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Awaken your health potential
Our team of highly-skilled manual physical therapists, Pilates instructors and massage therapists inspire the development of this knowledge...
Meet the Team
This is your Team section.
Briefly introduce the team then add their bios below. Click here to edit.
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PILATES Instructor
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Massage Therapist
Founder of KNOSIS Physiotherapy & Wellness, Tracey Vincel has over 23 years of clinical experience treating and preventing pain. She has a deep interest in the relationship between altered posturo-movement and pain and related disorders. Her practice emphasizes the mind/ body connection and how thoughts and beliefs can influence body tension affecting movement. She believes in an integrated approach to treating pain and has dedicated her 23 years of clinical practice as a physiotherapist to discovering the diagnostic tools that form the basis for mind, breath and movement therapy interventions.
She is passionate about sharing this knowledge and together with Patricia Ladis co-founded KIMA Center for Physiotherapy and Wellness in 2006. With the dissolution of KIMA in Aug 2020 she founded KNOSIS Physiotherapy & Wellness.
Tracey is the chair of the Global Wellness Institute’s Immersion Initiative which inspires participation in -
transformative wellness immersive experiences. She is passionate about raising our individual and collective well-being to build our planet’s and humanity’s harmonious future.
Educational Background: Master’s Degree in Physical Therapy (University of Maryland, 1998), Advanced Master’s Degree in Spinal Orthopaedic Physical Therapy (University of Queensland, 2003), post-graduate manual therapy certificates from The Institute of Physical Art, Hospital for Special Surgery, Integrated Manual Therapy Solutions, Kinetic Control, Performance Matrix, Neuro Orthopedic Institute, Diane Lee & Associates, Discover Physio Series/Integrative Systems Model, Neurodynamic Solutions, Gravity Fitness and Lorimer Moseley’s and David Butler’s “Explain Pain” training. Tracey has also extensively pursued the study of Yoga, Tibetan Medicine and Ayurveda. To bridge the mind body connection through breath she has completed her certification in Educational Capnography.
Monica Vitenson, PT, MSPT, OCS, CCTT
Monica has been practicing physical therapy for over 20 years. She has an outstanding reputation in the field as a manual therapist and movement re-educator. She specializes in TMJ and cranial cervical dysfunction, in which she is one of only a few New York therapists to hold an advanced certification.
Monica began her professional career as a massage therapist, graduating in 1991 from the Swedish Institute in New York City. In 1998, she earned her Master of Science in physical therapy from Columbia University.
Over the years she has continued to study advanced physical therapy techniques with some of the top practitioners in the field, including most of the courses offered with Greg Johnson through the IPA (institute of Physical Arts), Mariano Rocabado’s
Craniofacial series offered through the University of St Augustine, the Comprehensive Evaluation and Management of the
Cervical-Craniomandibular complex series with Myopain Seminars, and most recently, the full one-year intensive Discover Physio series with Diane Lee and Linda Joy Lee. In 2006, she became certified as a Pilates Rehabilitation Specialist through Polestar. That same year, Ms. Vitenson also earned her CCTT (Certified Cervical and Temporomandibular Therapist) through the Physical Therapy Board of Craniofacial and Cervical Therapeutics affiliate of the American Academy of Orofacial Pain.
Monica passed the prestigious PT OCS exam in 2008, which recognizes her as an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS). When Monica is not dedicating her time and energy towards improving her skills as a physical therapist, she is spending time with her family or in her garden.
Rebecca Gordon, PT, DPT, CSCS, RYT-200
Rebecca earned her B.A. in Dance from Hunter College and Doctorate of Physical Therapy from New York University.
Rebecca’s passion for physical therapy grew out of a lifetime love of movement and athletics. She grew up horseback riding and went on to train under Grand Prix dressage trainers and teach riding for over 7 years. She picked up dance in high school and has performed contemporary and hip-hop works throughout New York City.
She also began training in yoga during that time, and her practice has since evolved from a simple means of exercise to a multidimensional, spiritual study. Rebecca’s journey with movement helped her recognize the power of the mind-body connection, which drives her approach to working with physical therapy patients.
Rebecca has experience working with diverse patient populations but specializes in orthopedic and pelvic floor diagnoses. She holds multiple advanced pelvic floor certifications through the American Physical Therapy Association and Herman & Wallace Rehabilitation Institute. She has also served as a teaching assistant for Herman & Wallace certification courses. She treats patients with a variety of pelvic floor presentations, including pelvic pain, coccydynia, sexual dysfunction, peripartum dysfunction, and urinary and bowel dysfunctions.
Rebecca is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and works as a personal trainer with private clients. She also earned her 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher certification (RYT) after practicing yoga for over a decade. Rebecca integrates all of her experiences and training into her work with physical therapy patients, creating individualized treatment plans while cultivating a supportive clinical environment.
Renuka Pinto, PT, CES, Gravity Fit Certified
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Renuka Pinto is an internationally trained and traveled physical therapist with almost two decades of experience in sports medicine and manual therapy. After completing her bachelor's in physical therapy and a post-graduate degree in rehabilitation, she received her Master's Degree from the University of Melbourne in 2001. As an Australian trained therapist, she excels in the Maitland, McKenzie and Butler approaches of manual therapy.
She has worked with both individual and team sports — during her time Down Under she worked as a sports trainer with the Prahan Football club and in India, she was a consultant to the Mumbai Cricket Association. She was the first woman to consult with the National Cricket Academy, the India Cricket A team and the touring international West Indies team in 2002.
Renuka moved to NY thereafter, and earned her strength and conditioning certification from the NSCA in 2003. She worked with women's professional tennis for 3 yrs, traveling on the international women's tennis circuit providing physical therapy and athlete care to professional tennis players. Renuka has also been the physical therapist for the Indian Fed cup team and the Indian tennis team at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. She has worked at all four tennis grand slams — her favorite being Wimbledon.
Her areas of expertise are sports medicine, biomechanics, TMJ, Neurological and sports injuries. She has developed and launched three programs to help clients and patients based on her clinical and academic experience: sports performance enhancement, Happy Feet and P3 method for pregnant women.
Renuka was an adjunct professor at SUNY Downstate where she taught manual and orthopedic related skills to DPT students. She has given various lectures and seminars to medical and fitness professionals on the management of sports injuries, preventative and preparatory exercises for sports performance and analysis of movement. Renuka lives in New Jersey with her family. She enjoys biking, ice skating and cooking.
Anastasia Young PT, DPT, CSCS
Anastasia’s passion for fluid movement and high-level performance began early in life, racing internationally as a member of the United States National Luge team and competing in Olympic Trials in 2010.
With a love of athleticism and a keen interest in connecting body and mind, she earned her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from New York University.
Her education and experience have concentrated on orthopedics (sport/spine and pelvis), treating athletes at all levels. She has advanced training in pelvis and abdominal health and has a specialty in treating men’s and woman’s pelvic pain/floor dysfunction. She offers specialized services to treat conditions including low back pain, knee and shoulder pain, as well as endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, chronic pelvic pain, abdominal cramping associated with menstruation, constipation, and IBD. She also develops treatment and exercise programs for pregnancy and pre/post-partum care.
Anastasia has extensive knowledge in exercise and athletics which has allowed her to become certified as a CSCS (certified strength and conditioning specialist) in 2016 and in BFR (blood flow restriction) in 2021. Anastasia utilizes this knowledge along with extensive life experience to treat all types of athletic-based conditions.
Pilates
Jenny Long, CPI
Jenny is a Balanced Body Certified Pilates Instructor trained by Master teacher Lesley Powell of Movement’s Afoot, and studied with Kelly Kane at Kinected, who is also located in New York City. Jenny is a licensed Buff Bones Instructor, which is a medically endorsed full-body movement system for Bone and Joint health. She also hold certifications in Pilates Through Pregnancy to treat any and all peri-partum conditions, Pilates for Rehabilitation: Therapeutic Exercise, TRX and has a Pole Dance Level 1 and 2 instructor certification through elevated.
Originally from Tucson Arizona, with a dance and vocal performance background, Jenny received her BFA in Musial Theater from NYU. She spent time performing in NYC, in tours and regional theater as a member of Actors’ Equity Association and assisted Radio City Rockette Summer Intensives. She also taught Pilates to Juilliard students and worked as a Pilates teacher on staff at Movements Afoot under her teacher Lesley Powell for eight years.
Jenny is in her eighth year working at KIMA and KNOSIS and loves all the learning opportunities it has to offer. Not only does she enjoy working alongside specialized physical therapists and bodyworkers daily, but also attends many of the continued educational courses offered to employees on the latest cutting-edge research. She is passionate about teaching and truly enjoys helping people get out of pain, learn about their bodies and improve their fitness with Pilates.
Molly Phelps, CPI
Molly has been teaching Pilates in NYC since 1998. As a young pre-professional ballet dancer, Molly was taught Pilates by her ballet teachers as a way to keep herself conditioned, whether she was injured or correcting muscular imbalances, to achieve perfect form. After graduating SUNY at Purchase College with her BFA in Dance, she completed her intensive private certification with David Seth Fink. She then continued her training with Lesley Powell and Doris Pasteleur-Hall at Movements Afoot. Her pilates expertise is honed from over two decades of teaching. Molly has just as many years of study as an Iyengar yogi, and continuously searches for pearls of wisdom from physical therapists, acupuncturists, her yoga teacher Carrie Owerko, and other body gurus. Her holistic philosophy involves specific attention to precision and detail. A bespoken session takes in the student's strengths and weaknesses by discovering the most efficient way to re-pattern their movement and encourage bodily awareness. With simple biomechanics, corrective
injury prevention, and playfulness, the range of Molly's experience allows her to custom design specific exercises for her clients, liberating them from their habits and pain patterns, and awakening them to their potential. She is influenced by a lifetime study of diverse movement, and strives to inspire joyful mindfulness.
Mariia Shangina, CPI
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As a senior Pilates instructor, Mariia has a genuine love for movement. Certified by Polestar Pilates, the gold standard in the industry, she focuses on post rehabilitation and athletic performance. She has worked with a diverse client population and has a passion for injury prevention. She loves teaching alongside physical therapists, preventing pain and helping her clients understand their bodies in new ways. Mariia has completed Anatomy Trains and Slings Myofascial Training.
She constantly continues the development of her skills and practices what she teaches. She strongly believes that the main purpose of Pilates is the efficiency of movement that one can leverage in their everyday life by learning new movement patterns. Mariia aims to bring this philosophy into every class she teaches. She reminds us “It is the smallest details that make a movement efficient and a body more functional. Whether your goal is to become a faster runner or to alleviate your back pain, Pilates can help you get there with small but significant adjustments”.
Yuu Fujita, CPI
Yuu's style of teaching Pilates integrates strength, flexibility, balance and coordination to help clients achieve their maximum potential. She helps her clients to move forward at their level and work with any limitations they may have based on their total body history. Her preciseness and intuition help her improve posture, prevent injury, and maintain and improve clients post-rehab condition. She is passionate about searching and identifying what is preventing one's body from moving efficiently to be pain free, enabling clients to optimize their physical and emotional wellbeing.
Yuu is originally from Kyoto, Japan where she began her classical ballet training at the age of 6. While she was still training, performing and teaching small children ballet, she joined the Musical company, Kyogei, and toured all over Japan until she moved to the United States.
Yuu received BA in Dance from Hunter College and was certified in Pilates from the Physicalmind Institute in 2001. She has been teaching Pilates ever since. Yuu has studied Kinesthetic anatomy with Irene Dowd, Sherry Studenberg and Lisa Love as well as Iyengar Yoga, the Alexander Technique, Yamuna Body Rolling, the Eric Franklin Method and Thai Body Work to enhance her Pilates teaching and to prevent potential injuries for dancers. Yuu was a senior Pilates trainer at Movements Afoot for 10 years and trained with Lesley Powell while she performed regularly as a contemporary dancer.
Yuu has been a senior trainer and movement educator/creator at the Physicalmind Institute since 2007 where she works with company founder Joan Breibart and the institute clinical advisor Marika Molnar (the owner of Westside Dance Physical Therapy). Yuu models for Institute videos, helps craft their certification manuals, teaches workshops, and helps oversee and tests for teachers seeking Pilates certification. Over the last 10 years she has been involved in creating movements not only athletic and physical but also therapeutic for new Institutes Products. Yuu has been a big part of specialized exercise programs such as Standing Pilates, Circular Pilates (3D motions), Pilates for dancers, Bone Up (Osteoporosis), Pre/ Post Natal, and Forward Head Syndrome. Yuu has an international presence in the field of Pilates through her workshops in Japan to introduce Institute products and train Japanese Pilates practitioners and teachers.
In 2008, Yuu began studying BMC (Body Mind Centering) with Bonnie Cohen and started her training of Dynamic Embodiment Movement Therapy with Dr. Martha Eddy after she experienced several miscarriages and Infertility. Somatic Movement helped Yuu to deepen her knowledge and understanding about her own body as well as her clients. Throughout the training, Yuu was especially interested in Somatic Psychology and inspired by embryology and the beauty of our Endocrine system. Yuu's journey of understanding true somatic health continues while she enjoys the challenge of being a mother of two pre-teen kids and performing as a professional Kabuki dancer (traditional Japanese dance).
Massage
MEGAN RENEE BACKUS, LMT
Megan's passion for bodywork has led her to develop expertise in many areas. She regularly treats patients who suffer from a wide variety of serious complaints and conditions, ranging from rehab after hip replacement to fibromyalgia to athletic recovery.
She is a Certified Practitioner of the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Massage®, and has successfully treated many reproductive and digestive ills in both men and women, such as period pain, infertility, prostatitis, and constipation. Her prenatal massages are a customized blend of Swedish techniques (for easing soreness and promoting relaxation) with Arvigo® prenatal work that centers the growing abdomen and aligns the pelvis for a more comfortable pregnancy and easier birth.
She is also a Certified Infant Massage Instructor and has extensive experience with pediatric massage, both at Mount Sinai in New York and with disabled and orphaned children in Vietnam and Nepal. Her touch ranges from very deep to subtle and soothing as needed, and every treatment includes a bit of Reiki energy healing.
She is also a Certified Aromatherapist, and loves to make tonics, potions, and salves to help her clients reach their wellness goals.