Margaux Yiu

Pain relief for former athletes—starting with the nervous system.

I work with people who used to be athletes. Maybe club level, maybe college, maybe you just lettered in everything—and now you’re in your late 30s or beyond, sitting at a desk, still trying to stay active, but noticing that things don’t bounce back like they used to. The pain started in one spot. Now it’s spreading.

You’ve probably tried the obvious fixes: more stretching, more strengthening, more cardio. Your body’s response? “Cute. More pain.” Because when a body’s been compensating for years, it’s not short on effort—it’s running programs it learned decades ago and never updated. Muscles firing that shouldn’t be. Stabilizers gone AWOL. No amount of hammering the big muscles fixes a coordination problem.

So that's where I start: retraining how your body senses and controls movement—the small, quiet skills like breathing well, actually feeling what your body is doing, and turning on the helpers that went dormant somewhere around your second desk job. Then, we build strength and mobility on top, using Yoga Tune Up® creatively deconstructed exercises, so your body learns purer functional movements instead of working around them.

The fun part: once the coordination comes back, things like posture, gait, and grip tend to sort themselves out without you having to think about them.

Former gymnasts, tennis and volleyball players, rowers, skiers, cyclists, yogis, pickleballers—sound familiar? Message me with your athletic history (of course high school counts). Tell me where it currently hurts.

I’ve had over 1000 hours of yoga teacher and yoga therapy training over the past 18 years, and continue to learn more—not because I’m grinding towards final boss level, but because I know there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to tackling pain, so every little bit I learn will help someone.

I’m thrilled to add Tune Up Fitness tools to cover part of the process of functional movement recovery that I’d been missing.