A couple who provide therapy to relieve pain and ease tension have recently located their practice in Oak Bay.
Brett Holland operates Island Rolfing while his partner Melissa Brown operates Pathways of Connection Hellerwork and Somatic Transformation from their office at 208 – 2186 Oak Bay Ave.
Holland said both rolfing and hellerwork focus on the fascia – the soft tissue component of the connective tissue system which he likens to a web that connects everything in the body.
“If you have one area that is sore it can affect the rest of your body,” he said. “Our job is to rebalance the fascia of the whole body, and the side effect of that is the symptoms usually disappear.”
He said healthy fascia is highly elastic and resilient and can provide a high degree of injury prevention. But when fascia health is compromised, it can lose that elasticity and resilience and injuries can occur more easily.
“What happens is if we have a pain, we have that local area of problem. We can address that pretty quickly, often that will take it to 80 per cent healing,” said Holland. “If we want to take if further then we need to work the whole body because everything is connected.”
He said the fascia of the body tells a story of a person’s life, with all events reflected in the fascia including physical and emotional trauma.
Brown said she’s received a lot of positive feedback from the clients who have received treatment from her.
“They’ve done everything, then they do a 10-session series and most people feel like their problems have dissipated or completely gone,” she said. “So I feel that’s the biggest benefit, is it gets people out of pain. It also gets people more aware and conscious of their body and their patterns.”
Both Brown and Holland accept clients for 90-minute sessions running Tuesday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Holland said following a series of 10 sessions, they are able to improve their structure and send them on their way.
“We actually want to send people away. We want to get them to a place where they’re good to go again,” he said, adding many of their clients have completely recovered from the issues that caused them to seek treatment.
“We might have a big client list but a lot of them don’t need to see us anymore. It’s probably not the best business model.”
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