I studied Human Development and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, then Sociology in Manchester, UK and I researched the social-emotional development of children living in poverty in the Dominican Republic with Plan International.

I was fascinated by how our environments, relationships and experiences shape who we become.

At the same time, I was trying to understand something much more personal:

My own body.

I had been living with scoliosis since I was a pre-teen and the questions I was asking about how humans develop, adapt and change were about to become very personal.

Scoliosis made the question personal.

For years, I heard different versions of what my future might look like: wait and see, my curves will get worse 1 degree a year, learn to manage it.

And for a long time, I did what so many of us do when we believe something is wrong with our body:

I tried to fix it.

I stayed up late Googling my diagnosis, searching for anything that might explain what was happening or what I could do about it. I tried different approaches. Became a yoga teacher, specialized in yoga for scoliosis. Learned more about movement. Asked more questions.

But none of the answers I found were good enough — just 'wait and see,' or worse, 'there's nothing you can do, this is just what happens as you get older.'

So I decided to build the answer myself — for me, and for anyone else hearing the same thing.

That decision meant changing my career completely. It took me to University College London and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, where I completed my MSc in Physical Therapy in Musculoskeletal Healthcare & Rehabilitation and received the Dean’s Research Prize.

But the more I learned, the more I kept coming back to one question:

What else might be possible?

That question became the foundation for SCOLIOFITNESS, a methodology I created to bridge the gap between physical therapy and fitness and help people with scoliosis build strength and confidence in their bodies.

And along the way, my own curves did something I had once feared they couldn't.

They improved.

This became SCOLIOFITNESS — and later grew into Brain • Bones • Body.--> See how it works

There’s a much longer version of this story.

In the first episode of In Your Bones, I share the diagnosis, the years I spent trying to fix and control my body, the conflicting advice I received, and what eventually changed the way I understood, and related to my body.

But the work was never only about a spine.

From the outside, SCOLIOFITNESS was easy to understand: scoliosis + movement.

Behind the scenes, the work had always been more integrative.

The more I worked with my own body and the more people I worked with, the harder it became to look at movement in isolation.

I became increasingly interested in the brain and nervous system, in bone health and longevity, in the mind-body relationship — in how stress, movement, sleep and our everyday lives interact.

I kept studying: neurology, integrative health, hypnosis and subconscious work, somatic approaches, traditional practices alongside modern ones.

And eventually, the public version of my work became too small for the work I was actually doing.

And some of what I’m learning feels like remembering.

Long before I had degrees or research, there was my Vietnamese heritage.

Food was how my family came together. It was how we showed love to each other and, in many ways, to ourselves. Meals nourished more than our bodies. Around the table, we shared stories, passed down traditions and stayed connected to our culture.

I watched my grandmother care for herself through touch, acupressure and lymphatic massage with vibration - practices I would encounter again years later through my own studies.

 I come from people who believed another life was possible.

My family escaped communism and risked everything to build a new life in the United States, so their children and the generations after them could have opportunities they never had.

When I think about the courage and adaptability that required — stepping into the unknown because they believed something else was possible — I recognize a question that has followed me through my own life:

What else might be possible?

I know the life I get to live exists, in part, because of the risks people before me were willing to take.

I don't want to waste it. I want to really live it.

To take the opportunity. Go somewhere new. Try the thing. Keep learning. Love people. Stay curious. Say yes.

Living fully, for me, is a way of honoring where I came from.

And I kept coming back to the brain.

The deeper I went into neurology, the more fascinated I became by one of our greatest abilities:

We can adapt.

Our brains are constantly learning from experience, responding to our environment and shaping how we sense, move, connect and navigate the world.

And that matters far beyond pain, posture or performance.

It matters for how we experience our lives.

That's why I care about brain health. Bone health. Movement. Connection. The mind-body relationship. All of it.

Because yes, I want more years.

But I want more life in those years.

I want to continue traveling. Eat incredible food. Wander somewhere I've never been. 

And I want to keep doing those things through every season of my life.

Which brings me here.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of 

BRAIN • BONES • BODY

Brain health. Bone health. Movement.

I'm interested in what happens between them - how the brain helps organize movement, how the body senses and responds, how our bones adapt across a lifetime, and what all of that can mean for the way we move through our lives.

It's the intersection of my work that I've been moving toward for years.