Naori — From the Founder

Before Naori Became a Method

To me, Naori is an expression of sovereignty in my own health and in the way I feel and look in my body. It is the choice to become an active participant in understanding, supporting, and caring for myself.

What began with one question became a deeply personal search for answers and a new way of seeing the relationships within the body. Over time, that exploration grew into a movement method I now feel deeply grateful and excited to share with those who desire to experience more of the potential within their own bodies.

The story of how Naori came to be is not a short one, because the method itself is only the visible result of a much longer process of questioning, research, observation, and personal discovery. For much of that journey, I was not thinking about creating a movement method at all. I was simply trying to understand my body and find meaningful answers to the questions that kept leading me further.

Perhaps make a cup of tea, settle in, and let me take you back to where it began.

Approximately a 7-minute read.

Yuliya Nadimi

Founder, Naori Method

The beginning

After a particularly stressful time in my life, back in 2022, I was ill for nearly a month. When the illness passed, the exhaustion did not. I had always been healthy and active, yet suddenly I could barely get up in the morning. Even light activity could leave me needing to rest for hours.

Bloodwork showed that my iron was very low, and I began taking the supplement my doctor prescribed.

Six months later, my follow-up results had not improved. The next step was to continue supplementation, but the result left me with a question I could not let go of: why was my body not responding in the way I expected?

I began studying. I learned more about iron metabolism, food sources, absorption, meal composition, timing, and the many factors that can influence how the body uses what we give it. I changed the way I approached both food and supplementation. Six months later, my bloodwork had improved significantly.

That experience changed something in me. I began to understand that when something in my body did not make sense, I needed to keep asking questions. I wanted to understand the conditions surrounding the problem, the relationships influencing it, and what might be happening beyond the most obvious explanation.

A deeper curiosity

A few months later, my husband and I were introduced to fasting. I was struck by how quickly the body could respond when one of its most familiar daily inputs — food — was temporarily removed. The experience opened another door in the way I thought about the body. I became increasingly curious about the difference between what we see from the outside and what may be changing internally.

I began paying much closer attention to nutrition, food quality, digestion, meal composition, and the way I felt after eating. I changed much of what (and how) I cooked at home. I exercised four or five times a week. By conventional standards, I was taking good care of my body.

And yet, one part of my body continued to puzzle me.

My legs had always been more difficult to change. They were slim, but the tissue did not look or feel the way I expected it to. I had visible cellulite extending far down my legs, all the way to my ankles, and the surface of the tissue was unusually tender. My right leg also felt heavier than my left, and the measurements confirmed that the asymmetry was there.

I could not understand why.

At first, I looked in the places that seemed most obvious. I studied hormones. I studied circulation and venous return. I experimented with nutritional strategies and different forms of support. The pattern remained.

I then turned to manual techniques, believing that perhaps I could massage the problem away. I tried increasingly aggressive methods. My legs were so tender that they often hurt after the work, yet I kept going. At times, I left my skin covered in bruises because I assumed that stronger work must be doing more.

Eventually, I began to question that too.

A different direction

As my questions deepened, I devoted every day to research grounded in published anatomical, physiological, and connective-tissue literature, and peer-reviewed research papers on the extracellular matrix, lymphatic function, interstitial fluid, and adipose tissue biology. I studied fascial anatomy and continuity through the work of Carla Stecco, Robert Schleip, Thomas Myers, and Leon Chaitow. I was fascinated by all that knowledge (a side note: I think everyone who starts reading about fascia has that feeling, another layer of health unlocked!).

The more I studied, the more my questions expanded. I learned that when lymphatic transport is impaired, fluid can accumulate in the tissues, and that chronic lymphatic dysfunction can be associated with inflammation and fibrotic tissue changes. Some of what I was reading — the heaviness, persistent tissue changes, and the possibility that fluid and connective tissue could be involved — felt relevant to the questions I had been trying to answer. But I was not trying to diagnose myself. What mattered was that, for the first time, I was looking beyond fat, muscle, hormones, and circulation.

I had discovered an entire system deeply involved in fluid balance and the environment of the tissues.

From the lymphatic system, I began studying interstitial fluid and the environment between the cells. From there, I was led to fascia and the relationship between this connective tissue network and fluid movement.

And the deeper I went, the more the original question expanded. What began with nutrition grew into the study of circulation, hormones, lymphatic physiology, interstitial fluid, fascia, manual techniques, breath mechanics, pressure dynamics, and movement. I read across textbooks, research papers, clinical resources, and the work of practitioners from different disciplines. Each field gave me another piece of the picture. But none of the pieces fully made sense in isolation.

The more I studied, the clearer one pattern became: the body functions through relationships.

Around this time, I also began receiving lymphatic drainage massage. I could see and feel that it was working. My legs felt lighter, and I could see the tissue changing.

But I did not want those changes to depend on regular massage sessions.

Translating understanding into movement

I wanted to understand whether the principles I was learning could be translated into something I could practice consistently myself. So I began asking a new question: how could I bring together what I had learned about lymphatic flow, fascia, breath, pressure, touch, and movement into one practice?

That question became the turning point.

I began translating what I was learning into movement. I experimented with breathing patterns, positions, rhythmic movement, gentle contact, tissue glide, and different ways of sequencing the body through a session.

What changed

Over time, the way my legs looked and felt changed dramatically. The tenderness reduced. My right leg began to feel lighter. The asymmetry I had been trying to understand also began to make more sense to me — not as an isolated problem inside the leg, but as part of the way my hip, pelvis, and tissues on that side of my body were moving together.

And the changes were no longer limited to my legs. My body overall began to look more refined and feel more toned.

At some point, I realized I was no longer practicing a collection of techniques. A method had taken shape.

Naori was born through that process: years of studying, testing, observing, questioning, and refining.

The heart of the method

Naori brings attention to relationships that often remain in the background of movement: the relationship between breath and pressure, pressure and fluid movement, fluid movement and tissue condition, tissue condition and movement quality, and movement quality and the way the body feels.

Naori is designed to support other forms of movement and care. It asks a different question:

How can movement support the internal conditions that shape how the body looks, moves, and feels?

That question is where Naori began. And it remains at the heart of the method today.

Closing Reflection

Thank you for giving your time to this story and staying with me through the end. There is one more part of my journey that feels important to share.

One of the most meaningful turning points in my personal development was realizing that our choices shape the reality we experience. The realization itself mattered, but the deeper transformation came through living it—day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath.

I began looking closely at my habits, thought patterns, and beliefs, asking myself: Is this a choice my Spirit makes through Love, or one my Intellect makes from fear, doubt, unresolved pain, or simply the familiarity of an old habit? Whenever I sensed that something less than Love was guiding a choice, I gave it my attention, explored it honestly, and chose again.

This remains a living practice for me. It continues to shape how I care for my body, how I move through the world, and how I understand Naori—as an invitation to participate consciously in the life we are creating within ourselves and around us.

Yuliya Nadimi

Founder, Naori Method

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