About Mary Thomas, PT

You Deserve to Feel Great. I’m Here to Help.

Mary Thomas is the owner of Innovative Therapy P.C. and proprietor of the BODi Power System.

In 1989, she graduated from the University of Montana School of Physical Therapy with honors. She has also received the outstanding health science award in 1983-1984 and in 1989, the University of Montana President’s award for Outstanding Research. In 1998, she opened her own physical therapy practice focusing on pain issues and difficult orthopedic cases. Since then, she has proceeded to study lymphatics and lymphedema and has worked with post-cancer clients to improve their quality of life following treatment. She has experience with infants and children all the way to individuals over 90.

When Mary was a little girl, she loved to move. As soon as she was old enough, she joined the dance and swim teams while also taking gymnastics lessons. Pouring her heart and soul into developing her athleticism every day, she would often go to bed exhausted and sore, but happy because she knew it meant she was moving toward greatness and becoming something more.

During her junior year of high school, Mary decided to study physical therapy. Soon after graduating, she began to attend college. It was then that her muscles started to ache more and more severely. Her body was no longer performing like it used to. Continuing athletics as long as she could, what began as a painful confusion quickly turned into a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Mary knew she was becoming ill.

​Mary’s professor, who was also her physician, became concerned about her obvious decline in health. She told Mary that she needed to stop doing what she loved and needed to quit ballet and drop out of PT school. The one thing that filled Mary with passion and got her out of bed every day was being ripped away and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what was wrong with her and neither did the physicians. No one had an answer.

​Mary ended up completing her schooling and became a physical therapist. Her health declined much faster than expected and had to cope with repeated infections and other health problems. After 32 years, 17 surgeries, and 23 invasive procedures, she could no longer move without pain and fear. Mary had lost the ability to work and was eventually diagnosed with disseminated Lyme disease. The doctors said that there was no cure at this point and shifted away from treating her to just trying to make her comfortable. She was dying.

​Eventually, Mary found a teacher who said he could teach her immune system to stop “misbehaving”. As unorthodox as it was, Mary was willing to try anything. His system worked and stopped her from dying, but she still felt like she wasn’t living. Mary struggled to get out of a chair and pick something up off the floor, and had to frequently stop to rest when walking.

​She realized standard physical therapy methods could only take her so far. Mary began to use her body as a laboratory to test different concepts. She focused on the movements she could do the easiest to restore her ability to move. As she expanded and increased the movements that she could do without pain, a treatment system emerged. Mary trusted her intuition and used research to confirm her discoveries. She was getting longer-lasting and faster results than anything she had done previously.

These self-treatments caused her soreness some days to the point of pain; however, it was not the same pain she had been feeling her entire adult life. This new type of soreness overwhelmed her with happiness and gratitude. She was now able to go to bed and know that the pain finally meant she was working toward greatness again and not just enduring pain and limitations because someone she saw as an authority figure told her she was as good as she was going to get.

Mary’s journey taught her that the impossible is not always permanent and that people set their own limitations. There are ways to peel back layers of frozen, seemingly permanent damage from people’s bodies with less effort and less time than were ever thought possible. Since then, she has dedicated herself to sharing her method with those who lost their ability to do what they love. Mary wants every person to know they can transition from functional limitations to power moves. She loves seeing individuals realize they have the power to be the change they want to see in their physical performance. She can share this knowledge in easy-to-follow steps. It is her passion to bring the BODi Power System to every person who wants to move well, and hopefully, better than they ever thought possible.