Marika Baxter PT, MSPT OCS
For as long as I can remember I’ve felt aware. Of the unseen and the unspoken. What was underneath the surface of the visible and tangible world. And like many, this less objective or "knowable" landscape felt off limits to explore. Until.
My healing journey started with the physical body. As a gymnast, I experienced many injuries and had a series of knee surgeries in high school. After going through cycles of rehabilitation and having this profession in my lineage, I went to college to pursue a degree in physical therapy. As I continued to heal myself and work with patients, my awareness of these invisible and less objective threads grew. I began seeking the knowledge and understanding of what it was I was perceiving and why it was woven into the experience of pain.
Through my immersion into these questions, I've come to understand that it's not only our physicality that needs healing. I began to study the profound affects the psyche and subtle energy have on how we experience being in this body. Our traumas - personal, lineage and collective - inform our beliefs and perceptions of ourselves and our circumstances. When unprocessed, they affect how our energy and life force flows. And ultimately, what is unmet manifests in our bodies. Dysfunction in our nervous systems, musculoskeletal system and movement patterns are just some ways this can be expressed. I believe it is in meeting these parts of ourselves and dissolving the separation from within that we can begin to truly heal and ease our suffering. And that perhaps it isn't just healing we are seeking after all, but a return to wholeness. In soma, psyche and spirit.
For me, the experience of being human began to transform as I brought what was unconscious into my awareness to be seen, heard, and loved. As I unraveled these beliefs and layers of conditioning, the constrictions in my physical body and energy shifted. As I inhabited more of myself, my relationship with pain changed, and I felt safe to embody and express my authenticity. This ever unfolding path of connecting to my true nature allowed me to see that understanding this less tangible landscape was not off limits after all. That the search for healing myself was in fact illuminating how I would continue to serve in the transformation of others.
My work is always evolving and currently sits at the intersections of physical, emotional, energetic, intergenerational, and spiritual worlds of healing and transformation. As a certified Realization Process Teacher and IFS practitioner in training, I use somatic meditation practices and self inquiry to give clients an interoceptive experience of wholeness. To reclaim their own aliveness and to unravel constrictions that limit their ability to experience themselves and the world, both physically and energetically. With my background as a physical therapist and Pilates instructor, I use breath and movement to help people experience and embrace their whole, authentic Self.
I look forward to meeting you. With love,
Marika
"I sought out Marika Baxter for Pilates instruction because she is also trained as a physical therapist. As I’d hoped, her multi-faceted understanding of body mechanics has informed her teaching as she shows me how to exercise within my limitations.
Unexpectedly, she has given me more. She has shared her wisdom about how to discover myself through the medium of my body—which is, after all, my “self.” Marika is calm, kind, and generous with her knowledge. I feel lucky to work with her."
- C.S., Connecticut
My training - the more traditional story
I attended Springfield College graduating in 2003 with my Masters of Science in Physical Therapy. After graduation I fervently studied manual therapy and Pilates. I draw from these 17 years as a PT as I continue to work with the nuances of being human. Body language, posture, how we move and breathe, all hold information in our beautifully circuitous path toward healing and wholeness. My aromatherapy training was through Aromahead Institute. I am certified in the Realization Process through Judith Blackstone and am currently studying Internal Family Systems with Richard Schwartz. I have studied with Wendy DeRosa in energy healing and living as an embodied empath, and am informed by the work of Loch Kelly, Thomas Huebl, and Matt Kahn among others. During my career as a physical therapist I had the privilege of working in the dance medicine world helping dancers to be in loving relationship with their primary instrument, the body.