Welcome to the family

Catie started her training in her mother's dance studio, training in ballet, jazz, and modern dance 6 days a week. She attended many intensive dance programs including 2 years at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet's summer program. She was later accepted into the Alvin Ailey summer program, which she ultimately turned down in favor of a visit to the San Francisco Circus Center... but more on that later.

During her dance years, Catie was introduced to contortion by a friend, as this was pre-YouTube days. She immediately fell in love with the discipline and started self-training by watching every Cirque du Soleil video on repeat (she doesn't recommend this, but there were no coaches and she had a dream, dammit!).

Before signing for life away to contortion, she performed in countless dance performances, competed in Power Tumbling at the Junior Olympics, and choreographed dance and contortion routines for herself and her peers.

During this time she trained in many different disciplines with numerous dance teachers, tumbling coaches, hand balancers, aerialists, and contortionists. This was the very beginning of her interest in different coaching styles, and she was able to learn so much from having the privilege of training under so many professionals with unique perspectives and skill sets.

When she was 16, she decided to pursue contortion as a career and moved across the country to train at the only circus school in the US at the time: Circus Center in San Francisco, CA.

At first, Catie trained under the master Chinese coaches. But the Chinese style* of training was incredibly harsh, and shortly after arriving she was pushed too hard (physically) by the coaches and ended up with a back injury that caused her to have serious back pain and lose a lot of her natural flexibility.

After that, Catie continued to perform, back injury and all, but took a break from being coached, as she now had serious concerns about people pushing her too far.

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*In the circus community, the Chinese style of training is notoriously extreme

Finally, at the persistence of a close friend, Catie started working with Mongolian contortionist Serchmaa Byamba, who was able to help her get back some of her flexibility and gain a lot of new contortion technique. During this time Catie learned (through trial and error) an lot about training flexibility, and what did and didn't work. As well as many secrets of the Mongolian contortion style.

Although Catie was able to continue performing (and training) for a few more years, her back injury was ultimately the victor. Which sucked. She wanted to be a performer! But after some serious sadness and reflection, Catie decided to channel her energy and passion into teaching people how to SAFELY improve their flexibility.

In the years leading up to this decision, Catie learned about the importance of training from the ground up rather than forcing flexibility, and she knew she could teach with a fresh perspective. She didn't want anyone to suffer the same fate as her, and with so many coaches out there just focused on pushing people to the (literal) breaking point, she wanted to be the voice of change in an industry steeped in tradition and master coaches using outdated techniques.

And that's how, with her many highs and lows, unique learning experiences, and the wisdom of the good and bad coaches alike, Catie has been able to teach 1000s of students how to safely pursue the art of contortion — and continues her work to change the mentality around stretching and contortion training.