Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Taylor Reyes.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Dr. Reyes. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I graduated with my Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Hardin-Simmons University in 2014. From there, I began my professional journey with three main goals:
1. Become a Certified Functional Manual Therapist (CFMT).
2. Serve the Women’s Health population.
3. Be apart of medical missions.
I have since, for the most part, met those goals. I became a CFMT in 2017. This certification has taught me a paradigm where I treat each patient as a whole and with functional goals instead of single body parts and template goals. I currently cater to the women’s health population by treating prenatal/postpartum patients and those with pelvic floor pain or dysfunction (i.e., incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, pain with intercourse, etc.). During my pregnancy, I was overwhelmed with how little support there is for pregnant women wanting to maintain fitness so I developed a program to encourage fitness during pregnancy with the exercises geared toward enduring the demands of natural delivery. In regards to medical missions, the door is currently not open to serve abroad physically, but in place of, I donate 10% of every initial evaluation to a prosthetic clinic and wheelchair shop in Guatemala, Transitions Foundations of Guatemala.
Somewhere in the middle of trying to meet these goals, I decided I wanted to be able to dictate how I spend my time. I also realized my patients/clients and I should be deciding what their care looks like time wise and financially rather than a third-party that sees them as merely a number. Becoming pregnant with my daughter, Collette was the catalyst I needed to start my own business. I want to show my daughter that even after you reach your goals there are still more to be met and that we are in charge of our lives. So, in 2018, I started my own practice, FIRE Physical Therapy which stands for functional, intentional, restorative, and empowered. This describes what each interaction with a patient/client should reflect and how I conduct my practice.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has been a relatively smooth road all things considered. I formed FIRE Physical Therapy in January 2018 so that all I had to do once my daughter was born was start seeing patients shortly after. She was born March 2018 and I started taking patients in April 2018. Collette is our first child so starting a business at the same time as starting the profession of motherhood is a lot to take on. You just find a way to make it work though. Yes, I may have found referral pads and business cards in her diaper bag and I have had to do admin work while pumping/nursing, but that’s just how it goes.
Please tell us about FIRE Physical Therapy.
FIRE Physical Therapy is a physical therapy practice, but not like the physical therapy practices you traditionally see. The primary assets of my clinic are my treatment table and my hands. The post-doctorate certification I received allows me to treat the body holistically and with more of an osteopathic approach that purely exercises based. There are less than 320 of us in the world with this certification so it is a very specialized and niche way of practicing in itself. In addition to specializing in holistic treatment, I specialize in women’s health/pelvic health.
There is a whole world and at times it seems like a whole other part of the body that people have no idea exist; the pelvis. No matter if you are male or female, the pelvic floor is an integral part of your “core” and if you don’t know how to properly contract your pelvic floor muscles or you don’t know how to integrate it with proper breathing/lifting, you are missing 1/3 of your core and therefore only working at 2/3 of your optimal capacity. Performance optimization aside, I also work with women dealing with pelvic organ prolapses, urinary/fecal incontinence, pelvic pain, pain with intercourse, tailbone pain, and much more. As I mentioned before, I have a program for pregnant mamas called Labor Conditioning. The premise of this program is to guide the mom through a fitness routine geared toward enduring the demands of natural delivery. Toward the end of the pregnancy, we introduce manual therapy techniques to help open up the pelvis/pelvic floor to promote a smoother delivery and reduce the risk of tearing or other adverse events. For the mamas that are on bed rest during a high-risk pregnancy, I offer home visits to go over movements that are *safe* to help reduce the adverse physiological effects that go along with being bed bound. Manual therapy services are also offered to help combat the aches and pains that go along with being in one place for an extended period of time.
As is said before, I specialize in treating the body holistically so I see clients who are dealing with post-concussive symptoms, pain related to their desk job, pain or range of motion limitation during Olympic lifts, and so much more. I also teach self-management techniques so that each client feels empowered and can learn how to manage their bodies. I crave autonomy as a practitioner and I hope the same for my patients. My goal is to keep each session functional, intentional, restorative, and empowering so that each patient/client can get back to the things they love faster.
What makes me most proud about my practice is that I can flex the experience to meet the specific needs of each person I work with. On another note, it makes me very happy that my practice is an avenue for serving others. As I mentioned before, 10% of each initial evaluation goes to a prosthetic clinic and wheelchair shop in Guatemala. Both my patients and I can serve others across borders while we focus on the things that are important to us.
What were you like growing up?
Growing up I was a tom-boy for a very long time. I grew up in the country and showed pigs at the country fair every year. I bought a horse and a trailer with the money I earned thinking I’d start barrel racing, but turns out I wasn’t any good at that. My dad is from Texas, but my mom is from Guatemala. We would spend the summers in Guatemala every year probably until I went to grad school. My grandfather was a cattleman so we (my cousins, sister, and I) would spend time riding horses, exploring, and doing whatever young kids do at that age, but in a tropical rainforest environment. I would say that I was adventurous, but not wild. I loved/love trying anything and almost everything. I never sat still and I would say that’s still relatively true today.
Contact Info:
- Website: firephysicaltherapy.com
- Phone: 9403000010
- Email: firephysicaltherapy@gmail.com
- Instagram: @firephysicaltherapy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FIREPhysicalTherapy
Image Credit:
Beth McElhannon Photography (for the headshot)
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