Hello Steve –
It was good to see you again and thank you for all your good work 😉
I have two stories for you –
When I was out there in Arizona I got a phone call from a woman in CT, manager of a soon-to-open women’s wellness spa near my home. She got my name from my massage school’s website b/c I had listed ‘oncology massage’ as one of my specialties – we had a good talk on the phone and today I went to see her and the facility.
Good, good location – right across the street from the UConn Medical School/Center and on the edge of the gold-plated Farmington Valley. And – a lovely, lovely space. Nice woman – former dental hygienist whose profession took a toll on her shoulders and wrists, and she’s a Reiki practitioner – looking for ‘like-minded’ practitioners who believe there’s a larger purpose to work and doing business than making money.
So far she’s got a nutritionist, life coach, esthetician, acupuncturist, and a couple of massage therapists.
We chatted about all the usual things for a couple of hours and next week I’ll do an “audition” massage. She’s good, wants to know what practitioners have to offer beyond what she knows about…
She was “squirming” her shoulder as we talked, so… I found a couple of strains and releases  she said she wasn’t saying “Wow!” only because she knows there are modalities she doesn’t know anything about…
Bless her heart, staying cool and calm… Then she did something with her shoulder and I realized it was a little frozen  I raised her arm and found a release way up in her armpit  and she put her arm straight above her head!  such a cute lady, her eyes popped right out of her head and she said “You’re hired!”
I asked how long it had been since she could raise her arm like that, but she was so busy putting her arm up and down she never answered, what a sweetheart  I’m guessing it had been a while…
So neat  a great tribute to your NFR work  even in the hands of a novice. Apparently she goes to some big-guy LMT who hurts her a lot but she feels better after… hmmm…. Welcome to a better way.
It’s so good  and such a treat  to be able to help people this way  like the guy sitting next to me on the flight to AZ who reached for the tray table and cringed. Turns out he had had rotator-cuff surgery some weeks before and blamed his trouble on not being able to keep up with his stretching regimen while traveling.
Ten minutes and a few releases later he wasn’t blaming the stretching thing anymore, his shoulder felt OK. A couple of hours later, after the plane landed, he waved and shouted to me across the terminal, “It still feels fine!” NFR at 30,000 ft  what a trip!
I don’t think I’ve ever told you – my mother had a terrible frozen shoulder the last twelve years of her life and no one had anything to offer that really helped… So, so much pain… the farthest we ever took it was the Lahey Clinic and when they told us there was nothing to do we believed them.
So when I can do anything for someone’s shoulder especially, I am very grateful.
Thank you, thank you so much —
Sheila C., M.S., L.M.T.
