About Alison
I have been exploring possibilities for living an embodied life of service and vitality through most of my adult life, on a quest for finding fulfilling ways of relating to self, others, and the mystery of life. A native of southwestern California, I moved to the Pacific Northwest in my early 20s and immediately enjoyed a resonance with the down-to-earth, open-hearted, passionate people around me. I volunteered and worked at a number of small organic farms and homesteads throughout Oregon, where I found great fulfillment in setting my hands to work with soil, seed and the cycles of nature.
Drawing on a desire to be of immediate service and to use my hands, I decided to attend massage school in Portland, Oregon in 2012, where I focused on deep tissue massage and developed a deep love for Asian styles of bodywork, especially Shiatsu, which is based in the principles of classical Chinese medicine. This was a time of great blossoming for me, as I saw pieces from my whole life falling in to place. I felt a resonance with this kind of beyond-language work of being present with others in service to innate wellbeing. Memories of this capacity began to surface: constantly (and willingly) being recruited to “rub my mom’s neck” throughout my childhood… as a preteen, simply sitting in silence with my grandmother who had Alzheimer’s, us lovingly holding each other’s hands, held by the space surrounding us. I feel very grateful to have found work that allows me to be of direct service to others.
After school, I relocated to Southern Oregon to enjoy a slower-paced life surrounded by nature while building a massage practice in both the country and town. The move to Ashland afforded me the opportunity to connect with two people who would become transformative mentors. In 2014, I was blessed to participate in an 18-month advanced bodywork mentorship with Stephanie Shrum of Co-Creative Healing. In 2015, I found my way into martial art studies (Hakko-Ryu Jujitsu, a classical Japanese art) with Steve Glaser, who is himself a seasoned and exceptional bodywork and shiatsu practitioner. I quickly discovered that this martial art practice would support both my personal and professional development and I dove into training. This practice has changed the way that I move in the world, continually teaching me about the power of intention, attention, relaxation, and awareness. These are qualities that I strive to bring to all aspects of my life, especially my work as a massage therapist.
In 2016, I decided to leave the off-grid community where I lived in the Little Applegate and ventured full-time into Ashland, quickly getting connected with the thriving dance community. The practice of dancing brings me great joy and a childlike feeling of wonder and discovery, teaching me about the unrepeatable magic of the present moment, and deep listening to the bodies & movements of other humans. These two practices of Jujitsu and dance create in my life a beautiful contrast between discipline and play, structure and freedom, becoming and being; they bring to light the interplay of east and west, masculine and feminine, a reflection of the continual striving for balance in my own life. I bring awareness of these aspects of life into the massage work that I do, holding space for both the simplicity and the complexity of being human.
Since finishing school in 2013, I have been devoted to deepening my bodywork studies through a Shiatsu apprenticeship with Steve Glaser of the Ashland Center of Asian Bodywork and a Thai Massage apprenticeship with Jaye Morolla of Holistic Thai Bodywork, as well as advanced work in cupping therapy & gua sha (therapeutic scraping) through the Naga Center in Portland. From 2015-2017, my massage work took place at the Ashland Center of Asian Bodywork and I am a founding practitioner at the Center’s monthly community bodywork clinic, an offering which happened monthly for several years with great success. I have been continuing to cultivate my deep-tissue massage skills in tandem with my deepening experience with Asian traditions.
More recent years have led me to dive deeply into the wild world of craniosacral therapy, enjoying study with Hugh Milne, whose Visionary Craniosacral Work expanded my conception of what therapeutic bodywork can be — truly transformative and soul-touching. In the winter of 2021, I had the opportunity to study with Etienne Piersman of the Peirsman Craniosacral Academy in New Mexico. This profound yet simple study and practice has coincided with a season of personal awakenings, as I ripen into the felt experience of interconnectedness, the inseparability of spirit and matter, wisdom and compassion, form and emptiness.
Michael and I moved to the Big Island of Hawai’i in 2021 and I gave birth to our son, Ember, in early 2022. Our 18 months on a lush farm in the tropics was beautiful medicine for me during this time of great transition and recalibration. I am grateful to be learning so much about being human, being present, and being of service through this headfirst dive into motherhood and family life.
A lover of what nourishes my body and soul, I enjoy singing with others, playing guitar, swimming in cold water, exploring the west coast, southwest, and Hawai’i, dancing, and luxuriating in stillness and silence. I enjoy mindfully interacting with food (growing, harvesting, cooking, sharing, eating), deepening my relationship with nature and the plant world, exploring the many ways of receiving nourishment from the earth. I am an amateur herbalist, devoting time and energy to making medicinal tinctures and dried herbs for infusions using both locally-wildcrafted and garden-grown plants.
I greatly appreciate to the opportunity to deepen and expand my work through my practice at Heart Waters Massage and hope to meet you soon.
About Michael
I remember being a small child being asked what I wanted to do for a living. In between daydreams of being an astronaut, a paleontologist, or an actual dinosaur, I often would think how nice it felt to offer supportive touch to others. My first professional bodywork gig manifested as a series of unscheduled hand-and-foot rubs solicited by my mother, compensated at twenty-five cents per hand-and-foot. I continued this offering through most of my schooling, providing shoulder, scalp, and hand massages to friends. As I grew into an adult body, my love for manipulating tissues went dormant for about a decade, awaiting the ideal conditions to flourish through me once again.
My mind wished to awaken as I entered college, and I studied several disciplines and changed majors often, until finally settling on a degree in philosophy. Valuing “learning how to think” as my father always praised as I was growing up, philosophy offered a reflective pool of wisdom across the ages for my seeking self to peer deeply into. One of my favorite questions to ponder in classes and through late-nights-turn-early-mornings revolved around “what does it mean to be human?” This question sprawled across the embodied experience, tumbled through an array of multidimensional perspectives, and landed at the divide between the “self” and “other” and “how can this chasm can be bridged?” At the time, I looked to technology to connect one to the all, leading me down a path that was rewarding and ultimately unfulfilling.
I spent the first few years of my professional life living in Austin, Texas, enjoying fully life in a vibrant and expansive city while working a job that fit all parameters of my “dream job”. I worked on self-driving cars in an office more than full time, made plenty of money, and was undeniably miserable and unhealthy. No matter how good my professional life seemed, my soul needed more connection and more direct and tangible benefits after a complete work day. I chose to leave Austin, leave the tech industry, pack a backpack, and head out into the world to clear my head. While traveling I found my way to Thailand, where I received many thai massages from many masters of the craft. It was around my twentieth massage in a month that I remembered how much I had loved offering touch as a younger human, and began to walk the path towards a fulfilling career.
In total, I traveled around the world and the United states for fourteen months. As I was coming to a close, I used the remaining savings I had to put myself through massage school. I completed my massage education at The Edge School of Massage in Fayetteville, Arkansas in March of 2019. In school I was trained by Susie Byrd, a master in Neuromuscular Technique (NMT), and have learned to use this method as a foundation of the body work I offer. NMT works with the body and nervous system, incorporating specific holds and stretches that show the client where their holding patterns might be, helping them to let go in the process.
In my professional life as a massage therapist, I have spent a lot of the time still traveling around. I spent my first year as a private practitioner, mostly working outcalls in clients’ homes. I also spent many weekends at music festivals, where I found a niche in offering bodywork to those in celebration, supporting quick recoveries after long and intense weekends of play. After about a year of working, I began to call the work I offered intuitive deep tissue, as I found myself deeply listening to the body and working as slow as needed to allow each muscle fiber and fascia thread to unwind in its own time. I began preferring long and intimate sessions with clients, often giving two and three hour sessions.
In 2020 I was committed to continuing my education in the healing arts. In January I travelled to India, where I studied to become a Laughter Yoga Teacher with the creator of the modality Madan Kataria. Laughter Yoga is what I like to call “hilariously simple” where one uses laughter as a yogic breath work technique and uses playful movement to activate the body and then rest into meditation for a holistic restorative experience. Shortly after I returned from India, the world shut down and I found myself in a long, near continuous meditation. Unexpectedly and serrendipidously I received a phone call from a past acquaintance inviting me to come to southern Oregon to work on a housing project with him, and I eagerly accepted the offer. I found myself in Williams, Oregon where the housing project fell through, but the meditation continued. After a few months in the woods, I happened to meet Alison at a group meditation on the land where I was living and we instantly connected. A few months later and we had purchased a minivan and were traveling the country.
While on our travels, Alison and I chose to study Craniosacral Therapy with Etienne Piersman in the “No Mind” tradition. I quickly fell in love with the subtle and potent shifts I could feel at my fingertips while practicing cranio, choosing to stay and complete six courses consecutively. One way Alison used to describe the method was "doing meditation to someone,” a statement I now use to explain what the experience is like for those who have never dropped into the “no mind” state.
In 2021, Alison and I ventured to the Big Island of Hawaii to give birth to our son and spend time becoming immersed in a tropical paradise as a new family. While in Hawaii, the opportunity arose to continue my massage education learning Lomi Lomi, the ancient Hawaiian healing technique native to the island. I was trained in the Mana Lomi style by Hawaiian Native Maka’ala Yates, who intimately studied and mentored with the world-famous Auntie Margaret. Learning Lomi Lomi was a capstone of my time on Big Island, a gift that keeps on giving, changing the way I work with bodies and move through the world.
Please read what some of our clients say about our work on the Testimonials page.