Meet Gina Daley

We were lucky to catch up with Gina Daley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Gina , we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I truly believe resilience is cultivated and not given. Just like our muscles have to physically BREAK DOWN in order to build back up stronger, resilience is the result of being pressed to breaking, over and over, and choosing to adapt and grow bandwidth.
My personal experience with this didn’t come until my late 20s. I had gotten pregnant with a man I just started dating, and we chose to keep her, hardly knowing each other. It turned out that he had unfortunately lived thru an incredibly abusive and dysfunctional childhood, which in turn gifted him with uncontrollable rage, violence, anger, impulse, and the need to create a chaotic life around him.
Being inside that kiln, 3 years of verbal, emotional and physical violence, was the first gift of opportunity I received to really CHOOSE resilience. I could either choose to continue to be stuck in victim energy, or I could CHOOSE to do something with my pain.
Unfortunately, resilience is built thru discomfort and struggle. Healing from this relationship, while building a business, while single co-parenting, WHILE living thru a pandemic… was… SO. HARD. BUT/AND that confidence that comes from surviving and growing thru those challenges is absolutely priceless and is exactly what helps me look at challenges in the face, take a breath, and know that yep, I can do this too.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I created Portland Integrative Fitness out of a need. The Mainstream Fitness and Diet Industry currently has huge gaps in it’s ability to educate and help people in real and sustainable ways, and frequently causes harm due to lack of approaching the body in a full and comprehensive way. Our method here combines and integrates the latest science on how the nervous system, past trauma, behavior, and movement patterns all intersect. In order to create LASTING change, you MUST include these factors. We help people in any state of function or condition learn how to find and use correct movement patterns that not only support healing, but prevent future injury. We use a progressive and systematic approach that bridges the massive chasm between PT and where most fitness classes start, and then walks people up all the way to advanced performance.

We are active ambassadors of body positivity/neutrality with the deep desire to help people heal from the toxic and detrimental messaging of the 70’s 80’s 90’s and 2000’s that values thinness at all costs. We help people reclaim their confidence in their bodies, and learn to optimize what they have by focusing on how it feels to be strong, not the size of their body. Confidence is not a size or number on the scale, but rather comes from attempting and completing something difficult. So much energy goes into wishing we were different. We seek to guide our clients into feeling and building self esteem and worth from the inside, not comparing themselves to external sources.

My larger vision is to teach this method of teaching/fitness programming to other trainers so that they have less occurrence of injury, and can create more inclusive gym environments even at the corporate level. EVERY body needs fitness, and our goal is to make fitness accessible and welcoming for everyone.

We also train mothers for labor, and offer a path of recovery in their post partum period. Helping women go thru that initiation with confidence and find themselves on the other side is one of the most fulfilling parts of this business. In order to remove barriers for our new moms, we recently opened up an onsite childcare room with a nanny on staff to watch their little ones while they work out. I remember how difficult it was to get an hour to myself when my daughter was little, so I’m very excited to offer this support to our moms.

Movement has such power to transform and heal, empower and ignite. I used movement to heal from one of the most challenging chapters of my life and I want to help others do the same.

My next project will be creating a CEU so other trainers can advance their skill set and help contribute to this next wave of health- a more inclusive, holistic and effective way of teaching movement.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the 3 most important qualities that have contributed to my success as a business owner are:

1. The ability to scan and distill information and apply it quickly. Be a quick study. I’ve made SO many mistakes but I’ve learned and pivoted as quick as possible. Always be scanning- is there a better way to do this?

2. Be authentic. Find what makes you different and lean into it. My heart and love for connecting with people and just wanting to contribute to their feeling better is what made this business survive during crazy situations. I never toned down my enthusiasm and belief in our service. I love big and give big and don’t apologize for it.

3. Strive to be the best. I never stop polishing, I never stop competing with a past version of myself and our method. What sets us apart is we question EVERYTHING all the time and see if we can do it better. We ARE the best in our industry because I refused to be basic lol. Think outside the box and see what other offerings you can squish in your service, or whats missing from other competitors. Really pull back and refuse to follow the status quo. Be brave enough to be a leader in your industry. Its exhausting carving the path but its so worth it.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

This business is the accumulation of ALL my passions and life experience. Its the point of the venn diagram where all my personal struggles meet my skills meet the needs of the community. I really believe in leaning into your natural skills and knowledge and following the flow and alignment of where your life has brought you.
For example, I was a dance teacher for my first career which made me really good at teaching movement. I already knew anatomy. I’ve been a psychotherapy and behavior hobbyist, and have always had a root cause approach to my own health and healing. I was given an eating disorder from a previous personal trainer, and hated myself and my body for decades. I survived an abusive relationship and used movement and fitness to find my voice again. I had a hard pregnancy and all the chronic pain that goes with it and a hard post partum recovery period. All these pieces add up to starting a holistic integrative gym to help others heal their relationships with their bodies and learn how to use movement to heal their chronic pain. I took what was given to me and made something with it. I believe that aligning in this way creates an ease and fulfillment not found when forcing a career.
Of course I continue to learn and grow and be better. But I accepted the invitation that was always there first.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://portlandintegrativefitness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portlandintegrativefitness/

Image Credits

Stark Photography