About Mercedes von Deck
Mercedes von Deck, MD, also known by her nickname Didi, is devoted to helping people reach their full potential. She has spent much of her life studying the human body from different viewpoints through her career as an orthopaedic surgeon as well as as a dancer, yoga teacher and Feldenkrais practitioner. Movement has always interested her, and she uses her knowledge and skills to help people of all ages and backgrounds function and feel better.
Didi was fascinated by the brain growing up and wanted to become a neurologist. However, during her college years, she fell in love with modern dance and initially turned down medical school in order to pursue a career in dance. Eventually, she felt drawn to learn more about the human body and started her medical training at Harvard Medical School, still planning to become a neurologist. To keep dancing, Didi joined the MIT ballroom dance club and found training for competitive ballroom dancing provided her with the opportunity to study the mechanics of movement while providing an artistic outlet through performance and competitions.
She began her 3rd year of medical school on the neurology ward at the Massachusetts General Hospital and discovered the excitement she felt learning about the brain and the nervous system didn’t translate into immediate clinical benefits for the patients. She was also doing very well on the competition circuit with her partner, so in order to devote more time to dance, she took four years off from medical school to train and compete. She discovered the Feldenkrais Method® through her involvement in dance, and she found that the Method helped her dance performance as well as manage her stress when she returned to school. She continued to dance after graduating from Harvard Medical School, and she and her partner competed extensively, winning 5 National titles and representing the US at the 2001 World Games and 7 World Championships before retiring from competition. She still coaches ballroom dancing and judges on the college circuit.
Her love of movement and dance contributed to her decision to become an orthopaedic surgeon. She found orthopaedics to be a satisfying way to help people recover from injuries and regain lost function. However, in some cases, surgery, medications and standard exercise didn’t seem to be enough to relieve pain.
She found some new tools through exploring mindfulness practices such as yoga and meditation. As Didi slowed down from international competition after her third child was born, she joined an ashtanga class being taught in her neighborhood. Practicing ashtanga yoga gave Didi the movement she loved, but from the first class, she realized yoga was more than just exercise. Yoga held the key to her soul. She eventually started practicing every day as a moving meditation that helped her meet the challenges of raising three kids while working as a surgeon. She later completed two yoga teacher trainings and traveled to India several times seeking to understand her experience of yoga as a transformational practice awakening body, mind and spirit. She still isn’t sure exactly how the practices of yoga are able to work such magic, but she is passionate about sharing its benefits. She was instrumental in bringing yoga to the patients at the Cambridge Health Alliance where she works as a surgeon. Didi also directs the Mysore Program at the Down Under School of Yoga in Brookline and seeks to empower her students to go beyond what they believe they are capable of.
Throughout all this time, Didi was still practicing Feldenkrais as a mindful exploration of the body-mind continuum. She completed the four year training program to become a Feldenkrais practitioner and has been teaching regular Awareness through Movement® classes and workshops and offering private Functional Integration® sessions at the Down Under School of Yoga. The Feldenkrais Method uses movement as the most accessible way to create change in the brain for physical, mental and emotional improvement. Through her work in the Feldenkrais Method, Didi helps people improve their quality of life by helping them release extra work or tension in their muscles and find better coordination. This results in easier movement and an improved self image.
As an orthopaedic surgeon, Didi treats a variety of musculoskeletal disorders. She sees people with hip, knee, shoulder and ankle injuries, arthritis, broken bones, back conditions and hand disorders. Her surgical practice includes joint replacement, repair of fractures, arthroscopy and hand procedures. She empowers her patients with knowledge about how their bodies work and about their ailments or disorders so that they can learn to take care of themselves and can be partners in medical decision making. She spends a lot of time educating her patients, not only about proposed treatments, but also about self-care and lifestyle changes that can help prevent disease. She utilizes a truly integrative approach to treat the whole person.
Early in her medical practice, Didi realized that a patient’s attitude and resiliency is important to the success of medical treatment or surgery. Sometimes patients need to learn they can go beyond self-imposed limitations. Sometimes patients have developed habits of tightening muscles to help decrease the pain of an injury and they are unable to let go of these habits after they have healed. Didi finds that yoga and the Feldenkrais Method can help. These practices create a concrete experience of how to change muscular patterns that are hindering function. And when the body changes, the mind follows to enable people to find their optimal health and become their optimum selves. Using the Feldenkrais Method and/or yoga, Didi can help people feel better in their bodies, help people recovering from injuries or living with disabilities, help relieve chronic pain and anxiety, and enhance performance in athletics, yoga, art, music and dance.
Didi lives in Newton, MA with her husband, two cats, and two bunnies and is the proud mom of three creative and capable daughters who are passionate about what they believe in. Didi hopes she has been successful instilling in them the belief that anything and everything is possible if you follow your heart.