Your body
Cathy sees all bodies as fascinating & fabulous.
Dr Cathy Hayles, a dedicated, female-focused Accredited Exercise Physiologist, working with clients to find new freedom in movement.
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (Adel)
Bachelor of Clinical Exercise Physiology (Honours) (UniSA)
Master of Philosophy (Cantab)
Doctor of Philosophy (UQld)
She started out researching how culture influences the way older athletes experience their health, ageing, gender identity, and how female athletes view the way their bodies are portrayed through the media. After some time working in the public and community services sectors, and then in consulting, she brought everything she learnt back to what she really loves – working with people and their experiences of movement. Cathy blends empathy and scientific evidence to help people with significant health challenges find more meaning, value and enjoyment from moving and living in their bodies.
Cathy’s own experience of movement and exercise is varied. Sometimes she loves it, sometimes she feels crushed by just the thought of it. She also feels frustrated, exhilarated, disheartened, grateful, bored, empowered, and everything else. Mostly, she finds ways to make it lift her spirits, a little bit or a lot. Sometimes she chooses to take a break. She has small goals and big goals, some of which she has stuck with for a long time. Others get changed quite frequently.
Cathy loves learning about people’s complicated histories with movement and exercise, and their demanding, unpredictable, and wonderful lives. She considers it an immense privilege when people so generously share these experiences with her.
Cathy places an emphasis on functional movement within a broadly biopsychosocial framework.
She utilises the following approaches in her work:
Pain science education
Experiential learning
Motivational interviewing
Graded exposure and progressive overload
Interdisciplinary collaboration
She is an active researcher through the University of South Australia.
Current projects include:
How do women with PCOS and Endometriosis experience health care professionals’ advice about exercise compared to controls? A mixed methods analysis.
Accredited Exercise Physiologists’ perspectives on university curriculum and research gaps for working with gynaecological conditions.
Outcome differences between male and female adults engaging in resistance training for the management of anxiety, depression and psychosis.
