Support Your Skeleton at Santa Barbara’s Monkeytail Fitness

Rita Madlock Combines Architectural and Medicinal Knowledge to Build Better Bodies

By Ricky Barajas | January 27, 2022

After extreme vestibular nerve damage, Rita Madlock of Monkeytail Fitness suffered from severe vertigo that left her world spinning. When traditional Western medicine could not heal her, the commercial architect combined her knowledge of architecture with her research into Ayurvedic medicine to design a new path of healing attuned to her needs.

“The skeleton is architecture,” said Madlock, who views the body as a structure that must maintain integrity against the constant weight of gravity. “How well can your spine handle the demands that you place on it?”

There are many reasons why people should try Monkeytail’s Athletic Performance Evaluation (APE) session, the first step in employing Madlock’s techniques. But I can personally attest to learning something fundamental about the way that my body works that has quite literally changed the way that I move through my life.

Picture this: You’re me in October 2020, stuck in bed recovering from an abdominal surgery. It took months for me to walk without pain, and even though I’m technically fully healed, sometimes it still hurts to move.

Before my session, Madlock mentioned that people often become joyful during the APE — that for some, this experience is their first introduction to their innermost being. Toward the end of our session, I caught myself with a smile, which I realized that I’d been wearing for some time as I went through the APE’s steps and motions. I even let out a gleeful laugh when she asked me when was the last time my hip popped — I suddenly noticed that the whole time we’d been working together, it hadn’t.

“Part of the APE is giving a person permission to explore their energy,” said Madlock. “Learn to feel yourself.”

1221 State St. #206; (805) 845-0000; monkeytailintelligentexercise.com.

Read all of the stories in this year’s Self-Care issue here.