They couldn’t be more different. One is short; the other tall. One is Chinese-American; the other Caucasian. They were raised on opposite coasts of the country – one in Long Island; the other in San Francisco. One earned a degree in physical therapy; the other in statistics. One knew exactly what she wanted to do from the time she was 14 years old; the other had no idea, even after earning her graduate degree. Yet for Michele Jang and Trish Brown, the disparities between them are far less important than the shared dream that brought them to the Central Coast just a few months before the year 2003 began.

Born and raised just outside Chinatown in San Francisco, Jang was the youngest of six children. Often left alone to care for her ailing grandmother, Jang was introduced early to the anguish associated with chronic illness. Motivated by a strong desire to help others in need, Jang volunteered at the Chinatown YMCA for ten years. For that, she received an Outstanding Service Award, and by 10th grade, she knew she would become a physical therapist.
“I worked two jobs after school to save money for college,” said Jang, who earned her degree from Long Beach State in 1994. She went to work at a San Francisco hospital and by December of the following year, had saved enough money to buy her parents a brand new car.

Increasingly disappointed with the limitations imposed by managed health care, Jang enrolled in a course called Strain, Counter Strain.

“I loved it,” she said. “The course taught ideas that were closely matched with my own philosophy and years of martial arts training – which is not to meet force with force, but rather to go with, to help, to facilitate [the body’s ability to heal].”

That course would alter her career and set the wheels in motion for her meeting with Trish Brown and their decision to open Spirit Winds Therapy, an innovative approach to health and healing in San Luis Obispo.

Born and raised in Long Island, New York, Brown was the youngest of four and spent much of her energetic youth trying to keep up with her older siblings. In high school, she lettered in tennis, volleyball, and basketball, and was the first in her class – male or female – to do so. Captain of all three teams, Brown was voted Most Valuable Player and Student Athlete of the Year. But she still had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.

“The world was so much fun for me,” she explained. “I was attracted to a huge array of interests.”

Brown earned her undergraduate degree at a small private college in upstate New York where she majored in Mathematics and minored in Women’s Studies. She coached volleyball before taking a position in New York City, inputting stock trades for a small “wanna-be” Wall Street firm.
“There’s got to be more to life than this,” thought Brown. So she moved to San Francisco where she took a job as a bicycle messenger. After one too many “colorful crashes,” she returned to school and earned an M.S. in Statistics, on the theory that good statisticians were needed in nearly every field.
“I got a very cool job with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in Seattle,” she said, but soon found that life in front of a computer was not meeting her need for human contact. So she studied for and obtained her massage therapist’s license and opened her own practice in Asheville, North Carolina, all the while studying a wide spectrum of courses about the functioning of the human body.

Brown met Jang at a ground-breaking clinic in Connecticut where a different approach to health and healing was being taught. They both became avid students of the method known as Integrative Manual Therapy. Soon, Jang was offered a senior therapist position at a satellite office in San Francisco. She also taught a series of courses for Dialogues in Contemporary Rehabilitation throughout the U.S. and Holland. And Brown had finally found her niche.

“I’ve always known that my body was a close friend,” she said. “Our bodies hold so much knowledge, and this work has allowed me to learn more about that.”

Bringing years of practice, experience and education to the Central Coast – plus their firm belief in the wisdom of the human body – Michelle Jang and Trish Brown opened Spirit Winds Therapy in October of 2002.

The techniques are gentle, the approach subtle, but the help provided by these two highly skilled women is firmly grounded in hard biologic, anatomic, and physiologic data. Offering real hope and significant progress to a growing number of people with a broad range of physical goals, Spirit Winds is an alternative physical therapy specializing in a gentle, hands-on approach to movement, re-education and rehabilitation. Using the time-honored tools of their own hands to both diagnose and treat, Brown and Jang see clients with every kind of physical malady and personal goal.
Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, Trish Brown and Michele Jang looked into their hearts, listened for the truth, and reached for their goal – a clinic of their own in a small, rural, California town. If success is measured by the integration of spirit, mind, and body, and by a profession that helps others to achieve the same, then the women of Spirit Winds Therapy have arrived.

If success is measured by the ability to honor the heart, to listen to the truth, and to follow them both with courage and conviction -- then Michele Jang and Trish Brown have succeeded.