Posture Specialist: Ms. Nicole Tatro, MSPT CPEP

of Elite Health & Wellness, St. Albans, VT

Ms. Nicole Tatro, MSPT CPEP, always knew that she wanted to help people through health care and education.Growing up as an athlete, she witnessed the value of physical fitness and keeping your body moving and feeling well, especially from a preventative, holistic standpoint.  Upon receiving her Master of Science in Physical Therapy from Sacred Heart University in 2001, Tatro worked at a few hospital-based rehab programs but felt stifled in the protocols she could teach and the level of patient engagement she was able to have.  From there, she moved briefly to Texas and developed a rehab department from scratch at a local hospital.  Due to distance from family, she returned to her home state of Vermont where she directed a corporate physical therapy practices before she took a huge leap of faith and opened her own practice, Elite Health & Wellness, in 2010.

“I realized that the corporate concept of physical therapy was not for me,” Tatro says.  “I have always thought a more holistic, preventative approach was best; however, that does not always fit into a corporate model.”

In developing her own brand of healthcare, Tatro wanted to approach wellness from a whole-body perspective.  She had always been interested in posture, but felt that there was never enough focus on its importance while she was in school for her MSPT.  “We learned a lot about posture in school, but it seemed to me that it pointed to a much larger epidemic.  I was concerned with what was happening with kids, in particular.  All these children were coming in, hunched over, slouched in their seats.  I just knew there had to be something I could do to work with posture.”

Upon researching posture certification programs, Tatro found the BodyZone CPEP program.  Tatro uses a gentle, holistic manual release technique to treat her patients, which she finds to work seamlessly with Dr. Weiniger’s Posture Principles. She explains that her whole brand focuses on postural assessment, which helps her to determine a patients’ wellness path.  When treating her patients, she takes into account his entire history, including major trauma, emotional challenges, and current pain issues, and then treats with a combination of soft tissue work and StrongPosture exercises to align their bodies and keep them where they need to be to continue treatment and prevent further pain and injury.

“The CPEP Program was the ‘missing link.’  It ties in so nicely with everything I want to offer at my practice.  I was told so many things when I was in a corporate setting – I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do that.  I want people to be relaxed when they come to see me.”

She continues, “The body has a unique way of healing itself if we just listen.  That’s what I love about the StrongPosture exercises:  I am giving my patients one to two things to leave with, which means they are more apt to follow through with exercises and to retain and apply the knowledge I am providing them.”

The response she has received from her clients has been tremendous.  She says, “Every person that comes into my practice has a complaint about posture.  Once they start doing the exercises, they can tell a difference in their problem areas.  One young woman recently told me that she was breathing better!  Overall, my patients are in less pain, they’re sleeping better, feeling well, and taking the initiative to change their lifestyles.”

As a one-woman practice, Tatro finds it both scary and exciting that she has so many big plans for expanding her brand in her community as her practice continues to grow.  Currently, she works with patients largely on a one-on-one basis.  However, she expects that by the end of this year, she will have ventured into providing StrongPosture Exercise classes for different demographics in her community, including a children’s “posture bootcamp,” as well as taking on corporate wellness workshops.

“This is what I love.  The whole CPEP experience has been an ‘ah-ha!’ moment for me; it’s like I am falling into exactly what I was always meant to do.”

 

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