Karen Lord On Chronic Illness, Ambition & Redefining Strength
Invisible illnesses are exactly what they sound like: conditions that often can't be seen from the outside. There are no casts, crutches, or obvious signs that something is wrong. And because of that, many people spend years navigating pain, symptoms, and medical uncertainty while the world assumes they're perfectly fine.
Sometimes, the people who appear healthiest are carrying the heaviest burdens.
Karen Lord knows that reality intimately.
If you live in Los Angeles, there's a good chance you've heard her name. She's one of the city's most sought-after Pilates instructors, with studios in both New York and Los Angeles and a loyal following that includes celebrities, athletes, and creatives. Her Santa Monica studio, which I've personally taken classes at and love, has built a reputation for thoughtful programming, expert instruction, and a community that keeps people coming back.
From the outside, Lord’s life looks like a wellness success story. She built a thriving business. She helps people feel stronger in their bodies for a living. She has spent years at the center of an industry that celebrates health, vitality, and performance.
What many people didn't see was that behind the scenes, she was navigating severe endometriosis, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), hypermobility disorders, chronic pain, countless emergency room visits, and years of searching for answers.
Lord's story highlights a reality shared by many people, that looking healthy and feeling healthy are not always the same thing. And in a culture that often rewards pushing through discomfort, slowing down long enough to acknowledge suffering can feel almost impossible.
Below, Lord touches on what it was like to build a business while managing chronic illness, the pressure to "perform wellness" even when your body is struggling, and how her understanding of strength has evolved over the years.
mbg: For readers who may not know your story, how did you first find your way into the wellness and Pilates industry?
Karen Lord: I was an active kid. Bikes, skateboards, dance routines in the basement, but gymnastics was my first love. I had potential, I was bendy and brave, and movement came naturally to me.
When I moved to New York alone at 19, my focus shifted to fashion, music, art, and nightlife. I was thriving in a city that rewards ambition, but I was also running from something I didn't yet understand. Beneath the surface, I was dealing with a terrifying recurring health issue that doctors couldn't explain.
Every month, I'd end up in the ER in excruciating pain, only to be told it was bad cramps, stress, anxiety, or that I should try yoga. At the time, I simply called it "the thing"—a terrifying cycle of pain, vomiting, ambulance rides, and hospital visits that no one could explain. Meanwhile, I kept building a life and career.
Pilates entered my life through a boyfriend who was using it to manage chronic back pain. He encouraged me to join him for a class. I resisted at first, but when I finally went, something clicked. I felt like a gymnast again. I felt strong. I felt connected to my body in a way I hadn't in years.
I went home, looked in the mirror, and saw my younger athletic self staring back at me. From that moment on, Pilates became my thing. I practiced constantly because it made me feel strong, even when my body felt anything but.
Pilates became my thing. I practiced constantly because it made me feel strong, even when my body felt anything but.
mbg: Can you take me back to when your health challenges first started?
Lord: I got my first period at 14. A few months later, I was sitting in class when a pain so intense I could barely comprehend it hit me. I ran to the bathroom, where I spent hours vomiting, shaking, and writhing on the floor.
I remember trying to stand on my head because what was happening felt so abnormal that I thought maybe if I changed my position, it would stop.
Eventually, the pain passed. The school nurse gave me an Advil. My mom picked me up and told me that some people get bad cramps.
What I didn't realize was that this would become a pattern that followed me for decades. It happened in my childhood bedroom, on city streets, at weddings, on vacations, and in countless apartments across New York and Los Angeles.
I didn't think of it as stress. I didn't have that language at 14. I just knew I felt different from everyone else. And every episode reinforced that feeling.
mbg: You help people connect with and trust their bodies for a living. What was it like when your own body felt unpredictable or difficult to trust?
Lord: I've always been deeply intuitive and sensitive. Because "the thing" made me feel different and alone, I became fiercely protective of other people.
As I built my career in Pilates, I felt pressure to embody a certain kind of perfection. I quickly learned that wasn't possible.
When an episode would hit, I'd find myself calling clients on the way to the ER, apologizing through tears and wondering whether they believed me. The shame spiral was brutal.
I spent years helping people reconnect with their bodies while becoming increasingly disconnected from my own. I never lost a client. They continued to trust me. But privately, I was exhausted, isolated, and struggling to hold everything together.
mbg: What do you wish someone had said to you during the hardest chapter of your health journey?
Lord: I wish someone had held me and fought for me the way I fought for everyone else. I was everyone's advocate, and I needed one.
I was so strong that I could see the cognitive dissonance in my friends' eyes and hearts. I was at the top of my game. I was strong, social, living, wild. None of us could understand why something kept grabbing me and pulling me down, and how it was possible that I'd always just pop back up and get back to life.
It's an impossibility to have this much pain and survive. We know that as humans, we all dissociate and throw our hands up, and I went deeper underwater.
I wish I'd had someone to hold me up and demand answers for a life that was only being half-lived.
I was everyone's advocate, and I needed one.
mbg: What has chronic illness taught you about strength that you don't think you would have learned otherwise?
Lord: At first, living with this level of chronic and unpredictable pain taught me that I was less strong than I thought. For a long time, I believed I had somehow caused this. I was constantly explaining myself, constantly questioning myself.
Everything began to shift about six years ago. During the pandemic, I experienced profound loss: a pregnancy, one of my best friends to COVID, and another to the loneliness that followed. I was grieving deeply and searching everywhere for answers, from therapy groups to alternative healing practices.
Somewhere in that process, I realized that if I was capable of feeling this much pain, I was also capable of feeling immense joy. I was built to feel things deeply. Around that same time, I was formally diagnosed with ADHD, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and endometriosis. I remember calling my mom in tears and saying, "Finally, the thing has a name."
The diagnosis brought validation, but the strength had already been built. What I've learned is that strength isn't powering through. It's having the courage to keep going, to ask for help, to walk away from bad doctors and bad relationships, and to stay connected even when you're vulnerable.
People often tell me how strong I am. The truth is, I never wanted to need this much strength.
mbg: As someone whose career revolves around movement, how has chronic pain changed your relationship with exercise?
Lord: For the first time in my life, I couldn't work out for nearly two years. I developed long COVID, chronic migraines, MCAS, histamine intolerance, and Hashimoto's. My body was overwhelmed by years of chronic inflammation. Even a good workout could leave me feeling sick for days.
As someone who has always believed that more is better, I had to completely rethink my relationship with exercise. I had to treat myself with the same tenderness I had spent years teaching my clients to offer themselves.
Pilates was still the answer for me, but the way I practiced changed. Instead of pushing harder, I focused on rebuilding trust with my body. It took nearly two years to regain my strength, and that process taught me patience in a way nothing else could.
I had to treat myself with the same tenderness I had spent years teaching my clients to offer themselves.
mbg: What does listening to your body actually look like now compared to ten years ago?
Lord: Listening to my body now means love and attunement instead of dissociation and distraction. I have the confidence and experience to know that I can't ignore pain, or it will get worse. I can't drink, date, or dance it away.
I have a solid team and a solid self-protocol, and I'm fiercely protective of myself now, not just the people I love. I'm getting really good at this, and that feels like success.
It wasn't a snap of the fingers, and a new routine was born. It's been more than 30 years of actively alchemizing a shame spiral that never served me into ferocious self-care instead of self-abandonment.
Not unlike classical Pilates, it's a practice. It's principled and repetitive. And it's all heart and muscle.
Listening to my body now means love and attunement instead of dissociation and distraction.
mbg: What's one piece of advice you'd give your younger self at the beginning of this journey?
Lord: Karen, please take yourself seriously. One day, you'll still be here to validate the parts of yourself that no one else could. Stay around for that part.
mbg: If someone is reading this while struggling with a health condition that nobody else can see, what's the one thing you hope they take away from your story?
Lord: I hope they know they will be seen. They feel different because they are different, and being different gives you compassion, and that compassion is powerful, and please try to turn it inward.
Seek out those who see you. Revoke access to those who don’t help when you hurt. You don’t have to be strong. When people tell you how incredible it is, it's okay to say I don’t want this superpower.
Notice, like I did, that your ability to feel greater pain than most probably gives you the ability to experience moments of greater joy than most. Let that be your strength while you let people help you find a way through this life.
Pain changes path. It changes you. You are loved.