Massage is for EveryBody Awards 2021

By Peter Cao

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Gandhi’s words resonate through the walls of Inner City Health (ICH), an outpatient facility dedicated to minimizing the inequity of healthcare access and delivery in underserved populations of Denver, Colorado. We serve all patients, regardless of ability to pay, with compassion and high-quality care. Working as a massage therapist in this environment has allowed me to become an advocate for bodywork and its benefits for the underserved populations of the Mile High City.

I began volunteering as a massage therapist intern at ICH while in massage school last fall. The faculty and community in which ICH serves inspired me so much that after obtaining licensure, I began this year volunteering at the facility every Tuesday for eight months straight without missing a single day. My patient caseload would include individuals who are uninsured and those that have Medicaid/Medicare, majority of whom were Hispanic. As the cobwebs of the language cortex of my brain were dusted off, my Spanish-speaking abilities grew as did my ability to efficiently assess and treat patients. Soon I was able to see recurring patients, people who would normally never receive bodywork. My goal in addressing the root cause of their ailments would involve self-care exercises and providing newfound awareness of muscle recruitment patterns and postures. Our healing role as practitioners is the most gratifying when one is able to help those most in need.

The memories and friendships made at ICH will not be forgotten. I will always remember trying to inspire nursing students to take continuing education courses in manual therapy, spending cancellation appointment times in treating fellow faculty members, and becoming friends with my patients and their families while trying to improve their overall health through bodywork.

By Nataly Del Cid
Instagram handle: @enndc

Growing up in a low-income Latinx community in southeast Los Angeles, I have experienced and observed how intergenerational poverty can perpetuate violence and trauma, ultimately detrimental to individual and collective integrative health. I see the ways my community members’ bodies hold trauma and, unknowing how to cope with this trauma, they perpetuate more violence and trauma through self-harm, substance use, domestic violence, and more. They put up with physically laborious minimum-wage jobs in order to keep a roof over their head. These circumstances force them to become out of touch with their bodies in order to avoid feeling their mental, emotional, and physical pain. They do not have access to mental health practitioners that can help them process their trauma with holistic healing tools. Constantly on fight-or-flight mode, they become conditioned to believe that touch leads to harm, not a form of love or luxurious self-care. So much trauma can become entrapped in our bodies, and I believe that massage therapy can be a tool used to help these community members find their way back into their bodies and regain their autonomy.

I aspire to become a trauma-informed massage therapist who specializes in providing services to marginalized community members that are often overworked and unserved in the healthcare field. I want to make massage therapy more accessible to low-income community members and teach them how to preserve and treat the bodies when they do not have access to conventional western healthcare. Exposing massage therapy to these community members can help them learn more about autonomy of their body, consent, and empathy through safe and caring touch. I want to begin this work by volunteering for non-profits that provide holistic healing services to underserved and unhoused community members in the East Bay, California.

I will be starting a Master’s in social welfare at UC Berkeley this August and will be pursuing a license in clinical social work. My goal is to be able to combine my license in clinical social work and massage therapy certification, to integrate talk therapy with bodywork therapy and provide a holistic approach to healing for low-income, marginalized community members. As a mental health and bodywork practitioner, I want to advocate for increasing more holistic healing tools these community members can utilize to overcome their trauma and generate intergenerational healing.

By Deckllan Hartte
Website: deckllanhartte.com

I am Transgender, Two Spirit Trans Man, assigned female at birth. A practicing LMT with my own business. I specialize working with my Transgender community. A community that has a hard time finding safe and supportive bodywork. I am passionate to create a compassionate and safe space by asking and using personal pronouns, acknowledging gender fluidity, honoring their Gender Dysphoria and using specialized techniques for assisted healing of their Gender Confirming Surgery.

After having Gender Confirming Surgery to help with my Gender Dysphoria last year, I saw an LMT for scar tissue therapy. Knowing this practitioner understood my dysphoria made it safe for me to receive their help and support. It enabled me to heal and get back to my passion of helping others. No-charge packages and a sliding scale are always granted for this underserved community—I turn no one away. This can create a financial strain at times, but I am grateful as many in my community find it hard to even attain employment based on being Transgender.

Thank you for holding such awesome Guiding Principles and striving to bring conscious awareness.

By Carrie Kopp Adams
Instagram handle: massagebycarrie
Business Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/massagebycmk/
Website: massage-by-carrie.com

My name is Carrie Kopp Adams, and I am a military spouse, massage therapist, yoga instructor, & energy healer. I started my massage practice while stationed with my husband on Camp Pendleton and have been serving as an advocate for the powerful physical and emotional benefits of massage ever since.

For the past five years, I've worked with Wounded Warriors, DOD staff, and military service members and their families. I've seen firsthand the transformative power of massage in each community—whether it was helping clients recover from injury or illness, supporting them through pregnancy, or providing an outlet to release the stresses of military life. Together, we redefined self-care for the USMC community, and through them, I realized the great honor of a healer is to show others how to sustain wellness and become healers themselves.

Should I be selected for this award, I would like use part of it to give back to the community that built and still supports my practice, from duty station to duty station, here in the US. Through the Fort Meade Military Spouse Club, I'd like to provide ten-minute chair massages for all attendees of a Military Appreciation event here in Fort Meade, MD, where we are currently stationed.

For more information on my story & practice, you can access some articles & photos about me here:

http://sdvoyager.com/interview/meet-carrie-kopp-massage-carrie-mobile-throughout-san-diego-county/
https://shoutoutsocal.com/meet-carrie-kopp-adams-massage-therapist-yoga-instructor/