Holistic bodywork and wellness in olympia washington
serving the greater olympia area, the south sound, thurston county, lacey, tumwater, and OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON
Meditative, slow-flowing, holistic massage therapy and Soma Structural Integration leverage physiological and neuromuscular core energetics to de-stress and revitalize body and mind.
Unlocks the body's clean, vital energy for all-natural preventative health care and healing.
Deep therapeutic wisdom and intentionality form the spine of this profound bodywork which empowers and gladdens the heart.
MY CLIENTS ARE ARTISTS OF LIFE
They’re uncompromising seekers + learners, devoted to finding purpose, acting with integrity, and growing—always growing.
Massage therapy helps them get into their bodies so they can dance to the beat of their own drum.
When we come into relationship with our bodies, we effortlessly move into a state of being that’s more vital, easy and natural than we could have ever imagined.
We are reborn into a way of being that is deeply sourced, passionate and committed to our individual purpose.
We develop
Strength that’s never brittle
Responsiveness that’s relaxed
Core self-awareness of body and mind
A balance of depth + levity
Easy, dynamic range of motion
Full self-expression
Mindfulness and joy
Incandescent sense of purpose
Respect for the somatic language of feelings, sensations, and needs
Wisdom and emotional intelligence
HOLISTIC MASSAGE AS MANIFESTO
I BELIEVE
To receive massage therapy is an act of resistance to the modern western way of life, and the way it pushes, pulls, and torments, mindlessly exhausting every natural resource available–including its humans.
I BELIEVE
To kindle the spirit + activate a vital inner life is essential to health—mental, emotional, and physical. Without an inner sensibility (sense-ability) we cannot share our authentic gifts. We can only be used for others’ purposes until we claim our bodies and minds.
I BELIEVE
Massage therapy has the power to awaken and inspire the body, mind and spirit toward a state of inner union. The fact is, we are healed when we feel whole. Being healed only requires that we understand we’re perfectly imperfect, never forsaking any moment.
I BELIEVE
Massage therapy is more than touch therapy—it is an education for the embodied soul. It is liberation from limitations both real and perceived. To be truly empowered is an unconditional spiritual state of being filled with source energy all our own. Individuality can only spring forth from source.
“olivia HAS deep awareness of how to help a body let go of its efforting. I have energy to respond well to life!”
— Tressa
WHAT IS HOLISTIC MASSAGE?
CARE TO THE CORE
By optimizing how your tissues work together to move you and support you in gravity, holistic massage gets to the root of movement and healing issues by releasing and aligning not just muscles, but the core structural fibers (connective tissues, or fascia) of the body.
Once aligned, the body’s connective tissues–its mechanical, neural, and energetic communication system–naturally promote whole-body healing.
A focus on fascia means profoundly effective results because it works on the body and mind.
The power of fascia isn’t yet fully understood, but, as it envelops every cell of the body, it’s easy to see it’s pretty darn important.
Curious about fascia? Read my article about fascia from the IASI Journal.
Questions? Ask me here.
MINDFUL PRACTICES FOR NATURAL WELLNESS and healing
Slow and intentional—mindful—the work creates suppleness in the tissues of the body and restores smooth, easy responsiveness to the nervous system.
Holistic massage creates safe space, dedicated time, and gentle support to anyone and everyone who wishes to cultivate a stable sense of inner peace.
By disengaging the sympathetic nervous system and turning on the parasympathetic nervous system, stress is relieved. Healing begins. Effortless energy begins to flow.
Vitalized and brought into harmony, body and mind work together.
We feel restful yet responsive, secure yet dynamic, confident yet unhurried: a felt sense of health.
The benefits to restoring this union of body and mind are profound, long lasting, and, with practice and awareness, even compound over time.
We develop the courage and ability to remain fully present to the unfolding moment—mindfulness, the most elemental natural wellness practice.
“OLIVIA never fails to help stabilize and ground me to the good Earth.”
— Laurel
RECOVER A sense of natural vitality + joy
Embodied energies restored + balanced, our whole being feels newly alive to healing, to joy, to life. This vital inner sensibility empowers our authentic voice, authentic action, and authentic self.
One feels deeply refreshed in body and mind after every session, with access to limitless wellsprings of calm energy.
Self-awareness, consciousness, depth of breath and being can be cultivated during a session in a meditative, embodied environment.
Enjoy a long-lasting, felt sense of balance to body and mind, and feel it increase session after session.
Create new healthy connections to the natural self
Holistic, integrative massage is effective over the long term because it’s based in neuroscience.
It smooths and renews the connective tissues, or fascia—our body’s mechanical, energetic, and neural communication system. Once renewed, its incredible healing power is released.
We feel refreshed. We return to a more natural state.
Strength becomes true resilience, flexibility of body and mind, peace and calm to the core. Power, pure and clean, comes from the inside.
Freedom in the body translates to freedom of mind and spirit.
This is bodywork for liberation.
THE MIGHTY BENEFITS OF HOLISTIC MASSAGE
RESOLVE CHRONIC AND IDIOPATHIC PAIN
Maybe you only wish you could explain why you’re in pain, but day after day goes by, and try as you might you can’t figure it out.
Sensitive bodywork supports your body and mind on your journey for answers … and relief.
Or maybe you do indeed have a diagnosis and you’re exploring healthy, sustainable ways to live with it. With a doctor’s okay, holistic massage can be an effective way to meet your pain where it is and gently work toward relief.
TREAT PAIN FROM ACCIDENTS AND INJURY
Timely relief for low back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, TMJ and jaw dysfunction, carpal tunnel syndrome, knee pain, and so much more.
Complements your physical therapy and medical + chiropractic care, because it effectively restores the fundamental energetic, mechanical and neural communication pathways of the physical body: the fascia, or connective tissue.
ENHANCE ALL YOUR EFFORTS
Do you struggle with body mechanics?
Does your yoga teacher or personal trainer constantly adjust your position?
Do you feel limited in your range of motion or experience pain during one or more exercises?
Integrative massage helps people adjust better to the demands of workout routines and training regimens. Tones, strengthens, and lengthens muscle groups while soothing soreness.
build mind-body connection FOR RESILIENCE
To work best, bodywork must acknowledge the needs of the mind: its dual nature (the two hemispheres of the brain), its extraordinary sensitivity and power (the nervous systems), its enormous capacity for deep listening on both conscious and unconscious levels.
A holistic + slow-flowing approach to the body, integrative holistic massage creates a soothing, meditative space in which new depths of breath, self-awareness, and mind-body balance naturally arise.
Our body and our mind become free to work together to naturally release stress, pain + injury.
As a massage therapist, structural integrator, and archetypal and depth psychologist, I understand the healing value of bringing intentionality and awareness into my massage sessions.
“my whole body felt like ONE nice deep breath.”
— Kai
INTEGRATION FOR RESULTS THAT LAST AND LAST
Massage therapy is an investment in physical and mental health.
Combined with INTEGRATIVE techniques, holistic massage therapy builds lasting results, because it treats the whole person—body and mind.
What is integration?
Integration begins with noticing our own embodied feelings and sensations.
Being seen, being heard feels good. A rare gift these days where our bodies are used as machines from school age on, where our minds are overwhelmed, where we are driven ever further from our natural being by schedules, electronic devices, media …
Integration works when we learn to stay with this practice of dropping into the inner life, the sensations and flow, the chiaroscuro.
Even just a few moments spent in peaceful space and time with ourselves And then staying there. Getting accustomed to feeling good. Owning that feeling. Prolonging it. Strengthening your sense of it. Seeking it. Making it part of your mental and physical health maintenance.
Integration is coming into A better relationship with yourself.
Orienting to joy, freedom, ease, flow, innate creativity, power, wisdom.
Heck, even getting to the point where you demand nothing less than joy + freedom.
taking INTEGRATION to new levels
getting reacquainted with JOY
As a depth psychologist, creative process facilitator, and licensed massage therapist, I understand the immense mental, emotional and physical value of that relaxed, parasympathetic state (a.k.a. “rest and digest,” a.k.a. “massage brain,” a.k.a. “creative flow”).
My studio is a safe, meditative space designed to enhance and prolong it.
Clients dive deep, slow down, tune within, and catch their breath. Even after their session.
Research on the parasympathetic response shows that spending time in it, allowing it to percolate through + deeply nourishing your entire being for as long as possible leads to increased emotional intelligence, a greater feeling of wellbeing, a wider sense of happiness, and lasting stress relief.
So don’t just leap up, dress and rush out the door.
Let the good feelings linger. TAKE TIME. Allow your brain to stretch, get loose, just like your body has.
Book some studio time for yourself before or after your session and exponentially benefit from the time you spend receiving integrative massage.
OFFERING RELIEF, DELIGHT + INSPIRATION FOR DAYS
I gift all my clients with extra time: a full fifteen minutes following their session.
Enjoy some water or fresh-brewed herbal tea, a healthy handmade treat, stretch, dress, and gently transition back to your day.
Clients can book even more post-session time if they wish.
What will you choose to do with your free time?
journal
meditate
rest with eyes closed
draw or color
make a sand mandala
stack blocks
Treat yourself to what speaks to you and make every session an individualized, integrative experience to deeply nourish.
“Olivia is a rare gem. She lives and breathes creativity, intelligence, integrity and kind, empowered living...”
— Milah
THE AWAKENING: SOMA STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION
SOMA IS NEXT-LEVEL integrative, holistic BODYWORK
Soma smooths and strengthens the fascia, sets your body in line with gravity, and optimizes movement patterns, effectively restoring a living sense of vitality, ease, and grace.
Soma is powerful yet gentle at the same time, because it works over a series of sessions.
It helps • Heal persistent pain + old injuries • Restore vital movement patterns • Activate natural creative energies
It’s an awakening to the body which gives clients the time and tools they need to clear pain, tension and restriction.
New freedom means new choices. New choices mean new chances, new paths taken … a fresh sense of personal integrity and meaning in life.
Soma clients feel stronger and more resilient, inside and out.
FLOWING WITH NATURAL ENERGY, WE CAN RELAX. IN THAT MOMENT, JOY TAKES US BY THE HAND.
Breathe more fully. Move from a grounded place, and with grace. Learn to express yourself (and why that’s important for your health). Practice mindfulness. Come to trust + love yourself exactly as you are. Embody a fuller sense of your own agency and individuality.
Soma takes a whole-body, whole-person approach. By the end of the journey, you will be empowered to live as yourself, doing what you want to do.
MIDLIFE TRANSFORMATIONS
Good, bad, and ugly—midlife arrives like lightning from the blue. A laughable trope only until it finds you, the classic midlife crisis creates twists and surprises worthy of Dynasty.
Midlife is a journey for the brave.
Soma—symbolically and actually—gets to the core of YOU, the ever-elusive mystery of the self as it emerges past your programming + limited beliefs.
You can emerge more beautiful than ever before—the kind of beauty which begets more beauty: the beauty of truth to inspire the next generation.
MANIFESTING ON YOUR PERSONAL GROWTH JOURNEY
On a personal growth or healing journey, therapy, coaching?
Investing time and money into becoming a happier, more effective, more secure version of yourself?
Turns out there are many layers to that process. We work through so much pain in the process, as thoughts + emotions must shift to allow grow into a richer sense of life.
Somaworks to establish healthier physiological neural pathways, reconditioning your nervous system so that it helps, instead of hinders, you. It brings into balance the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and activates the core of being.
Your work on yourself works even better!
NEW ENERGY FOR ARTISTS AND CREATIVES
You creatives out there know how challenging it is to tune into the calls of the inner life, when there’s so much judgment, opinion, expectation, and old programming out there.
Though faint at first, the voice of the natural inner self can be attuned to and developed until, at last, it’s the only thing that matters.
Intelligent, integrative bodywork, Soma increases wisdom + intuition, inborn intelligence.
We must seek out silent places from which we can listen carefully to ourselves—and only ourselves.
SUPPORT FOR LIFE CHANGES, PHASES + STAGES
Foundations, shaken.
Contexts, rewritten.
Plans, imploded … Kingdome-style.
It happens to all of us, yet we can feel alone in our struggles to understand, to heal, to land solidly on our feet again. The work is made even harder because life doesn’t stop its merry-go-round. Family, work, community, business pull at us while our values push us forward into the future.
Soma is sanctuary for the soul, where we can feel balance as a reality again.
INVITING SPIRITUAL AWAKENINGS
Dear Fellow Seekers,
Sometimes it does feel like a burden. We ask ourselves why we’re doing this, why we’re looking deeper, why we allow ourselves to ask the questions, how we can justify the pull closer to grace, when the costs are so real.
Well, the benefits are real too.
Give yourself permission to receive the peace + beauty of a spiritual life. Self-knowledge + self-acceptance lifts your spirit so you can lift those of others.
DEEPENING YOGIC PRACTICE
For yoginis, new and old, beginner + beginner-minded.
You know that yoga isn’t just a hipster way to get your pump on.
To you, it’s so much more.
It’s a passion, a lifestyle, a guiding philosophy, inspiring you to get up in the morning, lifting you out of slumps, gently reminding you that you have a right to be exactly where you are.
It teaches you to be tender with yourself, and this compassion becomes you.
Lean further into your yoga.
“OLIVIA HAS ADDED SO MUCH TO MY LIFE, EVEN OUTSIDE HER STUDIO. I HAVE THE TOOLS I NEED NOW”
—Brian
IT’S HIgh TIME TO Commit to yourself, YES?
Plan ahead and stay up to date with the regular self-care you need to feel joyful and free.
Set aside time + space for yourself.