Happy April!

Finally, its April!

Warm, spring weather will soon be here. Flowers will start to bloom and Ithaca will come to life after a long, cold winter. Finally!

It is a sentiment amongst clients and colleagues, friends and family. Everyone is ready to shed the sleepiness and sluggishness that comes with the yin season of winter and sprawl out into spring.

And my private practice has been open for a whole entire month today! I feel truly blessed and excited to have this opportunity and space to provide bodywork to the community I love. Each client I have seen has inspired me in some way, and I find myself bubbling with a creativity that has been long missed!

This creative energy has led to a revelation: massage is art. This may seem odd, but I will explain. I used to paint every single day and dreamed of being an illustrator. Some difficult things happened that made me lock my creativity away, and I didn't feel the sparks of it again until massage school in 2017. And then I lost my uncle at the end of massage school to a car accident. Grief changed me, and I felt disconnected from massage for a while and even struggled with it. I went back to my former career hoping for a break and healing and eventually realized I wasn't happy without massage and made my way back to the massage world.

In this process I've learned a lot, and still there was more to unravel. I started working at a spa again and followed my instincts. I let myself learn my limits and embrace them and how to speak up for myself. And before I knew it, my mind started wandering towards being curious about opening my own practice. What would it mean? Would I have a specialty? What would it even be? I decided to see what sort of clients I was seeing most of at the spa. Regardless of their personal backgrounds and requests, all of my clients are needing to be seen.

This act of seeing feels exactly like the act of seeing a scene on a blank canvas and allowing it to come to life through the paintbrush. When I find a trigger point or knot in the rhomboids it may be in the same spot as dozens of other clients, but what does this exact tension point mean for this client? Is it traveling up into splenius capitus, can I see its path of tension to any other part of the body through the connective tissue? When I move a client's arm this way, do they let it flow or resist? What does either response mean? How does my client feel? Its the same as watercolor painting! Questions always arise, theories formed, techniques tried, and ultimately its up to the art itself what it will become.

Feeling massage as an artform opens up the door for endless learning and exploration. Afterall, an artist must always be curious, and so must the bodyworker. With this newfound creativity I look forward to the month of April and the art that will be made within my practice. My deepest hope is that my clients feel seen, heard, and supported by my work.

Thank you for giving me an incredible first month at my private practice! My gratitude is immense and I hope to see you on my table soon!