S1 E 11: Redefining Wellness for Marginalized Bodies with Dr. Eli Parrish (pt 1)
Welcome back to the Colorful Futures Podcast!
This week, we’re kicking off part one of my conversation with Dr. Eli Parrish (he/they), a Doctor of Physical Therapy and founder of Ally Wellness. From earning a degree in marine and environmental science to starting a business dedicated to bringing joyful movement to marginalized bodies, Dr. Parrish’s story is anything but conventional—and that’s exactly what makes it so inspiring.
In this episode, we’re getting into how identity and intersectionality shape healthcare experiences, the gaps in care for marginalized communities, and why listening to patients’ lived experiences is essential for providing real support. Dr. Parrish shares how his own identity and background influenced his approach to physical therapy, and we unpack how chronic pain often goes deeper than physical symptoms.
If you’re ready to rethink how healthcare can better serve all bodies—or you just love hearing about purpose-driven work that changes lives—this episode is for you. 🎧💖
BIO:
Eli Parrish (He / They) is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and small business owner. He founded Ally Wellness, which provides personalized physical therapy and movement programs. Eli’s goal is to bring joyful movement to people in marginalized bodies. Eli earned a BS in marine and environmental science from Hampton University and became a Physical Therapist after completing a graduate program at Temple University. In his free time, you can find Eli taking care of two demanding orange cats and binge-watching an obscene amount of PBS documentaries.
Links:
website: https://www.ally-wellness.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allywellness_phl/
Transcript
Liora Natania: Hello, friend, and welcome back to another episode of the Colorful Futures podcast. I'm your host, Liora Natania, Career Coach, Talent Acquisition Consultant, and founder of Colorful Futures. In this show, we talk about all things related to careers and business through the lens of the lived experience of marginalized folks, people with intersectional identities, people who have been historically underrepresented in business and in corporate work.
So you can expect to hear real stories, advice, and tips from myself as well as other guests on the show and our goal is to help you build a successful and sustainable career where you can be your authentic self.
And I'm so excited to introduce our guest today, Eli Parrish. Eli is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a small business owner. He founded Ally Wellness, which provides personalized physical therapy and movement programs with the goal of bringing joyful movement to people in marginalized bodies.
Welcome, and we're so glad to have you here. I feel like I mentioned you being on this show like four months ago, maybe. And so it's really nice to actually be here doing the thing.
Eli Parrish: It's wild that you invited me. I’m like, I was listening to the intro. I'm like, wow, this is gonna be good.
Liora Natania: That's so funny. Is there anything I missed in sharing your background?
Eli Parrish: Yes. I always mention my cats because, you know, they are the reason I work. And they keep me very busy. So I just want to shout out to them because I don't want them to get mad.
Liora Natania: What are your cat's names again?
Eli Parrish: Junior. That's it. Just Junior and Bear.
Liora Natania: I love that.
Eli Parrish: Yeah, Bear is super cute too. Like his name is perfect. He drools. It's amazing.
Liora Natania: I love that so much. So there's like a bunch of stuff that I like, my ADHD brain is like going wild with like all the things that I feel like we could talk about. But let's just start with your career journey. Like, did you always think that you would be a physical therapist? Did you have other career paths in mind? What was that journey like for you?
Eli Parrish: Yeah, very random. I don't know. I think I've told you some of this, but no, physical therapy was not my initial career path. I actually did not, I've never, I never went to a physical therapist before I went to physical therapy school. I'm the only physical therapist I've ever gone to, which I think is kind of funny.
But I actually went to school for Marine Environmental Science in undergraduate. And I spent some time on a ship, like two years in the Pacific Ocean, putting weather buoys into the ocean. And I would drive around to each buoy and we spent like, you know, three weeks at sea at a time and then a week in port and then we go back out again.
And it's maddening. It's like the same 30 people for a couple of years on end. So we had a gym in the ship and I would always work out with some of the other crew members in the gym at the bottom of the ship while it was like rocking back and forth. And it was awesome. I really, I got into it, it's like, that was my kind of least, my way of being outside of the ship when that was not possible.
And when I got off, I worked at Whole Foods, cutting fish. I just kind of worked, you know, as many of us do in different retail jobs. And then I started thinking about grad school and I literally Googled because Google tells me so much, which is good and bad. You know, how do I use these science credits that I have as background and put it somewhere in this like, physical fitness realm?
And I kept Googling those things together and then PT, it was like, Forest Firefighter and PT.
Liora Natania: What made you not pick forest firefighter?
Eli Parrish: To be honest that, it wasn't the first time a career search put that in for me, but the ship experience is probably the biggest thing that kept me out of that kind of thing, because I was in a really isolated environment with not a lot of other marginalized people, to be honest.
I mean, in a way it was, but it's a very hyper masculine, authoritative, and I wasn't even on a combat ship. This was just for science. But I realized that that environment did not make me happy, even though the job was wild. I was traveling the world basically, but I could not tolerate being in that environment.
And I was like, and add fire to it? I'm like, I'm good. So, PT just seemed more attractive in that way.
Liora Natania: Yeah, that makes sense. So when you decided to enter the world of PT, what did that process look like? Did you have to go back to school? Were you able to just get started?
Eli Parrish: I had to go back to school. I had been out of school almost 10 years at that point. I think I graduated college in 2008 and I started PT school, maybe it was more like six or seven years. But whatever the length was, my science credits were no longer valid for like the beginning, the freshmen and sophomore classes I took. That was, it was too late for that.
So I had to go back. I had to take anatomy and physiology and a couple other science courses. And I did that at community college. And yeah, then I applied, I was waitlisted. I only applied to one university because I was really anxious at the time. I was waitlisted and then I got in off of the waitlist and there I was in PT school.
Liora Natania: And now here you are.
Eli Parrish: I know, a practicing PT. I never would have thought, to be honest, I had no idea. When I was a little kid, my first, I wanted to be in the army. And then I realized they didn't let women serve in roles the same as men could. And it was my like, first of the least problematic parts about that job. But I was like, no, that didn't seem right. So I won't be doing that.
Yes, it was a logic move. But I actually am happy I ended up here.
Liora Natania: Yeah, when you finished school, did you know that you would have your own business? Is that where you started? Or like what kind of led to you forming Ally Wellness?
Eli Parrish: I did not think I would ever have my own business, although I had kind of had a chip on my shoulder around healthcare and how it shows up for marginalized folks. And what really drove me to it was the pandemic. So what I primarily do in my free time is watch news and PBS documentaries. So like, I was reading a lot in the news and COVID was like coming across the ocean. And I went up to my boss and I was like, this is about to hit us.
And like, I think we have a couple of weeks maybe, and we should buy a thermometer before it hits so that we can scan patients for temperatures, that kind of thing. Like we need to start like, rolling out some of this stuff. And he didn't buy the thermometer at first. It took the first couple cases to come in for us to buy the thermometer. By then you can only find, I found it for him. I was like, there's like one left online and it's $90. And it's a baby thermometer.
Liora Natania: You get what you get.
Eli Parrish: You gotta buy it. So they bought it and I was like, okay, cool. He's like, it came in. I'm like, all right, can we start using it? And I was thinking on ourselves at first, screening us, and he was like, the lawyers haven't approved yet if we can use the thermometer.
And I was like, wait. Did we not go to school? Like, you know how many science credits you have to have to get into this thing? Like, didn't we go to school for three years? Aren't you a certified doctor of physical therapy? Like, I'm not talking about law. I'm talking about, does a person have a temperature and should they be allowed in the clinic? And we already know that's a contraindication.
It was just totally against sense and practice. And I was like, you know what? I'm going home. So I called all my patients with preexisting conditions, which is everybody, because we were working in a marginalized community. Most of the therapists not being in that, from that community.
And I called them and I was like, you gotta stop coming in here. And I slowly just started getting them off the schedule. And then once I got them discharged, they furloughed us for a bit. And then I resigned while I was in furlough.
Liora Natania: Good for you.
Eli Parrish: Yes. Yes. Thank you.
Liora Natania: Yeah. That makes no sense.
Eli Parrish: No, it was infuriating. I was like, I can't. It's just like, we won't do math because the lawyer said we can't add two plus two yet. I'm like, I don't. And then what? Half a million people died. And we couldn't get the temperature at a clinic that's for health care.
So that's not to say I have not, I've contracted with them now. There are parts of work about, in that clinic, that was nice because I was able to serve communities that don't get a lot of attention. But I have changed my relationship to how, you know, they're not my bosses. I contract with them. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Liora Natania: Yes. Yeah. And this is what we were talking about before we started recording was like, just having more freedom and flexibility when you contract or when you consult versus having to follow these rules and regulations that you know don't have your community like, in mind or have their best interests in mind.
Eli Parrish: That's how I started Ally Wellness.
Liora Natania: You like, got home. You're like, all right, I'm on my own now.
Eli Parrish: Yeah, actually started my business and got like wrote myself out of unemployment accidentally by starting the business and I still was like, whatever, like it is what it is, so.
Liora Natania: And now here you are like years later. Yeah. And it's, it's been a road. Like if I was to work full time for a company, I would make more money easier, but the easier part is actually the lie. You know what I mean? It's so much extra work, behind the scenes work.
Like I don't care. Like I feel like for a long time, the money part was very hard. Like it made me very nervous about having a small business. And I was like, how am I going to make this work? But the trade-off has been worth it where I'm like, I will continue to, to figure that out. Yeah.
Liora Natania: I so relate to that because like there are so many times where I'm like, it would be easier to just go work for someone, collect a paycheck, go home and you know, not worry about all the things. Especially the past like six weeks or so my business has been growing and I've been working like 50, 60 hours.
Don't worry, I'm coming out of that. But that thought has crossed my mind of just like, I could not do this. I could just work 40 hours and go about my day and whatever. But then I remind myself of the whole reason I did this in the first place. And that very quickly snaps me back to I'm just like, romanticizing the idea of working for someone else and collecting that paycheck with no, you know, no pressure, no strings attached.
I'm like, wait, no, that's actually -
Eli Parrish: That’s not how it works at all. There are a lot of strings. Ropes, chains, like whatever you will.
Liora Natania: Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. How do you feel like your identity, like whatever that means to you, and your life experience has impacted your career journey?
Eli Parrish: Well, I think first thing that comes to mind, I occupy a bunch of identities. The first thing is being a Black person and approaching healthcare. Just historically, the atrocities that have been committed and just the knowledge of, just like with the COVID thing, science and what is supposed to happen, and the procedures that we have all learned go out the window in the presence of race.
And so things are missed that are easily diagnosed. There are a number of times I have screened a patient for something and had to send them back to their doctor and be like, this is clearly congestive heart failure. I am not, like I'm not a doctor of that kind, you know what I mean? But they do teach us how to screen for that. I don't have any machines. I'm just listening to what this person is saying. I'm like, you can't be here. Your heart's not pumping. So like-
Liora Natania: Imagine that, listening to the patient.
Eli Parrish: That's it. That's like all you have to do. It's 75%, 80% maybe of what you gotta do. So I think already just having that experience of, in multiple realms of society, knowing that discrimination is rampant. I always had an ear for that when I was taking classes in physical therapy. That was something that was forefront and it was obvious at that point that, you know, once I started listening that they were, there was a gap in care, just from like, an empathy point of view.
So that was one thing. I think that started the idea. Like when I would listen to how people talked about chronic pain and how difficult these patients are and stuff like that. And I'm like, difficult. That's like a buzzword for me. I'm like, you're, that's, you're covering up some sort of weirdness there that I haven't figured out yet.
But like the more I worked, the more I saw what that meant. Because it's usually underrepresented groups. It's women, it's LGBTQ people, it's Black and Brown people who come in with these chronic pain symptoms. And it has a lot to do with power and control. And they even have studies on that type of thing where they know that chronic low back pain is probably more related to how much control you have in life than a physical problem with your back.
Those experiences as a marginalized person gave me, I think, the window to look through to find what would be my way to enter physical therapy as a small business owner, because other people just weren't looking, you know?
Liora Natania: Yeah. I think that's a very common thing I've witnessed with other folks with intersectional identities and who have been historically marginalized in that we see this need for support. And not to say that no one is out there giving that support, but it's rare and not the mainstream.
Eli Parrish: For sure. And even think like, you know, before we use marginalized more, I feel like minorities was something that was a popular term. And then you think about like, well, if there's 15 different minority groups that aren't being served out of like 20 types of groups, you know, that actually there are so there's so many clients out there for people if they are actually looking to serve outside of like whatever our standard white male cis guy norm is.
You know, and that's not even being like a hyper capitalist and trying to dupe people. It's just like, there are people who need services who cannot get good service because of how this whole thing is set up.
Liora Natania: Yeah. That was one of the things that I really connected with with your business and why I ended up hiring you, besides the fact that my wonderful general physician recommended you, but just your overall approach and like you even said before, like listening to people and just taking in like their lived experience and trusting that they know their own bodies and their own experience.
I've seen so much like medical gaslighting where they, like a physician or physical therapist or anything, just like they're not hearing your whole story. Like it's almost like they have this checklist that they're going through and if it doesn't fit within that framework, then they don't really know what to do with you. When like so much of those frameworks or studies or whatever are based off of cishet white men or white boys.
And I mean, I see this with like ADHD, you know, they up until recently, they haven't even tested the effect of medication on people with varying hormonal cycles because the hormonal cycles were making their test results too wonky. So they just didn't include them.
Eli Parrish: They're like, nah that’s too much.
Liora Natania: Right.
Eli Parrish: What in the anti-science is that, too? Like, aren't you curious? Like, wouldn't you be like, how do we, how do we separate these two things out? That's what I would be thinking, you know?
Liora Natania: Right. Yeah. But you think differently than all these other people, apparently. \
Eli Parrish: Turns out.
Liora Natania: Yeah, it's wild. One of the things I saw on your, I think it was your Instagram, you were talking about how PTs are like mechanics for people and like kind of looking at these different alarms and stuff like that. So if you could tell me more about that.
Eli Parrish: I think I've revised that a little bit and now I think I'm more of like, PTs should be more of a translator. There are signals that the body gives that may seem frightening, or you don't know what it's about, or they're associated with an event that happened, but whatever reason your body is giving you these signals and pain being one of them, and it's not clear what it wants from you.
Usually people have a good idea of what they need to do. And where PT comes in is when they've tried the language they normally use with their body and their body's like, nope. It's like a count, like a mediator almost where I'm like, okay, I think this is what the cause is and usually, if I listen to the patient, I use what they say to direct what I'm gonna look at and we're able to together figure out what these different signals are meant to mean.
So, like, one I was saying is pain. That's a signal most of us know, but we respond to pretty slow. Usually pain starts as an awareness and most of us will push past awareness into pain until it pushes us to move or change position or put some ice on it. And people who experienced chronic pain amongst other types of people, can push even past that.
It becomes very much a background thing after a while. So one thing is like learning to notice awareness and doing some change in your environment and seeing if that helps in the long run.
Liora Natania: Yeah, I love the mediator comparison because I even from just my experience working with you, like that's exactly what it was. I'm like, I think this and then you'll like do you'll do your thing. And then you're like, well, it's actually it might be this. I'm like, I like didn't even know how to speak that language or like interpret that that signal.
Eli Parrish: It goes both ways, I think as well where when patients describe their symptoms, a lot of times they start with, they're like, I know this is weird. Like, I don't know how to say it. And then
I try to give them permission, like just say the weirdness, because I'm a very weird person. So I'm like, just say it weird and we'll translate that into like PT speak so that it makes sense body wise.
Once your nervous system is kind of like in a place of understanding the context changes around pain. And so it gets a little bit easier to work around injury.
Liora Natania: Thank you so much for hanging out with Eli and I for the first part of our conversation this week. You can catch the rest of our convo next week in part two. See you then.