We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anna Gieselman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Anna, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I made some major changes to the direction of my life and my businesses. From the outside, these changes didn’t appear to be the wisest choices but from the inside of my heart, they felt 100% right. I went from teaching yoga for a busy gym in bustling Austin Texas (where I grew up), to moving to the sleepy town of Santa Fe, NM with no connections or employer to lean on.

At the time, I was studying applied neurology which is practice of training the brain in order to heal the nervous system and body. This is a fairly new area of study and for the most part is unheard of in the fitness world. If you’ve ever heard the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” then you might understand why I had to transform my own personal approach to healing and the foundation of wellness business. I could not continue to teach good old fashioned yoga because I understood that no amount of stretching will serve the body without the nervous system being onboard.

So then came the challenging part…Convincing my existing clients and any potential clients that what they’ve always known wasn’t the whole picture and that if they really wanted to change their health and body they would have to consider a paradigm shift in how we approach their wellness. Oh, and it was going to cost more.

I went through some big ups and downs both financially and emotionally which left me wondering if perhaps I had made a mistake and that I should have just stayed with what was known and comfortable. My mantra at the time was “what was meant for me, will find me”, meaning the people that need this work will come into my life.

I am delighted to say that this is true. After reluctantly creating a Tik Tok account where I teach people basic tools to train their brains, I went viral and had people reaching out to me from all over asking for help. I have also been slowly building my in-person clientele based entirely on referrals from people who’ve benefited from what I have to offer. It feels amazing to be able to do what I Iove and serve my community at the same time.

Anna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I came to the world of wellness when I was reluctantly dragged to a yoga class in 2000. I was turned off by the woo-woo nature of it all but loved how sore I was afterwards. Eventually the spirituality and mind-body connections sunk in and I made the choice to study and become a yoga teacher. Some years later I began teaching publicly and did that for over a decade.

In 2018 I was exposed to the concepts of both Functional Range Conditioning and applied neurology. My understanding of the body and brain expanded greatly as did my approach to healing. Now in 2023, I have my own private practice in which I blend the brain-first approach of applied neurology with functional mobility. I primarily work with clients one-on-one both virtually and in person. Some of my clients come to me with neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease or Post-Concussion Syndrome, some have chronic or acute pain and everyone wants to have a more functional body and brain. Some of the issues that we address are poor balance, vision deficits, poor mobility and pain.

What I wish people understood is that everything you have ever thought, experienced or done is because of your brain and if you want to improve your ability to do anything, from thinking to standing, it helps if you work with your brain first.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

I think in any field and in general, it’s essential to question your beliefs and be open to new information. We all want to feel like we know with a capital K. I find when people become entrenched in their beliefs then they stop growing. This is true with clients and how we approach working with them as well as in relationships with others, in politics and with how we interact with our environment.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I was 36 (6 years ago), I was diagnosed with a terrible autoimmune disease called systemic lupus. For anyone who doesn’t know, when you have systemic lupus you can experience very serious problems such as organ failure in addition to more superficial issues such as rashes and joint swelling.

For the first 4 years of the disease, I was convinced I would heal through diet and trauma healing. Unfortunately that is not how it worked and I ended up in the hospital with kidney failure and fluid around my lungs. At that moment I had to open my mind, face my fears and try something I was inherently against…evil western medicine. I am glad that I did because it gave me back my life, increased my empathy for other peoples suffering and allowed me to dive deeper into understanding what it means to heal.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.beyondfunctional.net
• Instagram: beyond_functional
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@beyondfunctional

Image Credits
All photos taken by Paul Galvan from Galvan Creative