Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leah Chester. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Leah, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

In truth, the field of massage therapy is bursting with defining moments. More often than knot (pun intended), clients seek out the profession of massage for a variety of reasons; relaxation, decompression, feelings of despair, loss and confusion. To many, simply being in an inviting, judgement free space opens the door for profound self gnosis. I’ve often claimed that massage is a “gateway experiene” to deeper fundamental truths about the experience of life for it is our body alone that determines not just the quality of life we experience but whether or not life itself is present. It is the only things that remains with us throughout the entirity of short time here and yet rarely do we give it a glance. Beyond this, the body is incapable of telling a lie. It holds our scars, our wounds (emotional, psychological and physical) and our activities as one giant and evolving map of who we are. Where a client explains a nagging hip injury the therapist sees years of self expression through dance. Where another consistently rubs their knee the therapist sees the story of football scholarship dreams devastated with an ACL tear. While society pushes diet culture, over prescribed medication and absurd beauty standards, the massage therapist sees the body itself, perfect in every shape, designed and redsigned over years of evolution, protecting and securing ones ability to be here while asking for nothing in return. For me, a moment I often recall involved a surgeon, desperate for torticollis relief (crick in the neck) so that he would not have to cancel a days worth of important surgeries. His expectatoins were minimal but he thought a massage might help as a last ditch effort to correct his neck. I spent the better part of an hour isolated to elongating his shortened neck muscles and shoulder cuff attachments with slow, intentional pressure, range of motion facilitation, heat application and deep effleurage and to his surprise, completel reversed his condition. Not only was he over the moon that his clients could receive their surgeries but he was mind blown at the power held in mere minutes of a massage. It wasn’t just beyond his expectations it was beyond his understanding. He had no idea that massage could “do that”. We are truly limited to our own experiences and for a surgeon, understanding of the body comes in a very specific and isolated format. He vastly surpases me in medical knowledge and yet recieved the benefit of my knowledge never the less. It was a sincere gesture of gratitude that led to his reconsideration of his understanding of the body itself. And the best part is that this simple application of technique benefited his patients as well. Doctor referral for massage is increasing exponentially as the medical community begins to understand that not all pain is generated from disease and that sometimes, pain comes from the heart and the body is just the mechanism with which those feelings manifest. His acute torticollis easily could be written off as “sleeping wrong” and in truth that was the symptom, however, the cause was mental anguish leading to hypertension while sleeping in a fixed position. The mind suffered the heart and the body simply responded.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My journey into the field of massage began at a very young age when I was hospitalized for acute splenomagly (idopathic enlargement of the spleen). As a toddler, this caused sever pain accompanied by aggressive vomitting and stomach distention. I was quarantined and isolated from family and other children. After undergoing every test under the sun which involved a heavy dose of needles and blood draws for a young child, nothing what so ever was discovered. One day, my spleen simply returned to normal size and I was discharged. The psychological toll it had on me resulted in forgetting how to talk. My mother and grandmother tried everything. They bought me a new teddy bear, offered me ice cream and Mc Donalds but my nervous system had already been re-wired to trauma which would later develop into stomach pain and ulcers. Left with few ideas my mother jokingly laid her hands on my shoulders and I asked, “Do you want a massage?” As she rubbed my little 3 year old traps my mind completely released and I felt a deep sense of relief for the first time in a long time. When she suddenly stopped I turned and gestured to her to continue. From that point on I began to notice pain in the people around me and naturally offered the solution that worked for me. I began to rub my grandmother’s feet so that her shoes would fit. I remember that same grandmother leaving me with my uncle Harvey so she could go shopping with her sister. Harvey was a cigar smoking, whiskey drinking, heel kicking man from the greatest generation who clearly didn’t know how he was supposed to babysit a little girl. So he laid down on my grandmothers bed to take a nap and I climbed on top of his back and began rubbing his shoulders. When my grandmother and her sister came back I had completely fallen asleep on top of his back and he was snoring louder than generator. They laughed so hard they woke us up. “Those tiny little hands give a good massage” he said when he realized we’d both fallen asleep. Throughout high school and college I continued, always offering to rub shoulders before SAT prep, reading about aromatherapy and holistic medicine and practicing yoga before it was as widespread as it is today.

After college I hit a very low point in my life, directionless, unhappy, lost. Because I felt so low in that moment I made a commitment to help in whatever way that I could to alleviate whatever faction of pain I could in some small corner of the world. The way I saw it, there was nothing more noble and fullfilling one could spend their time doing. So I enrolled in massage school.

After graduation I went on to work for a small company swiftly becoming their lead therapist, then their trainer and soon enough, their director of bodywork. I onboarded, trained and educated hundreds of massage therapists across the state of Maryland and eventually took the step into teaching. I enjoy watching the light bulbs go off in student comprehension and the excitement they get when they realize how much they have they ability to help people. Students of massage therapy come from vastly different backgrounds. I have taught doctors, state troopers, martial artists, physical therapists, lawyers, dancers, singers, electricians, veterniarians, doulas, peditricans, nurses and firefighters. All of whom remark of how they had no idea how complex and nuanced massage can be.

Pride is not the word I would use whenever a client regains physical use of something they thought they lost. It is an epiphany of connection; to their body, to themselves. It is in no way an exaggeraton to claim that massage has and can shift the trajectory of one’s life. Just ask someone with sever cervical fusions that threatened to take away their driver’s license when they couldn’t turn their head. Catching someone’s tears of joy is not an experience deserving of the word “pride” but rather perhaps “liberation”. Imagine receiving someone where they are and hearing of their life over the course of a year as you work on their areas of pain. There comes a moment when they begin to piece together what areas of their life stress them into sickness. They begin to recalibrate what they want, deserve and need to feel fullfilled by leaning into those spaces within their own body. Socially we may think of massage in terms of luxury and relaxation but it hs been my experience for over 13 years that people come to the table because they are overburdened in their heart.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My upbringing taught me to always give to those in need, be kind, compassionate and generous. While I still believe that in principle and application there is a tendency, as with anything, to take it too far. In the field of massage we often experience empathy pains to the point where it can interfere with our ability to perform therapeutic massage. Touch, like any of our senses, heightens and strengthens the more it is used. Its a fun little mechanism of the body in which it expends energy in the direction in which energy is most utilized. Our hands and sensory receptors become highly sensitive and advanced. Skilled massage therapists can feel nerve energy, organ displacement and fascial obstructions just by holding your feet for example. This type of sensory sensitivity lends well to taking on the symptoms of clients. Because I started so young I don’t think I ever understood that someone else’s pain is not my own. There is a gift in emapthy pain in that it instructs the therapist in precisely how to correct it but its no fun for us! Developing boundaries was a really difficult one for me. I would always lean towards compassion saving nothing for myself until I was so depleted I would also become sick. Learning to detach myself from another’s pain was hard but well worth it in the end as I can now continue to practice while not absorbing the client’s pain myself.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The best practice of massage therapists to grow business has always been referral. I love it because its a vetting tool in and of itself. Most of the best practitioners aren’t on fancy websites or instagram because they are too busy working and that’s the secret. Loyal clients will support you however they can because they see the value in what you offer. I often hear it said, “I’ve been looking for a good massage therapist” or “how can I find a reputable practitioner” and the truth is, the best are always off grid, in small private offices and not in any phone book or spa. Ask a friend you trust, preferrably one who gets regular massages.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vagaro.com/us03/tlcmassage3
• Instagram: tlc_massage
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-chester-a7b417b/

Image Credits
I designed them myself through Canva.