If you are stressed out, in pain, or feeling depleted and you don’t have the time or energy to figure out how to turn it around, you are in the right place and I can help. Together we can get your body back on your wellness team as your strongest and most powerful supporter.
I’m Trina Brown, a certified health coach and licensed massage therapist passionate about helping women release stress, lessen pain and anxiety, and reconnect with their powerful inner wisdom so they can practice self-care unapologetically and make peace with their bodies. Life is too short to waste another second hating our bodies and beating up on ourselves.
Stop for a moment right now and ask yourself: how long ago was my last negative thought about my body? If you’re like most women, it will be well within the past 24 hours. The added stress of all this body hatred has a profound negative impact on our health and happiness. No matter what shape, size, or physical condition, we can accept, embrace, and love our bodies now.
When it comes to wellness, there are so many demands in your hectic life on your time and your attention, and there’s so much contradictory information out there. One reliable source says eat this and don’t eat that, and another reliable source says the opposite. What’s the best kind of exercise to do? Nobody seems to agree.
Counsel that you must reduce stress because it’s hurting your health just makes you stress out even more. Being shamed into any ‘healthy’ practices has the opposite effect than what’s intended. And what about hearing that you are just going to have to learn to live with your chronic pain, that there’s nothing that can be done, or worse, that it’s all in your head?
You and your body may not be on the best speaking terms right now, but working together, we can change that so your body becomes your best friend once again, and you’re tapped into the powerful guidance of your inner expert, your inner wisdom. You’ll discover that you already know deep down what’s best for you, and living it gets easier and easier until it’s second nature.
In my 22 years of experience as a massage therapist, my study and practice as a coach, and my own health, I’ve learned that every body knows deep down how to heal itself and what it needs to function at its optimal level. And on this beautiful planet of ours, the answers for each of us are different. The answers aren’t ‘out there’ somewhere. The only expert that counts is the one within. My role is to provide the time, space, support, and a safe place to allow your mind and body to reconnect deeply with your inner knowledge and heal.
I used to hate my body. I was stressed out, working all the time, just exhausted. My life was drudgery. I was bedridden every now and then with horrible allergy attacks, I wanted to be active but just couldn’t get motivated to do it, and each day I spent just dealing with the day at hand. I didn’t look to the future or set long-term goals. I just didn’t have the drive or energy. And I lived for chocolate. It’s what got me through the day.
I used to joke that if a doctor counseled me that I could add 10 years to my life if I gave up chocolate, I’d say I guess I was going to die younger and happier.
Life was about to get a whole lot harder. On Independence Day in 2014 my husband had an accident on our farm that nearly killed him. He had a long, hard recovery, learning to walk, talk, and even swallow again.
Once he was better and no longer needed my full attention, it dawned on me that I wanted to be around a long time and to enjoy life. I had made my own health my last priority, not just for my husband’s six-month recovery, but for years. I realized that my body had been crying for help and I hadn’t been listening.
So, using my skills as a curator of information and editor for almost 30 years for higher education courses, my Bachelor’s degree in psychology, my experience as a massage therapist, and my health coach training, I learned how to manage my stress level, so I could increase my energy level beyond what it had been before. I had boundless energy, became much more active, and felt so much better.
But my journey wasn’t over. In 2017, three things happened in a short span of time. I got laid off from a full-time desk job I’d had for almost 30 years, I went through menopause, and I fell and broke my left foot. I couldn’t put any weight on my foot for 8 weeks while it healed from surgery. When I got laid off, I had quickly transitioned to full-time massage therapy. Then when I broke my foot, I couldn’t work, and I didn’t have disability income. The financial stress, physical inactivity, and crazy hormone changes made me feel so out of control. I returned to that old familiar stressed out, low-energy state, and was really down on my body. I felt like my body had sabotaged me, even betrayed me, when everything had been going so well.
Some of what I’d learned in my health coaching training didn’t work anymore for this new post-menopausal me. It was humbling to realize I didn’t have it all figured out like I thought I had. I had to go deeper. And that’s how I reconnected with my inner wisdom, with the help of nature. Instinctively, I have always turned to nature to help me through tough times. When I’m in nature I forget all the pressure and stress of who I think I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to look like to be judged ‘healthy’ in our pervasive diet culture. I tune into my inner wisdom and remember that I’m worthy and always have been, and that true wellness is about how I feel and what my body can do, not a number on a scale or a certain body size or shape.
And today, I feel half my age and I have boundless energy and confidence. I celebrate my body’s power and resilience. I have never felt stronger or more fit, and have never loved my body more than I do right now. For the first time in a long time I love the person in the mirror, from head to toe. It’s like the sun came out in my life. That’s why I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to helping as many women as I can to do the same.
In the late 1990s I was in search of a part-time occupation to supplement my income and I wanted it to be something that would make a positive impact on people around me. Then an aunt who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer described how much better she felt after she received massages. I knew then that I’d found what I wanted to do. While completing my massage training, I began work as a volunteer with Hospice of Louisville, and continued to work with Hospice until I married and moved away from Louisville.
I have been passionate about health for as long as I can remember, and I found my calling to complete my training and certification as a health coach in 2015 with the Health Coach Institute. Several years before, I graduated from a 500-hour professional massage therapy program at the Louisville School of Massage in 1998 and since then have taken hundreds of hours of continuing education in massage therapy. I’m a certified member of the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals, the highest membership level offered by this organization, and I am licensed to practice massage in the state of Kentucky (license number 108848) and in Indiana (license number MT20901301).
I worked as a developmental editor for a higher education course materials provider for 18 years, and have been helping people by researching and curating information for over 32 years. I graduated cum laude from Centre College with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and English in 1989. And I’m also a Phi Beta Kappa. I have a voracious appetite for learning, on just about any subject, and I have joked with my husband that if Centre had offered graduate-level education I’d probably still be there.
I live with my husband on a working farm. It’s extremely peaceful and quiet here and our home is on a hill overlooking alpacas grazing in pastures, woods, and our garden.
We share our lives with alpacas, horses, a goat, as well as numerous barn cats, dogs and chickens. Our animals bring so much joy to our lives.
In my ‘spare’ time I enjoy playing the cello and directing a church choir. I took up the cello as an adult after years of thinking, “someday I want to learn to play the cello.” One morning several years ago I woke up with a cello tune in my head and thought that same thought again, only this time it was quickly followed by the question, “well, what’s stopping me?” I signed up for lessons that day and rented a cello. I play in public at church and my biggest honor is playing for funerals, celebrations of lives. The cello is such a soothing instrument, both to listen to and to play.
