We were lucky to catch up with Joanna Dawson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Joanna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?
As a health educator, working in the fitness industry gave a unique perspective that after 11 years I’m confident in saying: diet culture is killing us. The fitness and wellness industries are based on marketing. From big box gyms to apparel, brands are oriented on the product. We all know the cost of healthcare is out of control, but as a 37-year-old Millennial, I represent a group that is the first in modern times that won’t outlive their parents. How does it it make sense that in a $30B industry (Fitness and Wellness) that increases year by year, our collective health continues to struggle?
The most common causes of death are completely preventable reasons stemming from high stress, to lack of physical movement and poor community bonds. The Fitness world is hyper fixated on performance, aesthetics and athleticism, but even the WHO recognizes health includes more than the body. Personally I’ve lost 100lbs and have a keen understanding of the mental, emotional, social and other aspects that contribute to well-being. I had to reorient my relationship to stress and address unhealthy mental patterns. Corporate America can take blame for people’s shame around their bodies and how it creates a grind culture amongst fitness pros. There’s always pressure to conform rather than question the status quo. From insufficient wages and hours to limited benefits (if you’re lucky), fitness professionals tend to accept the workplace dynamics. I find it incredulous that trainers make $17/hour, or to split wages 60% to the business and 40% to the provider or vice versa. I find it unbelievable that a woman with more years experience at the same place would make less per hour than a new hire – but there are no wage protections for women-identifying and other historically marginalized people. These were all my experiences and it’s part of why I’m opening my own studio, because I believe if I stay oriented on genuine health it will help shift the cultural norms.
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.
I don’t know who said it, but the idea is your core wounding becomes your calling? I work in the wellness and fitness industries because I’ve had to save myself. Physically, mentally, emotionally – practically every aspect of myself as a person has been in the trash can at some point. Multiple points. And I’m so proud of who I’ve become, because despite it all I’m still sensitive. I came to the fitness industry in 2012 after working in public health, changing my relationship to my body and going through a divorce. I was at my lowest but started to manage my stress better by getting out of my usual ways. I found the Enneagram personality system, which was like a cheat code for observing my thoughts and actions. By 2015 I was using the Enneagram in combination with movement and exploring how emotions related to physical sensations. The mind and body are connected and I find that most everyone improves their lives through deeper somatic, or body awareness. I help people create better for themselves in mind and body, through group or individual coaching. Individually I work with clients to improve form and function with isolated and targeted movements whether they’re managing pain, chronic conditions or looking to expand their fitness.
By this point I was getting somewhere. I was in San Francisco, had business partners with a mutual vision and we opened a fitness center, only to learn the building was bought out the day of our opening. The timing was critical and further impacted by the passing of my mentor and partner in the project. The one who would ask in morning orientations, “if you could take this anywhere – what would be your ultimate vision?” and get as excited as I was to exclaim that I wanted to change how people define health. That someday we would use that word in completely different meaning.
In the aftermath I let it all go and moved to Vermont. I figured I could exist inside the fitness norms, and be happy enough to find some peace in nature. It’s hard to mark the moment where the light switched again, but it did. Maybe it was the pandemic, or the buildup of hearing women mightly judge and shame themselves. But I reached the boiling point again in January, and so I’m opening a studio on October 26. After 11 years I know I have something that’s different. I’ve helped clients resolve pain when they’ve been ‘fired’ from PT’s for being too complicated. One doctor I meet has a prescription from her doctor because our training helped her health so much. There’s a whole other conversation about healthy boundaries between providers and clients, but what I’m proud of is the approach I have now. That incorporates the physical and mental, without oversharing or giving too much. I’m able to give without holding someone’s personal details or trauma dumping my own. What I want people to know is that movement is a way to practice confronting life’s challenges. We are fixated on how much someone can squat, but there’s more what makes up our health. It’s about deepening your relationship to yourself, and opening a space to unite training mind and body without pressure for aesthetics or performance makes me ecstatic!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn so much social coding around being a people pleasing ‘nice person’. We give ‘fight or flight’ response it’s due credit, but the other response of ‘fawning’ needs attention. It’s a survival mechanism and it’s what women are encouraged to be – fixated on the mood and serving those around them rather than aware of their internal needs, thoughts and feelings. At the worst state of mental health, I remember feeling like a doll, like a representation of a person with no original thoughts inside. The hardest part about growing and healing is that it brings you down from dissociative tendencies. Once you become present you start to see the ways being ‘nice’ was not the same thing as being kind, and it was often to my detriment. I think the lesson I’ve unlearned is that being real is worth everything. There is no risk for standing up for what I believe in, except that if I don’t I risk discounting myself.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Does right now count? In 2023 my career expectations and sense of self-respect have completely revolutionized. Last winter and for the last few years I’ve been an independent contractor, not making enough money while visiting clients or working out of various studios. Without benefits or sick days off (vacation is a fantasy). I had an attitude that if I kept my head down and stuck to my own lane, that I could carve out enough to get by. But it’s like smashing open the side of a fire hydrant – a release of my energy without any control or consideration. I’ve commuted as a cyclist or walking full-time for nearly 5 years, through enough stormy weather I’m constantly asking myself, ‘did it really need to go that way?’. I’ve allowed studios to downplay my services, despite knowing I had more to offer. I used to set my life up in ways that wasted my potential.
That was last year. Today I’m sitting in the middle of construction on my studio, and the satisfaction is indescribable. My business isn’t financially thriving (yet!), but the potential is different. The way I prepare for the week and month ahead aren’t just ‘me getting by’ anymore. Coming to terms with what wasn’t working in my business and putting in the effort to change it was in parallel with my sense of self. Healing my life has taken a long time, and this transition is one of the biggest!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.healthineffect.com
- Instagram: @healthineffect, @jodawson22
- Facebook: facebook.com/healthineffect
Image Credits
Owen Leavey photography