Integrative Sports Massage is a name that I've coined to best describe what my work has evolved into since 1997. I have been trained in many different modalities within the Western and Eastern massage vocabularies:

     Swedish Massage -- Sports (Pre- & Post-Event) Massage      
     Orthopedic/Medical Massage -- "Deep Tissue Massage"
     Trigger Point Therapy -- Myofascial Release Techniques
     Wet & Dry Spa Techniques -- CranioSacral Therapy -- Lymph Drainage
     Five-Element Shiatsu -- Traditional Thai Massage

For much of my career, I tried to keep the modalities separate so that I could work within a complete paradigm when doing Swedish, for example, or Shiatsu. As my practice developed, though, I found that the majority of my clients were seeking massage that relied heavily on techniques that lie within the Sports/Orthopedic/"Deep Tissue" realm, and my opportunities to do other modalities in their full context were few and far between. Nevertheless, the techniques and perspectives I had gleaned from all of the modalities began to inform and impact each massage that I performed.

Within the context of the muscle specific work that my practice required, I realized that I had an amazing toolbox full of techniques, approaches and perspectives that allowed me the luxury of really listening to each client and tailoring the massage experience to their specific needs (the ones they verbalized and the ones their tissues "verbalized".)

For example, relaxation is vital if we want our bodies to heal, so I often try to encourage that by utilizing connecting strokes and gentle jostling which are common in traditional Swedish Massage. I tend to incorporate a lot of compression which is a core technique in Shiatsu and Thai Massage as well as stretching and the idea of seeing the body as a whole rather than a series of parts (which is an easy trap to fall into when the predominate paradigms are Sports, Orthopedic, and "Deep Tissue").

So, Integrative Sports Massage is my way of saying that my work tends to be detailed and muscle specific, but I tailor the massage to your needs using a variety of techniques gleaned from the breadth of my massage experience.