BUSINESS ROADMAP
VISION:
I support 9 people in Sebastopol per week with in person massage sessions. I support people who are QT, BIPOC and/or navigating chronic health/pain. Folks lean deep into their healing work and tend to come 1x/week or 2x/month. I offer embodiment sessions where I support folks to listen to their bodies/create a ritual/movement practices that both allow them to connect to their heart and support more ease in their bodies. I offer these both in person and virtually. I offer shorter virtual jaw sessions, 75 minute 1:1 sessions and lead 3 month “EmbodiYourself” groups. It is so much fun to work with people in this way. Some sessions, I do a combination of bodywork and movement, which really gives me more flexibility in the way I work with my clients and I feel challenged to keep meeting them where they are and also excited to learn and grow with them. I am connected… I connect with… to my own rituals and practices. I am… describe practices… My desk area and the big rug in my massage room gives me a lot of space to adapt to working with folks on the table, on the floor, in a chair or virtually from their own space. My plants are so big and lush! They do the work for me! :) I feel so successful and whole in my practice. Financially I feel at ease. Becca and I live on a shared land project with two other couples and we have enough financial stability to support this and also to give money to projects that we value. |
Island A-
•Numb/Disconnected •Physical and Emotional Pain/Discomfort •Exhausted Burnt out •Big life transitions (Birth/Death/Surgery/Gender Transition/Relationship shifts) •Stress/Anxiety Journey-
•Heard/Consent • • • • Island B-
•Alive/Connected •Curiosity and sense of Agency •Listened to •More capacity • Boat-
•Sessions 1:1 Massage •Virtual 1:1 - Jaw / Embodiment Coaching •Virtual Group • |
My Journey of Massage
I didn't begin my journey offering massage with idea that it would be a career and especially not with the idea that it was something I'd be doing for 10 + years! The first time I received a massage was after a car accident I had in 2006. I found it to be helpful but it didn't move me in any profound way. It helped alleviate some of my physical pain.
It wasn't till about 2010, when I was at a community dance event where I experienced my first Esalen Massage that I truly felt the impact that this modality and working with a practitioner who was deeply listening to my body could have on releasing mental, physical, spiritual and emotional tensions. It was the first time, I think ever that I felt my body settle. I felt okay. It was deeper than safety, I felt alive, connected and integrated.
For two years that session and the way it made me feel stuck with me. I tried to work with other practitioners, but something always felt like it was missing. In 2012, I decided to take a training at Esalen for 28 days. Now you might be thinking, wow, that sounds amazing. It was and it also pushed me to a whole new understanding of my body that I had no idea existed. I had so much held in from trauma and unreleased emotions that there were days I couldn't have anyone touch me. I cried and I sobbed. I didn't exactly know why and I didn't need to. Each time this would happen I felt a bit more space in my life open up. I was able to navigate relationships with more ease. After the 28 day program ended I stayed living and working as an extended student at Esalen. There's a whole list of things I studied, but what I kept coming back to was, "how do I keep receiving touch that is safe and allows me to move my life in the direction I want to go?". I worked with a seasoned practitioner and we talked about the work, what is brought up for me, we came up with ways for me to share, verbally and without words that allowed me to express my needs. Receiving touch was a learning process. I was actively studying how to receive in ways that would keep allowing my body to settle. This practitioner was not scared of my tears, fears and joys. They let me go where I needed to go.
I had an experience with a different practitioner where they were working deep and I couldn't find my agency to speak up to tell them that the session was working for me. They did absolutely nothing wrong, but my whole entire system freaked out and I left my body so intensely that I couldn't be near the practitioner after our session. I felt myself scared of them. From the work I had done, I was able to still be in the reality that this practitioner had not done anything to me but I was responding to something very old in my body system that was linking these two moments together. It was hard to separate, but they were very separate. This incident, while horribly uncomfortable showed me that my body was giving me information about what I still needed to heal. I continued on this journey for 2 years at Esalen and I am still on this journey today. Because of these beginning presence based techniques I was able to be with some of the most excruciating wounds in my life and work the muscles of healing them. I don't say I'm healed from them because I believe in the process. I think of life as a growing onion, that each time we pull back a layer we are also being layered on to.
It wasn't till about 2010, when I was at a community dance event where I experienced my first Esalen Massage that I truly felt the impact that this modality and working with a practitioner who was deeply listening to my body could have on releasing mental, physical, spiritual and emotional tensions. It was the first time, I think ever that I felt my body settle. I felt okay. It was deeper than safety, I felt alive, connected and integrated.
For two years that session and the way it made me feel stuck with me. I tried to work with other practitioners, but something always felt like it was missing. In 2012, I decided to take a training at Esalen for 28 days. Now you might be thinking, wow, that sounds amazing. It was and it also pushed me to a whole new understanding of my body that I had no idea existed. I had so much held in from trauma and unreleased emotions that there were days I couldn't have anyone touch me. I cried and I sobbed. I didn't exactly know why and I didn't need to. Each time this would happen I felt a bit more space in my life open up. I was able to navigate relationships with more ease. After the 28 day program ended I stayed living and working as an extended student at Esalen. There's a whole list of things I studied, but what I kept coming back to was, "how do I keep receiving touch that is safe and allows me to move my life in the direction I want to go?". I worked with a seasoned practitioner and we talked about the work, what is brought up for me, we came up with ways for me to share, verbally and without words that allowed me to express my needs. Receiving touch was a learning process. I was actively studying how to receive in ways that would keep allowing my body to settle. This practitioner was not scared of my tears, fears and joys. They let me go where I needed to go.
I had an experience with a different practitioner where they were working deep and I couldn't find my agency to speak up to tell them that the session was working for me. They did absolutely nothing wrong, but my whole entire system freaked out and I left my body so intensely that I couldn't be near the practitioner after our session. I felt myself scared of them. From the work I had done, I was able to still be in the reality that this practitioner had not done anything to me but I was responding to something very old in my body system that was linking these two moments together. It was hard to separate, but they were very separate. This incident, while horribly uncomfortable showed me that my body was giving me information about what I still needed to heal. I continued on this journey for 2 years at Esalen and I am still on this journey today. Because of these beginning presence based techniques I was able to be with some of the most excruciating wounds in my life and work the muscles of healing them. I don't say I'm healed from them because I believe in the process. I think of life as a growing onion, that each time we pull back a layer we are also being layered on to.
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Esalen Integrative Massage is located on traditional Lisjan Ohlone and Coast Miwok/Southern Pomo territories. The Esalen Institute is located on Essalen territory.
© COPYRIGHT 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Cover image Adamw1987 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, |. |