The Beacon Fitness Center (BFC) is starting a new program that will certainly rub students, staff and faculty the right way. Licensed massage therapist Amy Wendland will be in the BFC conference room twice a week conducting on-site twenty- minute massage therapy sessions. The Mass Media was on hand for the inaugural session.
” Most tightness or muscle strains tend to locate themselves on the right hand side of the body in my experience,” says Wendland, as she works the tightened shoulders of Gale Hobin, director of Community Relations/Special Events at UMB, her first client. Wendland, like most of us, started off exchanging massages with friends at an early age, but has only in the past ten years desired to make this intimate hands on therapy her career. She’s going “solo” in her new practice and likes working one -on-one, conveying with her warm energy, “it’s important to heal through human touch.”
Wendland’s connection to Boston is longer than her twenty- minute massage sessions. She taught Performance and Fitness at UMass Boston. She also got her bachelor’s degree from Boston University and from there decided to pursue her “hands-on” interests at the Palmer Institute of Massage and Bodywork in Salem, Massachusetts. From advising additional methods to accompany her massage, to exercise and stretching, to organized sports and yoga, she believes there is certainly a connection where a number of combinations contribute to the overall healing of the client.
Personally, Wendland likes to use all of her style and techniques on her clients depending on what the individual may need. She will tend to focus on particular hot spots or stress areas in her twenty- minute sessions. “And I might add she does an excellent job,” noted the deeply relaxed Hobin. Amy stays fit and healthy herself by running and lifting weights regularly, and she also relies on stretching to maintain her well- being. She has recently begun taking yoga classes and thinks that massage and yoga together are “an incredible connection.”
As to her “dream setting” to help complete her therapeutic environment; the ultimate goal is to have an enclosed garden with all the accompanying scents and soft sights of nature, surrounding. A very humble utopia with welcomed sunlight or newly falling snow or maybe the sound of rain, Wendland says, “any one of them is fine.”
As Wendland kneads the neck of Chancellor Gora with all fingers and thumbs, she replies that this is her favorite part of the body to massage. Gora commented, “it feels great! It’s really important to reduce the aches and pains of normal living, to reduce those stresses inevitable in most jobs.” After seeing one of Wendland’s flyers all around campus, the Chancellor noted, “it’s very unusual,” to see a campus with this particular therapy offered, “and to have it on-site is just wonderful for people!”
All parties were in agreement, including a smiling Wendland, that her service is a wonderful addition to the UMass Boston campus. She’ll start her official appointments, by reservation only, on October 5th in the Beacon Fitness Center. The cost is $20 for 20 minutes and cancellation notice must be at least 24 hours prior to your visit. The spaces are limited and will fill up very quickly, so take advantage and take Wendland’s humble words, “something can come out between two human beings when engaged in a healing way,” into deep consideration.