Hello, it’s me! I’m glad you are here 🙂

For a long time, I viewed food and exercise as nothing more than ways to get slim. Thankfully, even old habits can die when you start paying attention to the thoughts behind your actions, and instead align your inner voice with the healthiest, happiest version of yourself. 

It all starts with the intention. Your mindset influences everything – whether you recognize it or not, it shapes the way you view yourself and the intentions behind everything you do. When you begin aligning your mindset and beliefs in a way that consistently supports your actions, you find you are capable of so much more than you imagined. 

My passion is to help others achieve this mind-body transformation and to show them just how powerful they are. 

Above is the short & sweet version. Below is the longer version. 

It’s hard not to see my journey as a student and my growth as a clinician as intertwined because both have played such a significant role in shaping who I am today. 

I have always been interested in health and wellness, especially when it came to nutrition. By age 15, I learned to understand macronutrient composition of foods, and could recite nutritional values by heart. I was enticed by natural ayurveda medicines and every new superfood. 

Of course, there is always more to the story. As a child with my interests, a shy personality, and a young, impressionable mindset I internalized the way well-intentioned adults talked about their displeasure with their bodies. This, along with social media and peer messages, convinced me that my life “would begin” as soon as I looked perfect, was perfect, and had it all perfectly together. Even typing that last sentence out now makes me cringe. Still, this was the origin story of how I started exercising (and dieting). 

As for my acedemic journey, I’m hardly what you’d call a gifted student, but I did work hard. I learned English in third grade. Language arts was the most challenging subject for me, math was fine, and science was always my favorite. I took my grades very seriously – not because of my parents, but my experience with societal and cultural norms played a role. I truly did see a grade as the amount of value I had and could give to others. Sure enough, I had one huge goal throughout grade school – excel in academics. Fast forward to high school graduation, my valedictorian speech was about “how success is defined by you, and not societal norms or what others believe is successful.” I laugh every time I read that now. You know when something is right in front of your face, and even comes out of your own mouth, but you fail to see the contradiction?

As I moved into the fitness space, I was often on and off with my workouts in the first year. You see, most of my workouts were heavily cardio-based and in my opinion, “gruesome”. Naturally, I assumed with all the movement and jumping here and there, my racing heart rate, my profuse sweating and my reddened face, I was doing something right. While I loved the feeling I got after my workout, it was still a love-hate relationship. Around 2018, strength training was gaining recognition among the fitness community. Eventually, I decided to give it a shot. I followed online videos using just my bodyweight at first. It felt challenging in a new, uplifting way. Working towards functionality and strength gave me a much-needed change of page from my usual workouts. 

Inspired by this new approach, in undergrad, I majored in Exercise Science. I also got certified in personal training and nutritional science to complement my learning as a full-time student with part-time work. This is when I became intrigued with exercise, personal development, and anatomy/physiology.  

I will always be amazed by the strength and resiliency of the human body. It’s astonishing how gradual change in structured exercise has the power to improve the condition and quality of life for patients dealing with injury rehab, neurological disorders, and even mental health conditions. 

My undergrad university just happened to have the number one Doctor of Physical Therapy program in the nation. It’s like the stars were aligning. 

In grad school, I quickly realized that something felt different. Everything was so involved and actually application-based! If I’m being honest, I’ve felt highly uncomfortable many times. Changing my mindset from “how to ace” to “how to apply” was a process. Self-doubt, confusion, slight anger, and deep questions like “what is my life’s purpose” and “what is life” were all part of that journey. But truth be told, the amount of growth I’ve experienced in those two and half years is incomparable. It was finally clear that it was never about the grades to begin with. Many kids, including me, when asked “what do you want to do when you grow up” answer “I want to help people.” It was good to realize how close I was getting to my ultimate goal. 

My full-time clinicals and Physical Therapy career have been an amazing experience. Caveat? It has also been very eye-opening. The overwhelming majority of the patients I worked with had multiple comorbidities (from a young age too!) such as heart disease, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, depression, lung disease, hypertension..etc. To them, preventative and holistic care was out of question (though I would disagree, but this isn’t my decision to make). In most cases, my patient would work with me to resolve their primary complaint – let’s just say knee pain as an example – after a few weeks of therapy, their knee pain recovers, and then they would return to life until the next ache/pain arose. To their credit, this is healthcare, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory term at all. Logically, it makes sense that when you have a problem (like knee pain), you focus on getting that fixed, and then you move on with life. But what about nourishing our mind and body in a way that truly helps us thrive in the long run? And actually, bolstering our health for a better lifestyle that creates happiness, fulfillment, and a wealth of gratitude?

Even as I raised these questions in my practice, I realized I wasn’t practicing this yet either. I prided myself on my interest in nutrition, but I was obsessive over it. Exercise came easy to me but food with my on-and-off dieting and overeating did not. It was hard to admit that this interest might have been due to some damaging ideas about how I viewed myself, how I derived self-worth as a person. Deeply rooted subconscious beliefs are exactly that – deeply rooted. They require conscious mental effort to reframe.

Once I got all of that sorted (I’m skipping the self-development stuff to avoid writing a book), everything else was actually pretty simple: I gained strength I didn’t know I had, lost body fat, came to enjoy all foods, experienced much more joy in my daily life, increased my energy, and felt at peace with myself – basically I felt like superwoman all within 6 months! It was- dare I say it…easy and…fun. 

Which makes sense, right? It wasn’t the knowledge aspect I was missing. I knew how to exercise, eat, sleep – all the physical “how to” stuff behind good health; not to mention, I had an array of fresh, scholarly research at my fingertips thanks to university resources and the glorious internet. It was always mind over matter. 

This is my story. But yours is going to be unique and equally rewarding. The good news is the general principles that guide transformation are the same. 

To you, the reader: everyone starts somewhere. Whether you’ve exercised before or not. Whether you have high blood pressure, diabetes, or both. Whether you’ve struggled with restrictive eating, overeating, or likely both. The first step toward lasting change is knowing that the healthiest, happiest version of you is already possible. And I would love nothing more than to walk with you every step of the way.

Here’s to you,

Priya