| Left to right, Office Manager Donna Moore with therapists, Cynthia Garcia, Ashley Battige and K.C. Gaffney.
That’s impressive. But even more impressive was the response of each of the therapists to our question, “What’s the hardest part of the job?” You’d expect to hear about the physical drain of spending hours on your feet, pushing and pulling and lifting. But no, not a single mention of the physical effort. Instead, here’s a bit of how each responded to our “What’s hardest?”:
K.C.: Putting your own needs and wants aside. Once you’re with a client, it’s 100% attention on them.
Cynthia: “If they are visitor and only coming in one time, trying to come up with a plan to help them.”
Ahsley: “Not getting everything done in a session. Having to stop on time.”
So those were about what’s hardest. We also asked about what’s best about the work?
Ashley: “When people get off the table and you’ve taken their pain away.”
Cynthia: “The look on the face when I’m finished. Being able to relieve unwelcome energy.”
K.C.:” Finding the joy in people after I work on them.”
We also wanted to get a bit of background on each member of the team:
TARA, the team leader, founded the program and as shown above, there’s a link to the article devoted to her and her work.
DONNA runs the office. She not only grew up in the St. Cloud area of Minnesota, but still splits her year with her old hometown, returning there for summers. She’s worked with Tara the longest – 11 years. Because she does many of the appointments, we asked how difficult it was to get on the schedule for a massage. She explained that there’s usually availability, unless you want to book with Tara. After 15 years, Tara has so many regular clients that, Donna tells us, “Tara is booked up before the season starts.” She adds that, “Cynthia is also getting booked up.”
CYNTHIA has been with Resort Therapy for nine years. Born in Mesa, she previously worked at a Rec Center, was a Teaching Assistant and Wedding Coordinator before deciding she wanted to work at making people more healthy and so she committed to massage training. When we asked our favorite question, about the best advice you’ve ever gotten, she said, “To comfort the comfortless.”
ASHLEY grew up in Wisconsin and moved to Arizona in 2015. She’d worked with the managing of Family Medical Leave programs and spent time as a bartender, but decided not long after relocating to Arizona to go into massage. When asked where she sees the most success with her therapy work, she replied, “I’ve seen great results in injury prevention. If people are working out, they tell me they’re able to do more. I had one long-distance runner who kept having plantar fasciitis, but I worked on him and he went for years without a problem.”
K.C. is K.C.’s legal name, meaning it isn’t short for something else. She says that her father wanted her to have that name but never did explain why. However, while giving her a lifetime of explaining her name, he also gave her this marvelous advice: “It’s not the years in your life; it’s the life in your years.” She studied massage at EVIT (East Valley Institute of Technology), so was able to go into it as a career right out of school. She’s a Phoenix native.
To celebrate the anniversary, Tara tells us, “We will be doing fun things during the entire month of January. We’ll give away some prizes and free or discounted massages weekly and also have treats available at random. Check in the massage office Mondays or Wednesdays from 9am-1pm when Donna is in the office. Residents can enter the giveaways even if you are not a customer.” You can also visit them online…
Website: resorttherapy.com
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