In 1989 Karlene Day, a graduate of St Joseph's Convent, migrated to Canada where she worked at several office jobs. Her mind was always focused throughout the 12 year period on coming back home when the time was right. Earlier this year, the 36-year old who gave massages to her friends regularly, learned of the latest form of bodywork "The Chair Massage" , a unique form of massage, virtually unheard of before 1986, that finally makes massage accessible to everyone as it removes all the barriers that prevent people from using massage.
Karlene gave up her office job and enrolled in the Seated Relaxation Massage course at the Relax To The Max Institute for Relaxation Massage in Toronto where she completed the coursework along with the necessary hours of practicals, gained some Canadian experience, folded her specially designed chair into its duffel bag and returned home a qualified Massage Practitioner offering "Relax by Day" seated massage sessions.
Hearing the words 'chair massage', I went to the massage fully expecting that the chair would be powered by some means, electrical or otherwise, and would be the masseur. How wrong I was. The chair is a very important tool of trade, on which the client sits fully clothed with no oils or messy creams whatever, but it is Karlene's small, firm hands which massage the neck, shoulders, upper back and arms, the parts of the body that hold the most stress and tension. However, if a client wishes to have her legs and feet massaged, this can be done. At the end of the 15 minute massage, my shoulders which ache most of the time from sitting long hours at the computer and my lower back from minor arthritis, were pain-free and have remained thus more than 48 hours after.
Karlene stresses "I am not doing therapeutic massage, I do relaxation massage techniques which are a lot simpler and do not need a whole full hour which makes it easier to fit into peoples' schedules." She has been taught over thirty techniques but has broken them down into four different routines so that "if someone tells me they want to concentrate more on their shoulders or any other stress area, I will do so on that day along with the other areas, but each time you come you will get something different, some techniques will be the same but you will get something new everytime."
The chair which is the only one of its kind in the country, as Karlene is sure that "absolutely nobody has it here, that's why I came back to pave the way" is a specialised portable chair, one of three prototypes specially designed by a French cabinet-maker, Serge Bouyssou, with the founder of this form of body work David Palmer, which comfortably supports the whole body and allows easy access to the massage practitioner. The client is seated facing forward with knees bent backward on a padded rest at the sides of the chair, arms loosely resting on a padded rest at the front of the chair and face resting in a padded face rest which covering is changed after each client. Says Palmer in his Ultimate Massage Training Manual: "as strange as the massage chair looked back in 1986 (the year of the first production) it has proved to be the key element in putting a "face" to Chair Massage. Practitioners walking down the street today are easily identifiable as massage specialists because of the chair strapped under their arm or across their back."
Karlene offers massages from 15 to 30 minutes at an easily affordable $20.00 for a 15 minute session: "at this low cost I believe a client will return once a week as opposed to once a month at a higher cost, as they see how easy 15 minutes will fit into their schedules." The best part of it is that Karlene and her chair can come to the client which is where it all started in 1986 in the United States "on site" mainly in the workplace rather than the client coming to the chair. Today half of the Chair Massage business in the United States involves clients going to the chair at fixed locations, such as, malls, supermarkets, airports, salons, and even corporate boardrooms."In Canada" says Karlene "you will see four or five chairs downtown in the underground corridors. You are asked into the offices during the lunch or break periods. This can work here as staff lunch hours are usually staggered so I can spend three hours there and service quite a few staffers at 15 minutes a massage without anyone taking time off for a massage."
"And there is no removal of clothes, people are usually shy about taking off their clothes. The feedback from my Canadian clients has been really good, some of them felt a little too relaxed, but after ten minutes they got a second wind and became more invigorated to continue with their day's work or whatever."
Since most staff are now more aware of health and well-being Karlene sees it as an excellent way of management showing staff appreciation, or as an addition to the regular Christmas Bonus and she quips "instead of giving your employee a little pat on the back give them a whole back rub."
So confident is this young woman, whose contact number incidentally is 632-7071, that both she and her chair are back in the Caribbean to stay, that she is already thinking ahead of taking her chair up the islands at some time in the future.