Welcome to Steele Physical Therapy
Blending Evidence-Based Pain Science Research with Manual Hands-On Techniques for People of All Ages
Book a Consult Session In Santa Monica or Culver City
Welcome to Steele Physical Therapy
Blending Evidence-Based Pain Science Research with Manual Hands-On Techniques for People of All Ages
Book a Consult Session In Santa Monica or Culver City
So... what's "integrative" PT, and why does it matter?
Here's the short version: standard physical therapy often targets where it hurts. Integrative physical therapy asks why it hurts — and then goes looking for the answer in more than one place.
That means I'm looking at your joints, your fascia, your movement patterns, and your nervous system. Because chronic and complex pain rarely has a single, tidy cause. More often, it's a combination of structural restrictions, muscles that have checked out, and a nervous system that's been stuck in overdrive for way too long.
Each session is 50 minutes — just you and me, no aides, no distractions. We move through hands-on manual therapy, targeted movement work, and education that actually makes sense (no jargon, I promise). The goal isn't just to feel better for a few days. It's to understand what's going on in your body and build the kind of lasting change that sticks.
Whether you're an athlete trying to get back to peak performance, or someone who just wants to get through the day without hurting — this approach works because it doesn't ignore anything.
This might be for you if:
This might be for you if:
You've done PT before and it helped — but only for a while
You've been told your imaging looks "fine" but you're definitely not fine
Your pain is hard to explain, seems to move around, or flares up in ways that don't make sense
You're an athlete who keeps re-injuring the same thing
You want a practitioner who will actually listen and treat you like a whole person — not a diagnosis code
the Process
the Process
Mechanical
Clearing Structural Restrictions to Restore Optimal Movement, aka Getting Your Body Out of Its Own Way
Before anything else, we need to address what's physically restricting your movement. Tight fascia, joint restrictions, soft tissue tension — these aren't just uncomfortable, they're signals that your body has been compensating, probably for longer than you realize.
Using hands-on manual therapy (think: myofascial release, joint mobilization, craniosacral work, visceral mobilization), I work to clear those restrictions and restore the kind of fluid, pain-free movement your body is actually capable of. Most people are surprised by how much better they feel after just a few sessions of real structural work.
Neuromuscular/ motor control
Activating the Right Muscles for Stability and Mobility, aka Reminding Your Body How to Move
Here's something most people don't know: a huge part of pain and dysfunction isn't about weakness — it's about the wrong muscles doing the work. After an injury or during chronic pain, your body recruits compensation patterns that feel normal but quietly make things worse.
This is where we retrain the system. We identify which muscles have gone quiet, get them re-engaged, and rebuild the kind of coordinated, efficient movement that actually protects your joints and reduces strain. Less "do 3 sets of 10." More "let's figure out why your hip is doing your lower back's job."
Cognition/emotion
The Role of the Mind-Body Connection in Pain and Healing…Because Your Nervous System Has Opinions
This one surprises people the most — and it's often the missing piece.
Pain isn't just a physical event. It's processed, amplified, and sometimes perpetuated by the nervous system and the brain. If you've ever had pain that seemed to flare up under stress, or that spread to places that didn't make anatomical sense, this is why.
I use evidence-based approaches — Pain Neuroscience Education, vagus nerve techniques, nervous system regulation — to help your body shift out of a chronic threat state and into actual healing mode. This isn't "it's all in your head." It's "your head is part of your body, and we're treating all of it."