Founder & Philosophy

About the Institute Founder: Donna Bajelis, PT, CHP, SMS

The founder and director of the Institute of Structural Medicine, Donna Bajelis, is a nationally respected educator and leader in the field of Structural Integration. She has 32 years of experience combined, as a Licensed Physical Therapist, Certified Hellerwork Trainer, and Structural Medicine Trainer.

Donna Bajelis specializes in orthopedic/neurological manual therapy, which includes myofascial release, joint mobilization, and neuromuscular re-education. She maintains a practice based in Seattle Washington, Twisp Washington, and Kaaawa Hawaii.

Over the course of her career, Donna has developed and trained thousands of health care providers both nationally and internationally. She’s been published in multiple medical journals and textbooks and is presently in the state of completion of her own Structural Medicine textbook.

Donna’s success in integrating her background as a physical therapist and her training in structural integration motivated her to create the Institute of Structural Medicine. In founding the Institute, Donna envisioned a place where healthcare professionals from diverse backgrounds could collaborate in uniting traditional and alternative therapies. She continues to find deep satisfaction from educating her students in the field of Structural Medicine. Educational Philosophy & Mission

Educational Philosophy

Institute founder Donna Bajelis believes that learning is inherently natural and fun, and teaches accordingly. In teaching Structural Medicine, she emphasizes a necessary balance between increasing her students’ intellectual knowledge of the human body and drawing out her students’ natural intelligence about their own bodies.

In helping their patients to heal, practitioners of Structural Medicine use their intellectual understanding of the body as their map, and their inherent knowledge of the body as their guide. This inherent guide can continue to lead even after the intellectual map ends. By teaching how to listen to and rely on this inherent guide, Donna Bajelis and her staff teach their students how to work comfortably in unknown situations by using body-knowledge and intuition.

In order to tap both intellectual and inherent ways of understanding the body, instructors at the Institute of Structural Medicine use techniques emphasizing all types of intelligence and learning. These include visual, auditory, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, concrete and intuitive techniques. The staff members are well educated in different learning styles, and adapt their teaching according to their students.

As the techniques of Structural Medicine require a whole-body understanding and cannot be learned by the intellect in isolation, the staff emphasizes kinesthetic learning, in which students constantly practice the techniques and movements of Structural Medicine.

Donna Bajelis and the staff at the Institute of Structural Medicine also believe that Structural Medicine requires from its practitioners, full consciousness of their own emotional, physical, and spiritual selves. Donna terms this “consciousness presence,” and describes it as the quality of being comfortable with oneself, of being comfortable in ones “own skin.” “Presence,” she says, “is a clear, conscious, honesty about oneself. All learning depends on Presence.”

Donna and her staff both teach their students how to acquire this necessary honesty, and require that their students be ready for it. Just as it requires “presence” to practice Structural Medicine, the continued practice of Structural Medicine causes “presence” to expand and improve.

Instructors at the Institute of Structural Medicine help their students to develop their awareness and presence. In order to do so, they cultivate a safe environment in which mistakes are allowed and encouraged. Donna and the staff consider questions the best learning tools, and encourage students to experiment and explore during their time of study.