Whether she’s leading a Broadway dancer through some stretches before a big premiere or developing a unique treatment program for a patient with a challenging condition, Maria Heston, PT always follows one guiding principle: treat each patient’s body as an entire unit to resolve their issues and make them feel whole again. In her 20-plus-year career and four years here at Twin Boro Physical Therapy, this unwavering commitment to her practice has helped Maria stand out as an exceptional physical therapist that truly understands what it takes to make her patients succeed.
Maria was inspired to enter the field of physical therapy earlier in her life to help her father, who suffered from a rare condition called familial spastic paraplegia. This disorder is similar to multiple sclerosis and caused her father pain, weakness, and spasticity in his legs that got progressively worse over time. This led Maria to pursue a career in physical therapy because she desperately wanted to save him from suffering and becoming wheelchair-bound. Unfortunately, Maria’s father passed away from leukemia when she was only a few years out of PT school, but the experience had a profound impact on her outlook of physical therapy that she carries to this day.
“While I had to accept that I couldn’t change my father’s circumstances and that I was unable to ‘fix’ him, it gave me an incredible drive and passion to help and make a difference in the lives of people that I could change,” she says.
From patient to practitioner
Maria’s interest in physical therapy led her to Boston University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences in 1996, and then a Master of Science in Physical Therapy in 1999. After graduating, she spent several years practicing in New York City in both hospital and private practice settings, and it was during this time that she first got involved with the theater. Maria served as the lead physical therapist during the run of The King and I on Broadway at Lincoln Center, where she provided on-site treatments to performers throughout the entire production process. She also had extensive experience working with performing artists on the sets of many other Broadway productions, including The Lion King, Tarzan, Sister Act, and Sleep No More.
Maria was first introduced to Twin Boro Physical Therapy while working on The King and I, as she was recovering from an ACL reconstruction surgery and needed physical therapy around her new hometown of Westfield. This led her to our Clark location, where she had “an amazing rehab experience” with her therapist RosaAnna, who suggested that she consider working with Twin Boro. Maria took this advice and eventually became a staff physical therapist at that clinic in 2016, and she has remained there ever since. It seemed like a perfect fit since Maria already knew the staff so well, and she has flourished in an environment that she feels is both challenging and rewarding.
“Working with people you love and respect is a true gift,” she says. “There is a constant atmosphere of learning, growth, and exchanging of ideas. It is also one of the most challenging environments I’ve ever worked in with the wide range of cases we see, but I love having that kind of high mental stimulation in a job.”
A unique approach to treat each body as a whole
Here at Twin Boro and throughout her entire career, Maria has taken great pride in her ability to create unique and individual exercise programs for each patient rather than trying to fit each individual into the design of a certain protocol.
According to Maria, “Every patient is so unique and different, and the only way you can learn is to really listen to your patients. A weightlifter, baseball player, and a dancer may all be high-performance athletes, but will still have extremely unique needs for optimal performance. The point is that no two patients are ever the same, no matter how they may appear.”
She also bases her practices on the philosophy that all parts of the body are interrelated and dependent upon one another for good health, which is why she treats the body as a unit rather than as individual parts. She accomplishes this with a broad toolkit of techniques and treatments, which include her being a certified full-body Active Release Technique (ART) provider, with individual certifications for the upper extremity, lower extremity, and the spine. ART is a method that focuses on relieving tension in soft tissues (like muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascia), and Maria believes that this approach has been a game-changer and “the difference between just making patients feel better and actually fixing the soft tissue to make it work properly,” she says.
Maria also utilizes a heavy osteopathic approach based on manual therapy training she has completed through the Institute of Physical Art, Maitland, and Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. This allows her to make an accurate diagnosis for each patient and effectively treat them through a set of hands-on techniques that include mobilizations, manipulations, Muscle Energy Technique, and neuromuscular re-education.
Fueled by a passion for helping patients improve
In addition to the top-notch care she provides at our Clark clinic, Maria still finds the time to work on Broadway whenever possible, which she finds to be “an incredibly rewarding, exciting, and magical experience,” she says. She currently works on a contractor basis when it aligns with her schedule, and has been the therapist for shows like Stomp, Harry Potter, Frozen, and To Kill a Mockingbird. During these shifts, she screens and treats performers for any issues that may be causing pain or affecting their performance to keep them healthy and reduce their risk for injury. Maria sees the work as a great way to remain in a field that she loves without taking up too much of her family time.
It’s safe to say that Maria keeps herself quite busy in her various roles as a physical therapist, but the payoff she gets from seeing patients improve is what keeps her going.
“What excites me most is that I get paid for doing a job I absolutely love,” she says. “When you feel as passionate about what you do as I do, it doesn’t really feel like work.”
Outside of her therapy duties, most of Maria’s time is spent with her husband and three children, who manage to keep her on her toes. She’s also a fitness enthusiast and loves to mix it up with resistance training, barre workouts, and yoga.
