We were lucky to catch up with Collins De la Cour recently and have shared our conversation below.
Collins, appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
In 2018 I was laying on the floor of my daughters nursery while she napped—my mind spinning with thoughts of a future I could not fathom. I was exhausted, overwhelmed and beside myself. I had just learned of a very public interlude my husband at the time had had with another woman at a professional conference, and I knew in my heart that there were likely more instances of infidelity that were quietly emancipating themselves like ghosts from the closet. I knew I had to get out of my marriage, but how? My daughter was only one, I had a part-time job as a booking agent at a local brewery. I basically had no money of my own. How could I possibly take care of us as a sole-provider?
Like flashes from the scene in Willy Wonka when they are coursing through the Tunnel of Terror, I writhed around with visions of disgrace and failure, painfully weeping and grieving the peace and sense of security I had only moments before believed my life to exist inside of. And then all at once there was stillness. From the stillness—the stillness of surrender—I started to “see” something different.
When I was in college I had studied Medical Anthropology; a subfield which investigates the myriad of ways different cultures view the body, health and wellness. I had a passion and curiosity of what it meant to be healthy, and I had wanted to discover all the ways that humans had learned to define and bring themselves back to a state of wellbeing.
In this moment of despair, I knew that somehow I had to come back to this younger, braver, more curious self—this person who had studied so many cross-cultural ways of healing—physically, mentally, and spiritually. I knew inherently that somehow I had to re-investigate the passion that I had for the human condition, and find a way to build up the inner strength I would need to move on as a single parent. And then it hit me. I could be a therapist. I could be a bodyworker. I could learn how to bring the body back into a state of serenity, and not only would this put me in a professional culture of health, but it would also offer me freedom. The freedom to make my own schedule. The freedom to create financial stability. The freedom to heal—not only myself, but countless others bound by the painful stresses of life.
I peeled myself off the floor and opened my laptop and typed “Massage School near me”, and was surprised to find that there was a school but ten minutes away from my house that was accepting applications for the next cohort, which would begin in two months time. I applied immediately, filled out the Financial Aid form, and one week later was accepted into a nine-month, 700 hour massage therapy training program that would end up launching my new career. It was like becoming pregnant with my second child. I was over the moon!
Within only a couple of hours I went from free and fancy having a great day—into the depths of despair—and then out again racing toward a new future with endless hope and possibility. Life had shattered me and put me back together again in a single afternoon.
Five years later I am divorced, I have new love (the most healthy relationship I could ever hope for), my daughter is healthy and thriving, and I have a fulfilling practice where I hold space for my clients who come to me as a safe place to find their own transformation. From this experience I have learned that coming back to the body, even when it is painful, is the answer to grief. Pain isn’t something to run from, but something to get curious about. Pain is a signal alerting you to what is not right, to what is out of harmony. By giving curiosity to pain, we learn what we are truly made of, and how strong and capable and resilient we as human being really are.
“There’s no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There’s no knowing where we’re rowing
Or which way the river’s flowing…Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a-blowing?”
Yes—AND, as it turns out—it is OURSELVES who get to chose how we’ll arrive at the banks on the other side of the storm.
Collins, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Collins de la Cour is a Licensed Massage Therapist, and graduate of Mind Body Institute in Nashville, TN. Her massage practice focuses on restoring gentle awareness, connection, alignment, and integrity back to the body’s soft tissues. She believes that you can heal yourself, and she is here to help. Collins utilizes the techniques of manual lymphatic drainage technique, myofascial release, sports recovery therapies, passive and active stretching, and integrated cupping in her sessions.
Collins de la Cour, LMT is based in East Nashville. Sessions are 6o-90 minute long, and are tailored to the needs of the client’s treatment goals.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I met Megan Palmer through mutual friends within the music scene here in Nashville, TN. I knew that she was a nurse and began talking with her about the lymphatic system at the back of a conference hall while listening to an interview with Mavis Staples. We were such nerds—at the very back of these large and mostly silent auditorium giggling about how much we loved lymph. Over the next several years we kept in touch; both about music and our shared passion for the lymphatic system and it’s influence on over-all health.
Recently we decided to take our conversations and shared vision’s of what healthcare could really mean to the next level. Along with her musical band mate and my colleague in massage therapy, Bob Lewis—we embarked on a 10-week course in Cooperative Business Model Development with the Southeastern Center for Cooperative Development. During this course we hashed up a shared vision for a worker-owned, democratically run wellness center—where licensed medical practitioners from various modalities would work together under one roof. We have named our business-in-progress Watershed Wellness Cooperative—a therapeutic spa.
We are still in the development stages of this concept, but are excited to have presented our pitch to an interested and growing support base.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
When I was a young girl, my mother taught me the importance of presence when engaging with anyone—eye contact with the cashier at the grocery store, graciousness with the bank teller, openness and humor with the person sitting next to you on the bus…
I am deeply passionate about the human condition. How one person is doing in their day—I believe—inextricably impacts the days of all the people that they come in contact with. I am in control of my own impact, and if I can affect the quality of someone else’s life condition with my own—I have impacted the life condition of myriad others whom I will never know.
Each of my clients has been gained through word-of-mouth referral. I believe it is this individual presence of being that has affected my reach, and gained me the reputation that I have as a massage therapist.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.collinsdelacour.com
- Instagram: @collinsdelacour
Image Credits
Photographer – Zoe Thomas Model – Amo Elizabeth Model – Jaquavious Harper Robertson