I’m Michal (pronounced MEE-khal, with the ‘kh’ like in Bach). I help you reduce and prevent back pain by learning how to realign your body based on our human evolutionary blueprint.

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My work turns physics, anatomy, and biomechanics into simple, practical tools you can use immediately in how you sit, stand, walk, bend, sleep, and carry yourself throughout the day. Rather than exercises or treatments, I teach you to inhabit your body differently in everyday life, making small but powerful adjustments that support healthy alignment and that you can maintain on your own. As a certified health coach trained through the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, I help you turn insights into sustainable daily habits that support long-term health.

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If you live with chronic back pain, you’ve likely tried many things to get rid of it so you can move through daily life without pain or limitation. You may have received a lot of advice, undergone treatments, or followed exercise programs. Yet despite your best efforts, you’re still in pain and often living with the constant fear that it will worsen or return.

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We evolved to be strong and resilient, and our bodies are capable of supporting us well into old age. Chronic pain is often a signal that we are not using our bodies in ways that support how they are designed to function. While you might think of posture as something aesthetic or optional, the modern back-pain crisis largely reflects a widespread loss of healthy human alignment and of the knowledge of what it is and how it feels. In most cases, back pain is a mechanical problem that can be understood and addressed. When you learn what healthy posture looks and feels like, and how to maintain it in everyday life, you gain the tools to resolve pain and prevent it from returning.

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Poor posture is not something people choose or cause through negligence, and back pain is not a personal failure. How we use our bodies is shaped both by the environments we live in (think wide couches designed for slouching) and by imitation (spoiler alert: we have very few good role models). Most of us have absorbed our alignment habits in industrialized societies that have been cut off from postural wisdom and from environments that no longer preserve and support the body’s natural structure. The good news is that it is never too late to learn how to use your body differently.

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I have studied the principles of natural human alignment for more than a decade, first to heal my own pain and then to help others do the same. My work is rooted in the principles of Aplomb, an alignment-based approach pioneered in France by the late Noëlle Perez-Christiaens. Her groundbreaking discoveries, including the importance of anterior pelvic tilt, spinal length, and natural load-bearing through the skeleton, remain surprisingly little known today, yet they profoundly reshape how posture and movement are understood. (You can read more about the Aplomb lineage and how this work evolved here.)

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I first encountered Noëlle Perez-Christiaens’s principles of natural alignment through the Gokhale Method. Like many people who come to this work, I arrived after years of chronic back pain and trying everything else. Esther Gokhale’s personal recovery story, combined with her clear and compelling presentation of alignment principles, convinced me to give it a chance. I began by applying the principles outlined in her book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back and experienced meaningful improvement. That experience led me to take the next step: a hands-on Foundations course with teacher John Carter. Several years later, I completed the Gokhale Method Teacher Training Program and became a qualified Gokhale Method Teacher. I also completed the Balance Certification training with Jean Couch, founder of the Balance Center.

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Ultimately, my desire to study the source of the alignment approach more deeply led me to seek out the small remaining group of devoted Aplomb teachers in France, all long-term students of Noëlle Perez-Christiaens, who continue to transmit her work to those who actively pursue it. Living in France and speaking French allowed me to study hands-on with these teachers and to immerse myself in Perez-Christiaens’s original body of work, from her doctoral thesis to her many now out-of-print books.