Jamie Mann is the latest setter to join the FA Setting Crew. She is a former gymnast, longtime yoga instructor, and a smile personified. Look out for “JM” on boulder tags to climb some of Jamie’s vertical flows, as well as yoga classes led by Jamie weekday evenings at FA Uptown.
Hello, dear readers. Whether you know me as a yoga teacher, the newest route setter, or just a familiar face around First Ascent, I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself and the journey that brought me here.
My love for movement and body awareness started when I was 3 years old. My mom was a gymnast through high school, so when I was old enough to enroll in a “Mommy and Me” gymnastics class, we were in. It turned out that gymnastics was as much mine as it was my mom’s. I was enamored.
In the 3rd grade, I was asked by the team coach at Northbrook Gymnastics Training Center to consider doing gymnastics at the competitive level. Overnight, my schedule jumped to 4 hours of training everyday after school at the gym, then going home to do my homework, eat, sleep, and do it all again the following day. 
Even Saturdays were spent drilling routines. The gymnastics gym was my home, the team was my family, and nothing made more sense to me than being in the air and having complete control over my body in space. So, bring on the long sleeved leotards, body glitter, and buns so tight you could actually feel your eyelids being pulled towards your scalp.
I remember competing on the balance beam and knowing that there was another team’s floor music, the buzzing of the crowd, and the cheers of my team happening all at once, but all I could hear was radio fuzz. It was my breath and the knowledge of exactly what I had to do to stick my next trick on a 4 inch wide block of wood, 4 feet off the ground. And the uneven parallel bars were perfect physics understood in the most physical of forms, gliding fluidly around and between the bars. It all felt like music that my body made intrinsically. I was Jamie the gymnast, and this was my flow state.
That flow didn’t come for free, though. By the end of junior high, my body, specifically my spine, started to feel it. I had to quit the sport for two years and undergo my first couple rounds of physical therapy. I was young and able to bounce back, so when high school came around, I joined the Highland Park High School team. Even though I competed at the varsity level, I could no longer compete in vault or floor exercise by my junior year.
The high impact nature of those events aggravated and worsened my already significant back injury. Fast forward to college days, my last meet long behind me at regionals senior year of high school. I was left with nothing but longing for the flips, the leaps, (yes, even the sparkly leotards) and a constant ache in my low back and around my hips.
The physical therapy journey I took was extensive and long. Do a Google search for different therapy options for a lumbar spinal injury, and I’ve probably gone through everything on the first three pages: chiropractics, acupuncture, massage therapy, epidural and cortisone injections, and the list goes on. We threw everything but the kitchen sink at the problem over such a length of time that I have trouble recalling the details.
I was nearly immobile for a few years there, living with 8’s and 9’s out of 10 on a pain scale day to day. Unable to sit through a lecture, I eventually had to drop out of school, losing all social and physical outlets in the process. I was isolated and missing a huge part of my identity. If you’ve ever met me, you’ll know that I’m a consummately expressive person. I communicate with my whole body. Feeling cooped up inside my fragile frame did brutal damage to my mental state. I was no longer Jamie The Gymnast. I became someone I didn’t know or particularly like, and I could not relate to the body that I was now being held hostage in.
I’ll bet you’re sensing a downward spiral. Well, you’re right. The bottom of the spiral landed me in a partial hospitalization program for depression where, you might’ve guess, the turning point in this story lies.
I took my first yoga class during that time, and was introduced to Eastern philosophy,
the combination of which took me to mental states that are an unthinkably blissful counterpoint to legitimate depression. It was (pardon my French), frickin’ wonderful. My first class was the first hour in so many years that I could not only turn down the volume on my obsessively negative self talk but also see a glimpse of some kind of connection with myself and my body that I had thought was long gone. It was a handshake with myself that desperately needed to happen.
About a year into devoted daily practice, I could feel that yoga was helping with pain management and alignment of my spine,
but it was still very obvious that there was something very, very wrong with my back. My last ditch effort was to speak with one last surgeon who agreed to take me on.
Turns out I had a very badly herniated disc that got a bit tangled up in some nerves. That micro discectomy operation paired with a daily yoga practice helped me achieve a virtually pain free life (minus the occasional flare up).
Eventually the spiritual and physical practice of yoga became so important to me that sharing the gift of yoga through teaching felt like a responsibility I was more than happy to take on. 
To be entirely present in your body, to focus on nothing but your breath, alignment and joint organization, and to allow everything else to slip away into background noise is quite possibly the most healing thing I have ever experienced. The idea of creating and holding that space for others to experience the same gave my injury and years of angst deep meaning.
To make a long story very short, when I found First Ascent and the sport of climbing, I couldn’t get enough. I nearly begged for a yoga teaching gig so I could afford being a regular member of the community and fuel my new found addiction to pushing my physical limits and comfort zone. I found my new self in the sequencing of yoga asanas, and I continued to develop this new self in climbing.
Having nothing but your breath and control over your body is a sure way to make all the other nonsense in your head disappear.
There was one small problem: everything I climbed seemed to be designed with bigger humans than myself in mind. Being a relatively new climber and 4’10” (on a good day) was definitely a challenge coming to First Ascent. I felt that there was a population in the gym that was not being represented: adults and children under the height of 5’. I knew there was more to sequencing a boulder problem than jumping and cutting feet at each crux. I felt strongly that there could be routes and boulder problems that are challenging for climbers of all sizes. 
I even felt it would be beneficial to have climbs that favored the shorties, and gave the taller people something to sweat over. I think that variety is important to keep everyone motivated in the truly spectacular sport of rock climbing.
When I asked Cheech and Mike (FA’s Head Setter and Foreman, respectively) if I could join the setting team and bring these beliefs to bear on my setting style, they welcomed me with open arms.
Learning a new art where body positioning is everything has been an absolute pleasure. The parallels that can be drawn between creating a flow on the wall and creating a flow on the mat are almost poetic. I’ll spare you the balladry, but I will say this: helping people understand and experience their bodies as a means of personal growth is what I feel I was put on this earth to do. I hope to set things that inspire, educate, and strengthen all body types and sensibilities. And I hope my setting and my yoga instruction at FA create space for you to breathe, flow, and tune out all of the noise in your own life so you can reconnect with the one and only you.
Learn more about Jamie and all of the amazing setters on the FA Setting Crew here.