Sometimes the life you worked hard to build must change before you can see what you were meant to build next.
For nearly two decades, neuromuscular therapist and owner of Necessary Elements of South Tampa, Mandy Schulis, built a career helping people navigate pain, combining an understanding of the body with intuition she said had been present since childhood. As a young girl, she instinctively noticed when people were hurting. At college, friends sought her out for help with migraines and shoulder pain. An early interest in medicine led her to study exercise physiology before discovering that her strengths, and perhaps her calling, were elsewhere.
She became a licensed massage therapist in 2006 and quickly earned a reputation for understanding pain and the body in ways her clients sometimes struggled to explain themselves. “I didn’t know I had a gift,” she said.
An athlete growing up, Mandy carried a push-through mentality into adulthood and eventually into her business. As her reputation grew, so did her workload. Success became increasingly tied to how much she could produce, how many people she helped and how much money she made. “I used to have this lone-wolf mentality,” she said.
Eventually, her body forced a different conversation. Pain and overuse began affecting the work she depended on, including a loss of dexterity in her thumb and significant pain through her shoulder, arm and fingers. A hand surgeon warned that without surgery, she could lose dexterity in her thumb completely. At nearly the same time, Mandy was navigating significant personal struggles that challenged much of the stability she had known.
“I’ve always been somebody that landed on my feet,” she said. “And that was the time I couldn’t.” Shutting down the business she had worked so hard to build was devastating. Mandy remembered taking down the sign, handing over the keys and sitting in the shower afterward crying. “I just felt so defeated,” she recalled.
Yet that ending created space for something she rarely allowed herself: stillness. Instead of immediately trying to recreate her old life, Mandy began paying closer attention to her own healing. She became certified in Reiki and nervous-system work while studying energetics and reconsidering some of what she believed about pain throughout her career. She began recognizing connections between the physical body, trauma and the stories people carry.
“I would not be a tenth of the therapist I am now if I hadn’t gone through that,” she said.
During a meditation at a South Tampa salt room, Mandy experienced what she described as something “snap all the way down” through the arm and hand that had caused her so much pain. As she walked out, a friend asked if she was okay. “I don’t know,” Mandy recalled answering. “But I think I’m gonna be.”
She went home and asked her husband, Matt, to get on the massage table. If her hands could handle working on him, she reasoned, maybe she could do this again. Two and a half hours later, she reached out to two longtime clients with a simple message: “I have a table and I have my hands. I think I’m back.”
One of those clients soon noticed something Mandy was only beginning to recognize herself. “You’ve fallen in love with it all over again,” she told her.
Mandy agreed, “But I don’t know what that looks like.”
What it looked like was not rebuilding the same life. Mandy told God that if He gave her hands back, she would listen this time. Returning to the work meant learning to do it differently.
The therapist who once described herself as “no pain, no gain” became more careful, gentle and aware of the nervous system and the experiences people brought into the treatment room. She also began embracing parts of herself she previously questioned, including her intuition and her growing role as a leader and teacher.
Today, success still includes ambitious goals and a growing business, but it’s no longer defined solely by how much Mandy can accomplish herself. “I want to build something that lasts,” she said. More importantly, she wants to keep the promise she made to God and her family not to run herself ragged again.
It’s a different kind of strength than the one that built her first chapter. That strength told her to push harder, work more and keep going. This one has taught her to listen, receive help, embrace detours and trust that starting over does not have to mean going backward.
For someone facing an unexpected change of their own, Mandy’s message was simple: “If you just give up, you’re going to be missing an amazing next chapter. Allow yourself to feel the human emotions that happen, but then get curious. Ask yourself, ‘What is this teaching me?’ I am living proof that something incredible can come next.”
“If you just give up, you’re going to be missing an amazing next chapter. Allow yourself to feel the human emotions that happen but then get curious. Ask yourself, ‘What is this teaching me?’ I am living proof that something incredible can come next.”