Laurie Boyle is a Wellness Center massage therapist who knows that everything is connected, especially where our bodies are concerned. Certified in “structural integration,”she has special training in understanding the muscles and their alignment.
She completed massage school at the New Hampshire Institute of Therapeutic Arts in 2009,and completed her externship at the Riverview Mill in Wilton. She got interested in the field after she herself needed a therapist to help her heal after she had surgery for a torn ACL. “I just decided I have to be in this field,” she said. “The body needs help to heal and I just wanted to know all about the knee and anatomy and everything.”
After her training, she had a friend who was going on maternity leave and needed a fill-in at her massage practice. Things just fell into place for Laurie after that. She began at the Wellness Center in December of 2009, and sees clients there on Friday and Saturday mornings and the occasional Wednesday.
Laurie’s training included work in deep tissue massage and scar tissue management, which led to her interest in the body’s fascia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascia. Fascia is the focus of any massage therapist who focuses on structural integration.It examines the ways the body is connected from head to foot. She found her training to be a real eye-opener. It helped her understand that a person presenting with back pain may have a problem not connected with the back at all.
The training demonstrated how pain in the back could indicate a problem in the legs, or pain in the shoulder could be related to the hips. “At first it sounded like hocus-pocus,” she said, but she learned to recognize the blocked areas in the fascia and how things are interconnected.
When her clients come in for a massage at the Wellness Center, she wants to give them whatever it is they need at that moment. “If they’ve had a heck of a week, I just want to get them to relax,” she says. “I check in on their pressure points and I might then spend more time on their neck, or just do their feet or whatever it is.”
She can tell a lot by examining someone’s posture. She’ll find people come in with a significant tilt to their shoulder and they’re wondering why their shoulder hurts. “Then I find that if I attempt that posture, my left lower back hurts,” she said. “The body speaks and it just shows us something is wrong.”
Clients get to her by calling the Wellness Center Member Services desk and describing their problem or what type of massage they’re interested in. She’ll see a lot of clients who complain of chronic pain. Plantar fascitis is another common problem, which she deals with by working on the entire back side of the body.
“The members here come in with such an attitude of ‘Here I am! I want to take care of my body!’ and I see they want to work out and be well. There’s a real awareness to it and I love it,” she said. “We build up a trust together and they work with me to tell me what they need.”
Often she won’t really know if she’s been successful with a client. But the next thing she knows, someone new is coming in, having been recommended by her previous client.
“That’s how I find out that they feel like they’re ‘cured’ and have recommended me,” she said. “I love that.”
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