Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork in Albuquerque, NM (NM LMT #8524, MSc, NTS, E-RYT)
- Soft tissue therapeutics and relaxation methods to facilitate the body’s natural wellness and healing mechanisms
- Prenatal massage: relax belly down, if you like, on a support cushion designed for prenatal support, in addition to well-supported side-lying positioning options too
- Postpartum massage including traditional postpartum abhyanga, nutritive Ayurvedic oil massage, with optional complementary support offerings such as dashamula tea
- Guidance on body mechanics and lifestyle enhancements that support your well-being
- 30-minute, 1-hour, 75-minute, and 1-1/2-hour sessions (custom durations too)
- Outcalls available
- Comprising a variety of methods and modalities
Why Body Work & Massage Therapy?
Compassionate, respectful touch is powerful. Our bodies are wired to root deeply into wellness when we relax and connect. Deceptively simple, it really works. Take a look at the inspiration page for videos and writing that share the evidence (as well as other inspiring ideas).
When you add careful attention to body mechanics, postural analysis, anatomical specifics, muscle recruitment, tissue assessment and facilitation, body energetics and the flow and interconnection within the body, we have a recipe for truly facilitating the body’s own healing mechanisms. For returning to neutral as was emphasized in training (NMSNT).
We’ll find the right blend of techniques that will most benefit you.
The Mission
My mission is to help people feel good and well in their bodies – to facilitate a deep, restful reset. In my own life, I’ve felt the benefit of this work and seen it clearly in others too. Wellness is not only possible, but a gift and right, or maybe even purpose, of being alive. It’s a journey. We all help each other.
What to Expect as a Client
Professional care and respect for what will best serve you and keeps you comfortable. A safe, calm, relaxing environment. Music. Laughter.
A careful intake where we talk through what you’re feeling and your treatment goals. If you prefer a minimal intake and to just get right into a relaxing treatment, that’s possible too.
For the first appointment, ideally, we’ll take extra time to go over things more thoroughly, if that’s a good match for you. I’ll check in with you several times to make sure you’re comfortable.
As the relationship develops, the therapist (me) becomes more familiar with you and the intake can often be brief (if/as you like) and the treatment can start right away, with a clearer sense of what’s best to facilitate your process. This reflects the way that both of us build trust in the relationship.
It’s useful to work together a few times over weeks or months, generally, (your part is the relaxation part, I use the word “work” in a very light sense here), because that development of familiarity over time really create a synergy where the treatment benefits accumulate.
Treatment Modalities
Training at NMSNT included many modalities ranging from tissue to energy work. My training and practice in each area continues. Ideally, the treatment integrates any or all as necessary.
I always accommodate and respect requests to stick to one particular type of work too. It’s a two-way street.
Modalities include: Swedish, stretching, joint mobilization, light to deep tissue pressures, myofascial release, cranial sacral techniques, organ/limb/fascial unwinding, traditional Chinese medicine like acupressure, Polarity Therapy, reflexology and Core Synchronism.
If you are looking for an expert who specializes in any single one of these particular areas, I’m always happy to refer. In fact, any time something exceeds my capacity, best practice and professionalism dictate that I’ll offer referrals for other providers. A team and shared approach seems healthy.
A Client Story
Here’s one client experience: This client arrived with severe neck pain. Like, the only thing on her mind was to figure this out so she could get back to her life. She was confused because normally she can take care of her body pains through yoga and other exercise before or after work, and generally she takes good care of herself and is body-aware. But this was different.
Within the first two minutes of treatment she started to feel release – muscles in chronic spasm letting go, and pain fading. Credit goes to the training and techniques in this field, and really, that the body and being ultimately somehow to want to return to a “neutral” space. The parasympathetic nervous system and its corollaries want to get a chance to shine.
The treatment continued: Techniques to look at and facilitate the body’s capacity to restore itself from hip asymmetry and pelvic tilt excesses, and address whiplash-like neck patterns. Her body sense of ease kept improving. She rested but we also brainstormed posture solutions at work – things to look at, examine, and maybe adjust. These types of things are key too. It’s a partnership. She left the treatment, hugely smiling, hopeful, and excited about life again – pain-free and with more body insights. Ready to go. Worker bee ready to enjoy her passion and free time to the fullest. Resilience restored.
True story. Not uncommon in the field of practice generally, as you ask around. And, yes, not always the case. Sometimes, it takes integration of the work, after the session and over a day or two, to experience the body’s integration of the facilitative work. And sometimes, it might take several sessions to facilitate changes in the body’s mechanisms related to long standing chronic postural, pain, or compensatory patterns. And sometimes, the work provides simply an opportunity to let go, relax, rest, amidst an era in one’s life that might be dominated by working with pain. The experiences are as unique as each person and life.
How Body Work and Massage Helped Me
This story is one of the reasons for my passion and belief in this work. And if you’ve ever experience body pain from your work life or life routine in general, this is why I might say “I get that… in some way…”:
Many years ago, with various teams and inspiring mentors and collaborators, I was some cool and unique stuff in the domains of technology and the arts. A counter-side to that is that I was in chronic pain and burning out from stress and tension too. Hadn’t figured out balance in practice yet, even though I could speak that language. Then a tendency toward depression, isolation, and that sort of spiral.
Free time was never pain-free. I started to dabble in yoga and began to feel less pain and more clarity and energy. But, even as I became an ardent student of yoga (the posture practice type at the time), saw chiropractors and other practitioners, there were still some body pains that seemed firmly entrenched. Or, I wasn’t able to identify the patterns the led to the fast return of pain.
If I had to do it over again, I would also have visited a skilled physical therapist more frequently and earlier on again after a long break. Really, I just didn’t understand enough the field of body wellness and the possibilities of feeling good.
Anyway, sometimes those pain patterns were very limiting. It became an identity of sort “oh, my back, my pain” etc. If you’ve ever had someone in your life close to you and dealing with chronic pain, maybe you know what I mean.
Enter Body Work. For me, this was the last piece of the integration puzzle. Through the combination of movement and body work, I began to actually have days, and even days in a row, where I felt no pain in my body and notable energy to do whatever. Miracle. These pain free days were the first that I could remember since I was a child. It’s an incredibly liberating experience. My understanding, on a personal level, of how to use my body better, biomechanics and body mechanics,
This totally defies the idea that once we have a pain pattern, that label, that we’re branded for the rest of our lives to live in pain. Or with the sense that pain must dominate everything. The field of pain science is vast. Puzzles of chronic pain can be a persistent journey of relationship to it. The possibility of change in that relationship is there, I guess, is my point here.
There are many stories of people experiencing improvements in quality of life and wellness that are far more dramatic than this one here, for sure. My intent is to simply share that I learned quite personally the difference that this type of work can make in a person’s life. And hearing so often others – friends, colleagues, family – talk about similar frustrations or limitations, my inclination is to offer help, to offer potential paths. Do no harm. Help if you can. In a very non-grandiose kind of way.
I’m still engaged in a variety of projects, with dedication, working with inspiring mentors and great colleagues, and I feel better than ever. It is exactly this pain-free, paradigm-popping, liberating experience of feeling good in the body – the body being our vehicle for doing things in life – it’s this experience that I want to facilitate in, and to share with, others. In recent years, I feel actually like that is my mandate. It’s what I must do in this short blip of a life. And, it is a blessing through these hands-on and movement techniques to see in others, the benefits that range from simple relaxation and a fundamental tissue-contact level of connection that turns off the churning brain, to real changes in their level of discomfort or pain or self-knowledge about day-to-day body mechanics and messages from the body.
If you know anyone who might benefit from this work, please get in touch. I’m here to help.
Nisch S., NM LMT # 8524, etc.