Life & Work with Lori Batcheller of Boulder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lori Batcheller

Hi Lori, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Lori J. Batcheller, MPT, LMT, CYT, MA

Even as a child I knew I wanted to help people. If I look back to my early years, my first experience with manual therapy started when I was 14 years old and my Dachshund, Hantz, became paralyzed from the waist down while leaping through deep snow our backyard in Massachusetts. The veterinarian told my parents we had three choices: surgery, which was far too expensive; put him to sleep to end his suffering; or, a long shot, try to rehabilitate him at home. I jumped into the role of his “therapist” immediately. Every day I massaged his limp hips and legs. My father made a sling so I could get Hantz weight bearing. I don’t remember how many weeks I faithfully did daily therapy with him, but then a miracle happened.
I was sitting in the recliner in our den with Hantz tucked in next to me watching a Billy Graham special on the television. When Reverend Graham suggested we pray, I prayed with all my might that my dog would walk again on his own and right then, while praying, Hantz jumped off the chair and started to run around the room! Whether it was coincidence or an answer to my prayer I may never know. I was elated. Hantz never had any future problems from the disc herniation that paralyzed his hind legs. It would be years many years later that I found my way into physical therapy school.
My seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Gaseck, ignited my interest in biology. I was fascinated by the white rabbit cadaver I got to bring home to dissect to preserve its spinal column. Later that year on a field trip to the Harvard Medical School Primate Research Center, I decided that I would major in biology in college and get a job there as a research assistant. After graduating with my bachelor’s degree in Biology from Colby College in Waterville, ME, it took only a year to land my dream job. About six months into my research career, I became bored and realized that being in a lab running tedious tests, looking at rhesus monkey butts to see if they were in heat (due to how red their butts were), and measuring heart x-rays to determine how much salt could be in Doritos without causing the heart to enlarge just wasn’t a fit for me. Feeling quite stressed since I had no idea what else to do with my life, I developed painful shingles and eventually quit and returned to temp work which had helped me through college.
After taking some personality and aptitude tests, I decided to attend physical therapy school at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia (now Drexel). Physical therapists were in high demand and I figured I could move anywhere, get a good paying job, and help people. To be, honest, I had no idea who I really was and put on a respected role that hid how confused I felt inside. After graduating with my master’s degree, I landed a job in Colorado Springs and worked in an acute care hospital, chronic pain unit, and then rehabilitation. After a few months of loving my job, I became very disillusioned with the medical system, which was obviously run for profit rather than putting the needs of each individual patient first. I spent the next nine years changing jobs within the physical therapy profession–outpatient facilities, hospital acute care, rehab, home health care, even teaching physical therapy assistants at a community college and working as a rehab supervisor for a home health agency. I burned out and again felt very unfulfilled. It seemed there was no place for me within the physical therapy profession.
I became increasingly depressed, not wanting to lose the seemingly ideal life that looked so good from the outside. I was a respected professional, owned a condo in South Boulder, and had all the “toys” a Boulderite requires including two bikes and two pairs of skis, along with running shoes, hiking boots, and fishing, backpacking, and camping equipment. When I didn’t quit the, the Universe stepped in to force the issue.
I was involved in my first car accident while sitting at a red light on Wadsworth Boulevard. That began what would become a 10-year search for resolving the chronic whiplash pain I suffered. It also began my search for alternative therapies when Western medicine did not resolve the pain and muscle spasm. When I stayed in physical therapy, despite the neck pain and severe burnout, the Universe gave me another nudge, or rather jolt, when two years later I was hit by another driver, resulting in a rotational whiplash injury.
I finally quit physical therapy due to a combination of burnout and chronic neck pain aggravated by my physically demanding job. I’d always loved to write and by then had gotten several articles published in physical therapy publications, so I returned to school and got a master’s in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Colorado, Boulder, intending to be a health writer. While living in Seattle and writing my first two books, I was introduced to an energy healer. Insui did off the body work called SHEN and within three visits both of my whiplash injuries resolved. Insui credited all the therapies and treatments I had received previously in addition to her work. My body, freed of the energetic restrictions from the traumas, basically returned itself to homeostasis. Energy work was something that was never even discussed in physical therapy school, let alone taught, yet I experienced it firsthand which planted a seed to learn more.
In the late1990s, still feeling like a lost soul, I discovered Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. The people I met who had lived there had a compassionate and peaceful demeanor that I wanted for myself. I ended up volunteering first for a week-long Seva (selfless service), later a 3.5-month Spiritual Lifestyle Program and, two years later, after a breakup with a man I thought I would marry, I moved in for a full year during which I wrote for their marketing department and got my yoga teaching certificate. Intending to move back to Boulder, I changed my mind when Kripalu offered me a job teaching Guest Yoga. I continued to do freelance writing for them but needed a better source of income. That’s when my physical therapy license came back into play. I was able to do massage in their Healing Arts department under my PT license and fell in love with bodywork. Instead of the restrictive Western medical system I had tried to plug myself into like a square peg in a round hole, I had a full sixty or ninety minutes hands-on with each client. The lighting was dim and soft music played in the background. I found the work very rewarding, both financially and personally.
As content as I was, I suffered from Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD) during the long, cold, gray New England winters, and I missed my chosen home of Colorado. After four years, my yearning to return to Boulder reached its peak. “Chief Niwot’s Curse” became too strong to bear. As legend has it, people who come to Boulder and see its spectacular mountains and sun-soaked valleys are cursed to never leave. If they do leave, it will not be for long, and they will be compelled to return.
After returning to Boulder. I got a job at a massage therapy chain and began to build my own clientele. I took four courses in Upledger CranioSacral Therapy (CST) and took my first John F. Barnes’ Myofascial Release Approach® course (JFB MFR). To me, JFB MFR incorporates elements of modalities I had already studied: yoga, energy work (while at Kripalu I’d become a Reiki Master in the Usui tradition,) physical therapy, massage therapy, and a holistic approach to healing incorporating not just the body, but the emotions and mind as well. Since then, I have taken all of John’s courses and repeated many, becoming an expert-level therapist in 2021. The work I do now is centered around helping clients move through pain, restricted movement and trauma, sometimes involving emotionally held areas of resistance within themselves. The results I have with my clients are amazing to witness. I love feeling areas of restriction melt under my hands and seeing the skin flush as blood flows into a once closed off region of fascia.
I’ve been called a “healer,” told that I have “magic” hands, and people leave my office feeling much more relaxed and with less pain, or completely free of the symptoms that brought them in. A lot of my clients come in with neck and back pain, acute or chronic stress, and various other restricted motion and/or painful conditions. With acute conditions, I can bring relief within a few sessions. For more chronic conditions, the length of time I see them varies widely. Many times, clients have suffered for weeks, months, or even years before they come to see me. Often after symptoms resolve, clients come back for tune-ups on a regular basis to keep symptoms and stress at bay.
I continue to repeat courses with John, now 86, and hone my skills. I now love what I do and do what I love, living in the place I love with the man and dog that I love. I may have felt like a lost soul for many years, but I’ve finally come home to my Self and, having worked through my own traumas, both emotional and physical, am present for others to work through theirs.
In looking back, I am aware that most every job I had prepared me for what I do now–running my solo private practice in South Boulder, teaching yoga for the City of Boulder, and writing health-related blogs for my website.
One of the many people who inspired me during the numerous years that I was searching for my Authentic Self and true calling said, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” And, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” Thank you, Joseph Campbell. Your words ring true.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Included in above

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am both a licensed physical therapist and licensed massage therapist with over 20 years of experience including being an expert-level John F. Barnes’ Approach to Myofascial Release therapist.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Creative, smart, nature lover, and committed to helping others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pranaphysicaltherapy.com
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRXC3sl_ueJTLS8CW2NJLrQ