
Rehabilitation training of Valdamir Janda through Lizz Roman
Pilates Educator Teacher Training, Ellie Herman, Balanced Body
MELT training, Sue Hitzman
200 hour Yoga certification, Yoga Tree
Breathwork practitioner certification, David Elliot
4 decades of somatic movement training (dance, trauma-informed practices)
Study with trauma specialists and nervous system experts
How I Think About This Work
I believe you’re whole.
Start with yourself for outer change
Integration over compartmentalization
Grounding to feel calm, focused, present and resilient
Creating safety for real transformation
Matching actions with values
From mentally understanding to trusting
Not waiting for a crisis to fully prioritize yourself
At a high level, my process looks like this:
Help you ground to bring presence and awareness to your self
Guiding you through somatic, pilates-based movement and breathing techniques where memories and emotions might surface, no need to analyze
Create more resilience and safety in your nervous system
Create a stronger connection to self and your own intuition
Integrating embodiment and intellectual insight
How I Work With Clients
“I trust myself better. Lise gives me the space, encouragement and comfort to trust myself better.. This work with Lise is sacrosanct to me.”
L.W., client
What I Prioritize
Whole-person integration: Physical + emotional + mental
Nervous system regulation: Building capacity to be present, not just managing symptoms
Personal boundaries and energy protection: Creating resilience from the inside out
Relational safety: Feeling safe within the work
Who I’m a Fit For
You're exhausted from managing your life
You're a therapist, coach, educator, or professional building your own career while managing motherhood, partnership, and your own growth
You're a women open to growth, and recognize that you’d like to try something different
You want to trust yourself, body, intuition and decisions
You value both sacred depth and practical groundedness—you're skeptical of surface-level approaches
You're ready to work through your body, not just your mind—and you understand that working somatically can access things talk therapy can't
You're willing to invest time and resources in yourself
You want integration—all dimensions of yourself working together, not compartmentalized
I’m Not a Fit For You If:
You're looking for a quick fix
You want someone to tell you exactly what to do without doing your own inner work
You're seeking surface-level stress management techniques
You're not ready to prioritize yourself or invest in deeper work
You want a cookie-cutter program where everyone does the same thing
You're looking for someone to fix you