My job as a massage therapist is to offset some of life's debilitating hardships with a soothing, restorative touch that promotes peace and wellness, even if just temporarily. So I've mastered how to do just that with my specialty, deep tissue massage.

True story, when I was about 8 years old, my father who worked as a factory line worker making glass bottles would make my younger sister and I rub his feet every night before bedtime. It was a dreaded nightly ritual that we both couldn’t escape. He would lay on his back in bed and my baby sister would rub one foot, while I worked on the other. As we got older, I graduated to rubbing his aching back. I had no clue what I was doing, but I obliged my father’s request. I remember making a game of it. I created patterns consisting of various strokes, knead gestures and hand glides that would at least get me through half an hour. That’s when the praises began. He talked me up so much to my mother, that the nightly task doubled — now adding mom in the mix. 

At 23, I dropped out of a pre-med program and yearned for an alternative career that was still in the health field that didn’t consist of being a male nurse (no offense to the men who are). Then it dawned on me, “You're good at rubbing mom and dad’s back,so why not pursue massage therapy?” And so I did.

In 1997 I enrolled in Palm Beach Academy’s massage curriculum and the experience was nothing short of amazing. It turned out the various techniques and strokes I thought I created while working on my dad’s back already had formal names. Every day in clinicals I was like, “OMG, I already do this move, or that stroke. Needless to say I aced massage school with flying colors and I tackled the working force with the same zest. The rest is history.