I don’t believe persistent pain is random.
And I don’t believe your body is the problem.
After years of treating pain—and living through my own frustrating search for answers—I’ve learned that what hurts isn’t always where the problem lives.
Sometimes the thing keeping you stuck is the pattern underneath it.
Why I Do This Work
I didn’t build this practice from theory. I built it because I lived the frustration myself.
For years, I dealt with chronic pain and did what most people do when something hurts: I tried to figure out what was wrong with my body.
I did physical therapy. Dry needling. Chiropractic care. Imaging. Exercises. Treatments. I looked for the diagnosis, the right intervention, the thing I hadn’t tried yet.
Some of it helped.
But nothing really explained why the pain kept coming back.
And that experience followed me into my work as a physical therapist.
I was trained to assess the body, identify the physical problem, treat it, and progress the plan. And I can do physical therapy well.
But over time, both my own experience and the people sitting in front of me kept showing me the same thing:
The physical body was real. The symptoms were real. But the structural explanation often wasn’t the whole story.
The more closely I listened, the more I started seeing the patterns underneath the symptoms—how people responded to pain, stress, discomfort, expectations, fear, responsibility, and their own needs.
And once those patterns became visible, we had something different to work with.
That changed the way I practice completely.
I have a doctorate in physical therapy. But that isn’t what makes me particularly good at this work.
I’m not the person I would hire to rehab a straightforward sprained ankle, progress a standard strengthening program, or give me ongoing bodywork for knee pain.
There are people whose depth lives there.
Mine lives in helping people with persistent pain and physical symptoms see the pattern their body is stuck in—especially when they’ve spent years believing something structural must still be wrong.
I connect with people in chronic pain at a level that allows me to see patterns that can be difficult to recognize from inside your own experience.
And I’m willing to interrupt them.
WHERE MY DEPTH LIVES
Sometimes that means asking the question you’ve been avoiding.
Sometimes it means challenging the story you’ve built around what your body can or can’t handle.
Sometimes it means creating just enough tension that you have to stop, think, and choose something different.
Sometimes it means recognizing that you actually do need physical support.
Working with me is fun. But it isn’t always comfortable.
Because I’m not interested in becoming another person you depend on to tell you what your body needs.
I want you to become the authority over your own body.
Training + Clinical Foundation
My clinical background matters. It just isn’t the whole story.
I’m Dr. Hannah Scherbarth, PT, DPT—a licensed physical therapist with a Doctorate in Physical Therapy and a Bachelor’s degree in Athletic Training from UW–Madison.
My clinical background includes movement assessment and rehabilitation, dry needling, vestibular rehabilitation, manual therapy, pain science, and brainspotting.
That training gives me an important lens: I understand the physical body. I can assess when something warrants physical intervention, help rebuild movement and capacity, and recognize when the story may be bigger than structure alone.
But credentials alone don’t create insight.
And lived experience alone doesn’t create clinical discernment.
My work is built on both.
And outside of work, you’ll probably find me outdoors with my husband and black labs, camping, tackling a DIY home project, learning something new, or finding my own version of new heights.
Ready to approach your body differently?
If you’re tired of searching for the next thing to fix and ready to understand the larger pattern, you can learn more about how we work together.