We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lauren Mallari-snyder a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Lauren thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

They were both present. I can’t recall a time that they weren’t both there to cheer me on at my dance competitions, track meets, graduations or there to console and support me through hard times. Or, if they weren’t both there, I don’t remember that, and I think that says a lot about how well my parents worked and loved, together. I guess I just always felt the double strength love of both parents, even if it was just coming from one!

This impacted my life and career by giving me the confidence to try. It’s not in my nature to be brave. But, for example, when I did get the guts up to open our physical therapy practice, I knew I could do it because my parents knew I could do it and I trusted their judgement. So I kind of stole their confidence I guess. But it worked!

Their relationship, showing up equally in parenthood, also impacted my life and career. I work with my husband and we also became parents last year, so there’s a lot of task and love sharing going on in our world! My parents have set a great example of how to do that. They’re both currently watching our son as I type this!

Lastly, they loved on each other. I distinctly remember squeezing my way in between their legs whenever they were hugging or kissing. And I remember my Mom sitting on my Dad’s lap when we were at parties. I just love me some PDA and they did it well! Working with my husband sometimes makes the PDA thing weird, but then I remember, this is our business, we can do what we want! And thinking back to how cute my parents were/are helps to remind me that I wanna be like that. So, you can catch me upping my in office PDA with my husband!

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.

Hi! My name is Lauren and I’m a Doctor of Physical Therapy, specializing in pregnancy, postpartum, and pelvic floor. I help people strengthen their pelvic floor and core, stop leaking, eliminate pain with sex and prep for birth! I got in to this specialty 12 years ago after, frankly, being pissed off that there wasn’t better care for the Mothers in our world.

At that time, I was working only with people who had issues with their back, knees, shoulders, hips…etc and I’d notice that many of them could not connect with their pelvic floor enough to create an effective core brace or even know what I was talking about. And some of them would also share with me that they would sometimes leak pee when they laughed or sneezed or experienced pain with sex. And this is what set me off.

Many of these patients were women who brought babies into our world, through their bodies! and all we had to offer them were messages of “Hurry up and get back to work.”, “Thats the price you pay for a cute baby!” or “That’s just the way it is after a baby.” At that time, pelvic floor therapy was not readily available or even known and issues “down there” were taboo to talk about. Women were/are just expected to act as normal, and actually stress their bodies even more as they carry a baby around all the time, figure out how to feed them and lug around an awkward car seat all while their body is at a deficit as its trying to heal from birth. Again, I was pissed.

So, from then on, I focused my postdoctorate education in pelvic floor health, pregnancy, postpartum and doula work to help patients with issues like urinary leaking, pain with sex, prolapse, anorgasmia, birth prep and postpartum return to exercise.

In 2018, I opened THRIVE to treat this population and soon after, my husband joined, adding his manual orthopedic specialty for patients with non-pelvic floor concerns. We now have grown to include another pelvic floor and manual lymphatic drainage physical therapist, Dr. Rowena and our office manager, Jori!

I’m most proud of our vast skill set we get to flex in the approachable and home-y environment we’ve created at Thrive. We get to do one-on-one, hands on body work + neuromuscular retraining + exercise all in one session with our patients and I’m just so proud of that!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

In relation to working as a physical therapist, I had to unlearn how to treat someone based on the insurance company’s dictation, rather than just what I felt was best for the patient.

But now, having Thrive, we can treat how we want! Being out-of-network allows us to use whichever treatment options we think would be best for our patients. Emerging from the insurance suppression has been freeing and gratifying for both us PTs and our patients!

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Speaking and connecting with “regular” talk. I’ve never been one for formalities or fancy doctor talk and it”s always been important to me to connect with my patients by “speaking their language”. I love a quote I heard from Shanté Cofield, who I think heard it from John Wooden, which said, ” It doesn’t matter what YOU know, it matters what THEY learn”. To succeed in my field, my patient has to get better. And they can only get better if THEY can understand whats going on and how to help themselves too. I mean, I’m pretty good! But not that good. I wish I could wave my magic wand hands and “fix” everyone, but thats not the case. Physical therapy requires a lot of the patient too, so it’s imperative we teach effectively so they learn what’s going on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sdthrive.com
• Instagram: @thrivephysicaltherapysd
• Facebook: @thrivephysicaltherapysd
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/thrive-physical-therapy-san-diego-san-diego-2

Image Credits

Jackie Batch