Paul Schell

Why this exists

I’ve been helping people improve their health for over 30 years, from personal and athletic training in college through posture therapy and functional training. These days I spend most of my time supporting our therapists rather than seeing clients — teaching is the part I’ve always enjoyed most.

I came to this the way a lot of our clients do: through my own injuries. Rugby, football, wrestling, basketball, triathlons, snowboarding, mountain biking. Shoulders, knees, back, neck, ankles, feet. Traditional physical therapy rehabbed each injury when it happened, but I kept running into a pattern where an old injury quietly created a new problem somewhere else. A snowboarding injury to one knee ended up overloading the good leg. My low back would act up for no reason I could name.

I had a degree in Kinesiology with an emphasis on Athletic Training from San Diego State — anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, injuries, rehab — and it still didn’t explain that. I’d been trained in the classic Western model and didn’t know much about whole-body approaches to healing.

On a flight home from China after graduating, I read the Posture and Pain section of Kendall’s Muscles: Testing and Function — the one book I’d carried across several cities and the Great Wall. It gave me a first real look at how interconnected the body is. That sealed it.

Background

A few years later a friend introduced me to Pete Egoscue, and I went to work at his Del Mar clinic as an exercise therapist. I became Education Director, running seminars, talks, and classes on postural therapy in the U.S. and internationally for acupuncturists, chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, and personal trainers. I developed the Posture Alignment Specialist certification and training curriculum, then moved over to the franchise side of the business.

My wife Nicole and I founded Inspire Wellness, took over a failing clinic in West LA, and moved it to Santa Monica in 2008 — it became the top-producing clinic in the network within a couple of years. We opened a second in Beverly Hills in 2012, then Boston in 2014. We later ended the franchise relationship and went independent as Activ8 Posture.

Today I actively support our therapists and work to facilitate, empower, and guide them in helping clients get out of pain and back to functional movement.