FALL RIVER: Hannah Poole’s journey to be a massage therapist took a winding road that involved her being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and Reiki.
Poole, who just started less than a month ago as the new massage therapist at Choice Health Centre in Fall River, said Reiki, the Japanese healing technique, helped lead her into becoming a massage therapist.
“I got really sick with a complication of diabetes called Gastroparesis, and so that made me be off work as a result of it,” said Poole in an interview after giving a complimentary massage to The Laker News’ Pat Healey.
“I decided to take a Reiki course and that changed my life for the better. I went through all the different three stages. I was able to recover from my gastric paresis and it never came back. And that was something they told me I was living with for the rest of my life.”
She gave a summary of the type of massages she gives, describing the one she had just given to Healey.
“I do a bit of a hybrid of things, mostly including some Swedish as well as what’s called some myofascial stretch,” she said. “The fascia sort of surrounds our body and our muscular structure, and it’s sort of like a web and it can get pulled on from opposite ends of the body and create constriction, contracture, pain, even inflammation.
“If we can address that through actually working out the places that are stuck and contracted, we can actually do a lot to free up the body and increase things like your natural circulation, including the lymph system, which takes away our bodily waste and recycles and increases our immune function to just basically give you an overlying better situation with your muscular structure, your mental health.”
Poole, who moved back home to N.S. after living in Ontario for 14 years, said she finds it more effective to start gently and work your way slowly, deeper into those tissues to get the release to come up itself so you’re not digging things out and creating more inflammatory reactions.
“As a result, you’re letting the body sort of bring it up to the surface and releasing it out.\” she said. “That has an overall effect on the whole structure.”
The Middle Sackville resident, where she calls home with her husband, works out of Choice Health Centre at 890 Fall River Road Monday to Friday. Her hours varies, but she does mostly the afternoon/evening hours of work and some Friday morning hours until about 11:30 a.m. She only works out of the Fall River office.
“I’m really looking forward to getting to know the community and to get to interact with them,” said Poole.
She said she has always kind of been interested in massage.
“I feel like I’m really doing what I was meant to do,” said Poole.
Poole feels her type of massage work is a little bit easier on a person than your standard massage therapist.
“I’m more interested in working with a person as a whole, not just as a body and not just as pieces of a body that are “broken”,” she said. “I’m interested in giving you back what you think you’ve lost and surprising you with what you are capable of that you may not even know.”
To book an appointment with Poole, check out Choice Health Centre’s online booking section of its website at: https://choicehealthcentre.com/. Or you can call the Fall River office at 902-861-3900.
