Who is LisaAnn McCall
The Journey to McCall Method
Before I became accomplished in different sports, a brief description of my childhood. Truth is, I was uncoordinated and fell a lot.
I wasn’t able to participate in organized sports, like tennis, because I didn’t even have the upper body strength to hold the racquet. But my desire to be an athlete never waned. And that disconnect – between my athletic aspirations and my actual abilities – served as the fuel for later athletic successes and for the creation of The McCall Method.
Pioneer. It’s the one word that describes both my professional career as a physical therapist and my athletic accomplishments spanning several decades.
While I crossed the finish line in several marathons, I also was counted among the first females competing in the early days of triathlons. During the early 1990s, I was ranked among the top 20 Texas female triathletes. I struggled with injuries during this time and, maybe not entirely coincidentally,
I soon became a physical therapist. I immediately was hired by a group of the top 10 orthopedic surgeons in the entire Southwest. After three years I felt the need to grow and build my own physical therapy practice. I entered the emerging world of yoga: first as a practitioner and soon as an instructor. When I saw many of yoga’s shortcomings, the McCall Method soon began taking shape.
My first book, McCall Body Balance Method, Simple Concepts for Ageless Movement, was born in 2001. Then, I started raising eyebrows again: I began to teach how to walk and run barefoot. This radical idea came years before the barefoot running book Born to Run popularized running sans shoes. To this day, I help clients navigate their way through foot, ankle and knee pain with the principles I refined through barefooting.
But wait, there’s more!
To stay healthy and injury-free, I also saw the importance of learning and practicing what I call ‘skilled movements.’ In my 50s I boxed, practiced the martial art of Wu Shu, parkour and ninja and now as I tiptoe into my 60s, I’m adding Kung Fu to my resume of personal movement.
My physical therapy practice
During a wonderfully fulfilling 30-year career, I’ve been able to help everyone from professional athletes to physicians and surgeons to thousands of regular people get out of pain. You name it — arthritis, joint disease, and chronic pain — and the McCall Method brings relief where other approaches fall short.
Testimonial
Jeff Gross reflects on how the McCall Method saved his knees.
What is The McCall Method?
The McCall Method heals people through their own everyday movements. It draws upon your body’s own inner wisdom to feel good.
Testimonial
Denise Kahofer shares how LisaAnn McCall brought her back from serious back surgery.
History of McCall Method
The beginnings of the McCall Method, in a way, date back to those first days humans stood upright and began to walk. More than 20 years ago, when I was trying to unify my yoga teaching and our daily movements, I read about how people in different global cultures enjoyed moving and working through their days without pain in their joints or muscles. The author, Angie Thusius, had been introduced to this ability to move and work without pain in different international communities by Noel Perez.
For years, Perez researched how men and women from different ethnic backgrounds walked, carried heavy loads and moved through their lives without pain. Thusius developed the Kentro Body Balance guidelines from Perez’s research.
With my knowledge and experience as a physical therapist with more than 20 years experience, along with the work of Thusius and Perez, I developed the McCall Method. We all agree on one fundamental: how Western civilization defines “correct posture” and ways to move is often much different than in other global cultures. These ethnic and indigenous groups lead lives that demand an excessive amount of manual labor, yet they do it with comfort, strength and ease. Looking for examples of this movement closer to home? Just watch the way children play and move through their days, especially before they start attending school. We can learn so much from their natural movement in their early years before adults begin teaching them “correct postures.”
