My name is Jesse James Retherford. I am a Movement Therapist and the founder and primary practitioner at The Art of Fitness in Austin, Texas. I believe you can live a pain free life, and I am dedicated to helping you do just that.

Movement Therapist

As a Movement Therapist, I have over 16 years of experience in many different movement oriented modalities, movement assessment, hands on massage therapy, personal training and coaching, and personal exercise program design. I do this work because I was my first client. In my youth, I lived recklessly. I was angry and full of fear and self judgment, which caused me to make choices that lacked value or respect for my body. Because of this internal emotional turmoil, well into my late twenties, I chose activities which literally destroyed my body. My injury history includes concussions, torn ligaments, jams, sprains, dislocations, staph infections, and five major knee surgeries. I know what it’s like to live in pain, to identify myself as “my” pain, to feel hopeless, and to believe that pain is just a fact of life.

Around the age of 35, I experienced a shift — I realized I wanted to live a long, full, active life. However “my” pain had been getting louder and louder. From deep within, I found the willingness to stop identifying my body as “the pain”, and to listen to and grow from it instead. Thus began my own healing process, which pushed me into the depths of myself emotionally, as well as physically. It forced me to take a hard look at the choices I was making around my physical body: how and why I moved and worked out; the foods I ate; my sleeping and recovery habits, among others. Most importantly I had to look at how I did or did not love, honor, and respect my body and being.

Life Changer

I recognized that the pain I experienced physically was a reflection and manifestation of the pain I held inside. My willingness to feel this pain and ultimately surrender it became my biggest asset. I learned that pain is a communication tool for your body to speak with your conscious self. The pain exists to let you know that something isn’t working, and listening to it presents an opportunity to make positive life changes. I experienced a profound shift in my life because I was willing to listen. Listening then led to a shift in my relationship and attitude around both the physical and emotional pain that I felt.

Today, I don’t recognize myself from five years ago, and for that I am profoundly grateful. By focusing on my own internal pain, I was able to fundamentally shift the way I lived my life. Instead of wanting to move and exercise because I was motivated by insecurity, self judgement, not being good enough, anger, or fear — emotional motivations that lead to poor movement choices — I learned to move from a place of loving, honoring, and respecting my body. I explored new paths of movement which were healing and restorative. I felt less physical pain. My body began to feel better. More importantly, my heart — my emotional body — now feels better.

Without doing this for myself, I would never have been able to accomplish the same with my clients. I cannot take someone anywhere I am not willing to go. This is why I continue to move deeper, learn more, ask for more guidance, and trust my body and my heart more implicitly.

This is the shift I can guide you through. Because I have been there personally, I can help guide you toward your own emotional and physical transformation. As a fellow explorer of movement, a movement coach, and a Movement Therapist, I am here to help you grow, evolve, and fundamentally change your life through movement.