My Career in Natural Health Therapies: The Evolution

In many ways I simply fell into this career when I decided I no longer wanted to work in an office setting. Open to new possibilities and ready to take on a completely new challenge, it has been an incredible journey ever since. After more than 10 years in the field, I can still say that it’s been a fabulous growth medium, providing a range of experiences that have enriched my life and encouraged new perspectives.

Because I had the usual ‘aches and pains’ that sitting at a desk in front of a computer or doing a lot of driving can result in, my own aches served to help identify with the discomforts people go through from daily postures alone. Of course, much of my preference for massage results from my first experience on the table as a client.

I still find it a marvelous tool for maintaining vibrant health. When a massage therapist is trained to provide conscious massage that works in tandem with the body systems, you can experience everything from relief of muscle spasms to improved flexibility and certainly not the least in today’s busy lifestyle, is the relief of mental stress. That ‘noticing’ of how you feel before the massage, and how you feel afterwards, can lead to changes in lifestyle that only you can initiate.

Massage therapists in Ontario have received some of the highest education worldwide on how to effect every system in the body, how to assess structures that are under strain, how to test for neurological indications and to know when to refer out for conditions that are not in their soft tissue area of expertise. When registered, massage therapists are licensed by the province and governed by the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario. We are under the Regulated Health Practitioners Act the same as doctors, chiropractors and many others, in an effort to provide the best quality of care possible. Are we all the same? Of course not. Even when the training is identical, the individual always brings their own identity into their work. As with everything, you may have to experience more than one set of hands to find the right therapist for you.

While there is no single fix for living a life in balance and feeling vibrant every day, I believe that being active in your own health care is the best preventive program around. That includes conscious choices around food intake, regular exercise and making room for ‘down-time’, and my experience has been that massage therapy has a positive role in maintaining balanced body systems and a restful mind. It’s worth a try!