We were lucky to catch up with Christi Slaven recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Christi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I took the huge risk of believing in myself and starting my own business. There is so much self esteem and self worth wrapped up in taking the leap from a regular paying job to the world of small business start up. Even though my husband, friends, other family members, and even clients were constantly telling me I need to make that change I doubted myself for years. I didn’t think I was good enough,

Let’s back up to the beginning. I was suffering from sciatica so badly that I truly believe the pain would’ve killed an elephant! On top of that I had a locked up ankle, a bum knee, a frozen shoulder, and a trigger thumb all on my left side. I tried the traditional path of modern medicine, but their answers were shots, drugs, or surgery. None of the doctors I went to would believe that these issues were connected to each other. These professionals all had their specialty and they never took a look at the whole body as a unit. Unfortunately, this is the norm in the medical world.

I decided to find a whole body, holistic way to deal with all of these issues simultaneously. That lead me to Corrective Posture Therapy! After my time as a client I was so impressed with how much this helped all my issues I began working for the company. After COVID though the writing was on the wall that the company wasn’t going to be able to make it long term. This was too valuable of a modality to disappear entirely!

So I took a leap of faith, and started my own company doing corrective posture therapy. I have been a business owner for two years now and it’s going so well I can hardly believe it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Corrective posture therapy is a game changer in the world of chronic pain, arthritis, balance issues, and tight muscles. Muscles are the only active fibers in our bodies: meaning they do work and use calories. Muscles love to move and to learn new ways to move. However, in our upside down society that is addicted to technology we move very infrequently in comparison to how much we should / need to move. We are stationary most of the day, with our heads looking down and our shoulders tightly curled in around a phone, computer or steering wheel.

This creates big primary muscles that become lazy and forget how to work. When we do decide to move, to play a weekly game of tennis or take the dog for a walk, for example, we end up overusing smaller muscles and they become overwhelmed and overworked very quickly. Since muscles tell bones what to do, and they aren’t able to guide the bones correctly we end up with a body that is out of alignment, tight, and just doesn’t move smoothly anymore. Our muscles have created some bad habits.

Corrective posture therapy helps break the bad habits and re-instills the good habits the muscles had at the beginning! Once the muscles are working more efficiently the bones begin to migrate back to where they should be. This releases the tension in the muscles, the grinding of bones on each other, and puts our center of gravity back in the center of our bodies improving our balance which is extremely important as we age.

Corrective posture therapy is different from physical therapy because we get to look at what the entire body is doing for the root cause of the pain / problem. Physical therapy is only allowed to focus on the part of your body that the doctor wrote your prescription for. For example let’s say you have left knee pain. Your poor knee might be overworking because your right hip is tighter than the left. This will cause the muscles on the right side of your body to become short and it will pull the right hip bone up. This leaves your poor left leg to bear most of your weight because it reaches the floor more readily. With every step you take your left knee will absorb more impact and eventually begin to hurt.

Corrective posture therapy is different than chiropractic care because bones tell muscles what to do. When your chiropractor tries to move your bones back to where they belong it’s kind of like putting the cart before the horse. Those tight angry muscles will always pull the bones back out of the position your chiropractor puts them in.

Corrective posture therapy is all exercise based and the exercise routine is created based on the clients needs, and the body’s abilities. These can be as simple as lying on the ground in a neutral position for those with herniated discs, or leaping over obstacles to improve a pro athlete’s performance. The exercises and the length of the routine are chosen based on if we see improvement in the body’s ability to move after the exercise has been completed. If the right changes aren’t seen we change the exercises until we see the desired result!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

All my life I believed that to accomplish more I had to do more, and never let up. I believed that if I took my foot off the gas pedal for even a second I would lose the race. This was the mentality I into bought to my entire life, trying to do everything at 110%. I am hardheaded so it took longer than it should have but eventually I learned that you can’t pour water from an empty pitcher. Not only is it okay to loosen up and take a break… it’s imperative!

A big part of my first career path in life was being a personal trainer and aerobic instructor, and I undertook this task just like everything else. I put myself in competition mode and over did. I became a body builder for years. Eventually I had taken on too much with a husband, three daughters, a full time and part time job. I had to ask for help. This wasn’t easy for me. I learned to be humble and ask for help from the people around me who loved me and had been offering their help for years. I had just been too proud to accept their assistance.

I learned this lesson the first time in my early 20’s, but with each new challenge I’ve taken on I have had to relearn this. The most recent was when I started my small business. I was wearing all the hats, bookkeeper, social media guru, corrective posture therapist, administrative assistant, accountant, etc. etc. I was working every hour of every day and still not able to get everything done. Then one Saturday morning when I couldn’t get my social media post to look the way I wanted it to the stress exploded a vein in my right eyeball! The next Monday I hired a book keeper and a social media person. These were things I hated doing and they stressed me out the most. I am now happily paying someone else to live their bliss (because they like doing these things) and I’m supporting other small business owners! It’s a win win all the way around.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

My reputation has been built on outstanding customer service and attention to detail. I take my time to determine what unusual movement pattern / muscle imbalance is causing my clients issues, like chronic pain. My goal is to find the root cause of the issue; not to just put a band aid on the symptoms.

I keep in touch with my clients, and track their progress. I listen when they’re talking and ingest what it is they’re saying to me. Quite often the body knows how to relieve the pain even if the brain doesn’t realize it. So, I watch what they do naturally to alleviate their symptoms, and have them mimic those movements as closely as possible. When we do this for a sustained period of time in a controlled manner the muscles at the root of the problem begin to let go.

When cleints have tried it all, physical therapy, massage, a chiropractor, or even acupuncture, with out a long term benefit they either become discouraged or determined. The determined ones often wind up at my door looking for a long term solution, and I can provide that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.professorposture.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/professorposture4u
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/professorposture4U
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christi-slaven-professorposture
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgxBXVBOVzk71YcNH1ywckA

Image Credits

Paul Gigante, Gigante productions