About Caroline
I believe we can live well.
Your body isn't broken. It's working exactly as it was built to work. The problem is that nobody taught you how to work with it.
When you live with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, hypermobility, or chronic pain, the standard advice falls apart. "Push through it." "Just exercise more." "Have you tried yoga?" None of it accounts for a nervous system on high alert, joints that don't stay where they belong, or the exhaustion of fighting a body that feels like it's working against you.
But here's what I've learned, both as a physical therapist and as someone who lives in a hypermobile body every single day:
We can't change our collagen. We can change almost everything else.
We can teach our nervous systems to find safety rather than scan for threats. We can build strength that supports our joints rather than destabilizes them. We can create environments, routines, and relationships that hold us up rather than wear us down.
I teach gentle strength, which builds a foundation in your body, your mind, and your life, that lets you live well even when your building blocks are different.
My Story
I'm a physical therapist who also lives with EDS, POTS, and the whole constellation of conditions that come with faulty connective tissue.
I was diagnosed during my final clinical rotation in PT school. The timing felt almost cruel. I was learning to help other people's bodies just as mine began to fall apart. Everything I found online was either too clinical to be useful or too chaotic to trust. I needed a bridge between research and real life, and there wasn't one.
So I built it.
I earned my Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Duke, with a focus on complex pain. I have a Master's in Education because I believe how you teach matters as much as what you teach — health information shouldn't require a PhD to understand. And I've spent years figuring out what actually works for bodies like ours. Not generic strategies. Real tools for nervous system regulation, sustainable movement, pacing, advocacy, and building a life that actually fits.
Bending Better exists because I needed help and couldn't find it.
You don't have to push through. You don't have to prove anything. You just have to be willing to try a different approach.
I'm glad you're here.