Mike Braitsch, PT, DPT, has spent much of his career helping people with Parkinson’s stay active, connected and engaged in life. As the founder of Tribe Wellness, a Parkinson’s-specific clinic in Dallas, he combined individual therapy with a lineup of group exercise programs, from boxing to tai chi to hiking. In this episode of the Think BIG and LOUD Podcast, he talks with host Beth Peterson about how he got here, what the Parkinson’s community has taught him, and a new project that will take a group of people with Parkinson’s across northern Spain on foot.
From fighter to physical therapist
Mike’s path into physical therapy wasn’t a straight line. He’s always been active, and after a college rugby career he started out in finance. He liked the company but didn’t love the work. On the side, he was competing in amateur fighting and martial arts events around the country, and that meant a lot of injuries.
He finished his prerequisites at night and on weekends and made the switch. He hasn’t looked back.
A personal connection to Parkinson’s
Like many people who work in this field, Mike has a personal story. His grandmother had progressive supranuclear palsy, an atypical form of parkinsonism that looks and acts a lot like Parkinson’s disease but responds less well to medication and tends to progress faster. When she began having trouble walking, her neurologist suggested a wheelchair, and her decline sped up from there. It was a different era of care, but it stayed with him. From then on, any story about someone doing well with Parkinson’s caught his attention.
One of those stories came from boxing coach Freddie Roach, who mentioned in a Sports Illustrated interview that something about training his fighters helped him manage his own Parkinson’s symptoms. Years later, as a physical therapy student at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Mike asked the head of movement disorders what it was about boxing that helped. The answer: we know exercise helps, but we don’t know why boxing helps, so why not design a study and find out?
With faculty support, he did. He built a pilot boxing program, and when it ended, participants didn’t want to stop. They told him they were moving better and feeling better, and asked what they were supposed to do now. Preston Hollow United Methodist Church offered its space for free, and classes kept going there until there was enough funding to open a clinic.
The birth of Tribe Wellness
With a colleague from UT Southwestern and a community grant from the Parkinson’s Foundation, Mike continued researching boxing for Parkinson’s. People could try the program through the study, then keep going at the Tribe Wellness gym and clinic a few miles away. He opened the clinic in 2017, and at its peak it offered 17 group classes a week for people with Parkinson’s, along with individual physical and occupational therapy just for people with movement disorders.
Why “graduating” from therapy isn’t the finish line
A key part of the Tribe model was moving people from individual therapy into ongoing group programs. For someone recovering from a knee replacement, graduating from therapy makes sense. For someone with a chronic, progressive condition, it can feel like being left without a plan.
Mike tells the story of visiting a friend who volunteered with the Dallas Area Parkinson Society. On his desk sat a packet of home exercises from physical therapy two years earlier. It was there to remind him to do them. Was he doing them? Not at all. For Mike, that summed up why groups matter. People are more likely to show up when they’ve made plans to work out together, and they tend to work harder alongside others.
He’s clear that groups don’t replace individualized physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Every person’s symptoms are different, and one-on-one care allows for more precise coaching. The groups are a tool to keep people going, and a place where people laugh together, trade notes and remember why they’re doing the work.
Movement as specific medicine
Each Tribe program grew out of a real need voiced by members. As Mike puts it, exercise is medicine for people with Parkinson’s, but matching specific types of movement to specific symptoms makes it work even better. This led Mike to create the Southpaw Boxing Club, Brain and Body Tai Chi, Mobility Yoga, and Peak Performers, a walking and hiking group.
For Peak Performers, Mike wanted the group to have a “big goal” from the start, one that would push members beyond what they thought was possible. That goal turned out to be Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at about 8,750 feet. The group drove nine hours to West Texas and hiked for 14 and a half hours, far longer than the nine and a half they’d planned. It was inspired by advice from Mike’s longtime martial arts instructor: set a lofty goal and watch people rise to the occasion.
One couple who made that hike recently told Mike it was their last big outdoor adventure together. Getting to be part of that, he says, is unreal. The group has since added shorter outings with different levels of challenge, and learned that participants should test and qualify for the biggest ones.
What LSVT BIG changed
Mike is a longtime user of LSVT BIG®, and he says the training changed how he coaches, including how he teaches tai chi, which he’d already been teaching for years. The biggest shift was helping people move from watching and copying to feeling and recalibrating their own movements.
In boxing class, that meant slowing down, placing his hands on a participant’s hips to guide a pivot, and asking how the new movement felt compared with the old one. The approach made such a difference that every new PT and OT he hired at Tribe completed LSVT BIG certification as part of onboarding.
Community as a safe space
Tribe Wellness closed as a clinic, largely because of the demands of Medicare billing and staffing. The community didn’t. Mike kept an online group running, moved tai chi to Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, and helped transition programs to the Dallas Area Parkinson Society, which now runs the original church group. His programs are also used at the Mike A. Myers Stroke Center at Texas Woman’s University, and he trains instructors to lead them.
Care partners are often already carrying a lot, he notes, and some things are easier to share with someone who’s going through the same experience. Former Tribe members still meet for lunch every week to swap resources and compare notes.
Your Own Parkinson’s Pilgrimage
Mike’s newest project began with a Tribe member named Yolanda. She asked to start a walking program because she planned to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain with her husband. The Camino is a network of trails that converge on the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, and people have walked it for more than a thousand years. Everyone who travels it is called a pilgrim.
Watching Yolanda train gave Mike a new view on apathy, a common and powerful non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s. During the pandemic, he saw regulars drift away and never return. A lofty external goal, he believes, can help people take action even when motivation is hard to find. So this past May, he walked the Portuguese route of the Camino solo, starting in Porto and covering around 178 miles in 12 days.
In May 2027, he’ll lead a group of people with Parkinson’s to Spain to walk the final 100 kilometers, the distance needed to earn a Compostela, the certificate of completion.
10 days on the trail • 10 km walked each day • 100 km to earn a Compostela
Because beds along the route are limited, 10 participants will test in to make the trip. Everyone else can join from home, either walking the same daily distance in real time or working toward 100 kilometers over the month of May. A recruitment webinar is planned for November, and an online training community begins in January, with journal prompts and tracking of steps, effort and non-motor symptoms like apathy. The project is a fundraiser for the Davis Phinney Foundation.
The hope is that this could one day become a research study. There’s reason for optimism: in the final round of Mike’s boxing research, which looked at apathy, depression and anxiety, 80% of participants responded, and those responders showed a 75% improvement in non-motor symptoms.
How to get involved
Mike wants to hear from anyone interested in walking, training or donating. The team is also looking for donations of trekking poles and hydration backpacks for participants.
- Instagram: @tribewellnessllc or @drmikebraitschpt
- Email: tribewellnessllc@gmail.com
What the Parkinson’s community has taught him
Asked what years of working with people with Parkinson’s have taught him about living well, Mike’s answer was simple.
Listen to the full episode
The Think BIG and LOUD Podcast from LSVT Global shares inspiring stories, expert insights, and engaging conversations for people living with neurological conditions and those who love and support them.
To learn more about LSVT LOUD speech therapy or LSVT BIG physical and occupational therapy, or to find a certified clinician near you, visit lsvtglobal.com.
Claude assisted in the translation of this content from a podcast to a blog, edited by humans of course.