Soul Seeds Massage Therapy and Doula Services ~ formerly Island Massage Therapy of Block Island and South County, after much journeying and reinventing, has finally landed in North Kingstown, RI! Yay! My new studio is located in the Lafayette Mill Building on Ten Rod Rd, NK.

I am so excited to be here and to share my work with the community. Being a Holistic Health Practitioner my goal is to offer a variety of services to help you connect to your healthy, happy, relaxed, and vibrant self

Drawing on 16 years of experience in the field of Holistic Bodywork, I incorporate an understanding and love of anatomy with an intuitive touch. The spectrum of my work spans from very Deep Tissue & Therapeutic massage, Pre/Postnatal massage, to more relaxing and meditative Swedish massage, and Foot Reflexology sessions. I also practice Polarity Therapy & Reiki.

I am also super excited to be sharing some new offerings with my clients. I've been studying and practicing Ayurvedic Bodywork, a very dynamic and old (think thousands of years!) health and healing system using several different modalities to help the client reach states of deep relaxation in order to access their body's own healing potential, bringing a sense of balance, ease and calm to their whole being.

What brought me to want to learn more about Ayurveda was that a common theme, or thought began to consistently appear in the last several years...nourishing. 'Is it nourishing?' became the question to ask before doing anything. And if the answer was no, then what could be done to make it so. Nourishment is key to thriving life. We can be mal- or under-nourished in so many ways, in our hearts, bodies, and spirits......how can Nourishment be brought back onto the scene? The answer, or one of many, came in the form of Ayurvedic Bodywork. Nourishing to the core, it has been practiced for thousands of years, attesting to its longevity. And now is a key piece in the Soul Seeds puzzle.

The most common treatment I do is the Abhyanga, or Warm Oil massage. It's so relaxing, truly otherworldly and the results have been outta site!

I'm also a Professional Birth Doula. As a Doula I work with a lot of pregnant people, offering support and encouragement during the pregnancy, labor, birth, & immediate postpartum period, so naturally that extends to my massage practice. What an honor it is to offer the support of pre/postnatal massage to those doing the big and extraordinary job of growing babies inside their bodies!

So it may seem like I've got a lot of different things going on, but they all really tie in together and connect in that....I work with the community, whoever that may be, to offer the specific kind of work and support that they need to thrive. I get such great joy from building relationships with my clients and watching them grow and flourish ~ or just floating out of my massage room, de-stressed, refreshed, and without a momentary care in the world!

      Ahhhh, stress! Stress feels awful. And yet it has become the 'normal' way of being for so many people today. What can be done? How do we deal? I'm thinking about this tonight as I sit here, snug and cozy after a hot shower, with some buttered toast and a cup of Earl Grey. I'm thinking about this because I feel really relaxed, and feeling relaxed, I realized that I was pretty damned stressed out today. Having this point of reference allows me to see boths sides of the coin. We know that we were in darkness because of the return of the light.

     I never really gave the enormity of the subject of stress and what it does to us much thought (I know, coming from a health/healing professional that sounds crazy!) until I had a very powerful healing experience a few years ago. I went to see an acupuncturist for migraines and depression and he gave me a doozy of a session! After reading my pulse, looking at my tongue, my eyes, and taking my (exteremly thorough) history, he said, "Melinda, you are a little stressball! You've been in a pretty much constant state of 'fight or flight' for probably 10-13 years, and you don't even know it. I'm going to give you a very intense treatment, because you need to experience a true calm to fully understand how much you've been holding. You need a Point of Reference." Afterwards, I floated out of that office and across the street to meet a friend for tea. She said I looked different. I told her I felt so relaxed. I couldn't remember ever feeling so relaxed. Truly 'chilled out'. My chest felt so open, my breath came in deep and full, easy and smooth. I felt like all the frayed nerves in my body had been combed out, soothed, cooled, softened. Wow. Physically, and in my whole being I felt so different. I had no idea!

     This got me thinking, wow, that stress, it's pretty serious stuff! As serious as abuse of drugs and alcohol, really unhealthy food habits, lack of excersize, and diseases. I know, I know...everybody knows that already. But do you Really know it? I thought I knew it too, but i didn't....until I knew it. Until I had an experience where I could see the difference. As stressors began to seep back in, I was able to see them as they came, and do something about it. That could mean doing something about the problem itself, or something for myself so that my relationship to the 'stress-thang' didn't have to be so 'stressful'. For me, getting a deeply relaxing and nurturing kind of bodywork session is what does it. A couple months later, I went to an Ayurvedic Bodywork Practitioner for an hour & a half treatment. She used specially blended warm oils in large quantities, warm stones placed here and there, she gave me the most luxuriously oily scalp massage with aromatherapy, massaged my hands and feet until I didn't even know where I was anymore. My body just dissolved. Wow. Again, I felt that stress flow out of me like rain. Replaced with a golden flowing warmth, a comfort of being in my body and loving it, feeling an easy smile of just being.

     Hmmmmm, feeling a revelation? I love a good deep tissue massage. It feels so good, the way it works my muscles, and joints, kneading out the tension and knots. I love giving a good, solid, deep massage, feeling tissue melt and move under my hands, fingers, knuckles, and elbows. Feeling that kind of unwinding is awesome. I had thought that I would always want deep tissue massages, and that relaxation massages weren't really effective for anything. That's just becuase I had never relaxed! Sometimes I go for the deeper massage, sometimes I go for the Super-Melt Massage, sometimes I want Reiki, Shiatsu, or Polarity Therapy. My favorite work to do, and what I've been finding myself doing a lot of these days, is combining massage, deep or otherwise, with the clearing and balanacing energetics of Polarity Therapy. It's been described to me like this,  "It's as if your whole being gets a fresh rain shower, with a warm breeze, and sun coming out giving you a full body rainbow". All the while your body is getting smooshed and kneaded with warm oils. Wow. I want someone to do that to me! Yes please. Someone do that to me! I love this practice so much because I feel like it touches on all the important things. Calming and soothing the nervous system, releasing tension in the body, releasing and clearing blocked energy along the meridians and energy centers, harmonizing and aligning the body's systems so they are in rythm with each other. Ahhhhhhhh, yeah.

        I am looking forward to bringing Ayurvedic Bodywork into my practice this spring or fall! It's such beautiful work, practiced for thousands of years, steeped with knowledge and wisdom of the centuries. So deeply nourishing and nurturing for the body and soul.

     Blessings,

           Melinda