S2, E2: Rocksteady Bodyworks - Jeff Roche & Jessa Munion
The conversation opens on a hinge moment: a phone call during the 2001 World Trade Center collapse that jolts a high-achieving consultant into a westward search for meaning. That shock becomes a doorway to nature, where the first language is movement and the terrain teaches humility. Vail’s mountains lead to yoga leadership in Park City, and eventually to the seed of a studio that isn’t a studio at all, but a practice. Rocksteady emerges from this arc as an integrated place where bodywork, Pilates, and education converge. The core idea is simple and radical: movement is medicine, self-discovery is a practice, and real wellness is communal, not just personal.
If wellness starts as an inner state, it grows through contact with real things: cold snow, steep walls, early mornings, sore legs, and steady breath. Jeff’s alpine lens brings this to earth. Years of mountaineering translate into how to build a business—vision, route finding, risk, and flow. Picking a safe line in avalanche terrain mirrors choosing a financial path that keeps people and purpose intact. The duo blends a global outlook with gritty pragmatism: spreadsheets, QuickBooks, whiteboards, and a willingness to move cash and muscle as the dream scales. Their Holiday neighborhood space reflects that synthesis—part quiet bodega, part Portland craft, part Northern European clarity—designed for the provider and the client to thrive.
Rocksteady’s clinical heartbeat is “movement as medicine.” Deep tissue work isn’t spa fluff; it’s structural change. Sessions decongest stress patterns, wake dormant chains, and restore the body’s internal flow so people can perform and recover. Pilates here is not choreography; it’s precise, functional repatterning that balances the nervous system and strengthens scaffolding for daily life and hard play. The culture insists on autonomy, calm daylight, and honest communication. It’s a workplace where wellness is not a product but a process: a flatter hierarchy, time to practice, and a shared responsibility to carry care beyond the room.
Education lifts this further. Many can pass a test; few can transmit craft. Rocksteady mentors therapists and teachers through experiential learning—watching, doing, refining—so they leap years ahead. The point isn’t dependence; it’s self-sufficiency. Alongside technique, they teach client management, business models, and ethics that resist quick-fix trends. In a noisy era of hot takes and copy-paste expertise, they argue for humility and apprenticeship. The best knowledge still travels person to person, hand to hand. Excellence comes from repetition, feedback, and the courage to revise your map when the weather turns.
Their stewardship extends to place. The Great Salt Lake is not a backdrop; it’s a living system that shapes weather, health, and identity. The lake’s decline is framed as a complex problem that demands value-chain thinking and impact networks, not cosmetic gestures. Priorities must shift where water is consumed, guided by per capita economics and long-term health. Personifying the lake resets the tone: a friend is ill, and we must respond. The same systems logic that stabilizes a spine applies to a region—restore flow, relieve pressure, and align incentives to serve the whole.
That systems view drives their take on the Little Cottonwood gondola controversy. The canyon’s “red snake” is a flow problem, not a monument contest. A people-first solution—dynamic lanes, bus-priority corridors, and distributed transit hubs—scales capacity without scarring an iconic landscape or sinking public funds into a 45-minute ride few will use. Two up, one down in peak windows mimics circulation: direct, adaptable, and reversible. Buses are assets with second lives; towers are sunk cost. The message is consistent from fascia to freeways: start simple, optimize flow, honor the terrain, and choose solutions that can evolve.
In the end, the story is less about a brand and more about a stance. Wellness isn’t a checklist; it’s a lived relationship with your body, your people, and your place. Rocksteady’s bet is that strong bodies and attentive minds create better neighbors, better decisions, and a more resilient city. Nature remains the great teacher. Movement stays the clearest medicine. And the work—inside the studio and across the valley—is to keep restoring flow, one session, one mentor, and one smarter path at a time.
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