Lavinia Magliocco

I trained as a ballet dancer professionally at North Carolina School of the Arts and School of American Ballet, leaving home at 14 to dance. After being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and told I would never be able to dance again, I spent about 9 years getting progressively more ill. At age 30, I had surgery that removed part of my intestine, and then I discovered Pilates and started very slowly putting my body back together again. Within 3 years, I reconnected with the dance community and was serendipitously invited to the Met Opera in New York, where I was offered a job at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City and danced there for 6 years. I then got my Pilates certification, came to Oregon, taught at Oregon Ballet Theater, and set up Nike's Pilates program. I established my own Pilates studio and became known for working with professional dancers who were injured and people with neurological disorders, adapting Pilates to help people who were disabled or couldn't do certain movements without assistance. After I had cancer and blew out my back, and the studio where I was working for 20 years closed, I saw it as a sign from the universe that I couldn't rely on my body for the rest of my life. I applied to the clinical rehabilitation counseling program at Portland State University and realized I really loved the clinical work. Being a body person all my life, I fell in love with somatic psychotherapy. My dad was a psychiatrist, so this wasn't a complete pivot. I became licensed and started practicing, adapting my own studio for psychotherapy. I am now in private practice through my company, Equipoise Integral Counseling, which evolved from Equipoise and Lightened Exercise. I work with clients from their late teens on up into seniors, specializing in working with LGBTQI+ individuals, creatives, and men and women in their second act who are reinventing themselves. I have also been a writer and recently published several articles with Psychotherapy Networker, and I am working on my memoir.