Exploring & Expanding

After many years of owning and operating Balance Massage Therapy, I began to dream about sharing my passion for healing and helping others live happier, healthier, and more authentic lives. With the love and support of my family, that dream became a reality this fall as I embarked on this new phase of my life, and my life’s work, with the opening of Balance Massage School of Vermont.

Now, 5 months into this amazing and profoundly satisfying journey, I can hardly express my gratitude to and for this first class of explorers. Each of them has brought their own unique perspective and personality to the group, and the bonds that are forming are precious and beautiful. I couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to this journey.

Massage Therapy is a sacred profession, and as we learn about the muscles and mechanics of the human body, we also learn a great deal about ourselves…how we deal with stress…how we process feelings and emotions…what we do with our successes and failures. And we use that self-learning and knowledge to better understand what our clients are bringing to us when they come looking for relief from their pains or hurts or disappointments.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And how true that is. You can never make assumptions based on what you see only on the outside.

Our clients come to us with a sore back that is the result of a soccer injury. But as we massage out their strained and tightened muscles, we learn that the soccer injury is the result of how they’ve learned to hide the fact they’ve been injured. As time goes by, we learn that hiding their injuries is the result of some family drama that took place years in the past. As we learn the sacred art of massage – the art of touching our clients in ways that allow them to trust, to open, and to release their fears – we see that true healing comes when we are able to peel back the layers of life that have limited or prevented them from growing into the person they always wanted to be…the person they were created to be. We learn how to release the hurt that leads to the hurt.

We still have a long journey ahead of us this year, and for that, we are grateful. Most of us will only walk this road once, and there is so much to see and absorb and take in along the way. At the beginning of each class, when my explorers are making their way through the mountains of Vermont to our learning space, I often stand quietly in the classroom thinking about our shared journey. It makes me smile when I realize how deeply the healer continues to find healing in the sharing of this beautiful and sacred profession.