Profile: Sarah Ryan, Catalyst Hands
Changing lives with massage
Sarah Ryan, massage therapist and owner of Catalyst Hands, knows the meaning of finding one’s true calling. An exploration of the world and alternative ways to achieve health led her to Portland and massage. Why Portland? “If I have kids, I want them to climb apple trees.” Why massage? “It feels like this is what I’m supposed to do. With massage I catalyze change in people’s lives.” All good reasons why her business is doing well.
Holding a degree in comparative religion, Sarah set out to explore alternative health modalities – chiropractic, reiki, herbals, and many others – after her mother died of cancer. “I saw the Western model of medicine fail,” Sarah said. She then spent most of her twenties traveling, living in Japan, Senegal, Israel, and France, and criss-crossing the United States.
It was another passing of a close one that nudged Sarah on the path of massage therapy. Accompanying her grandmother while in hospice in South Carolina, she would try to relieve the pain with gentle massaging of painful areas. When she saw her grandmother’s positive reaction, Sarah realized, “I need to do this.”
Sarah found the right massage school in Tuscon, Arizona, which offered the combination of the Eastern (shiatsu) and Western (Swedish) perspectives that she sought. After graduation, she experimented with living on the East coast, but “living in Arizona turned me into a West Coaster. There’s too much stress out east.”
She heard a lot of people talk about Portland as a great place to live. That her aunt and uncle lived here made easy the decision, in the fall of 2003, to sell her car and buy a one-way plan ticket across the country. It took Sarah two years to establish herself, conquer doubts about massage being the real deal, and discover that working for herself beats punching the clock. “It takes a lot of confidence to have your own business,” Sarah said, “a lot of self-knowing and the belief that you can do it.”
Catalyst Hands was born in September 2005 and is now located at SE 78th and Stark Street, in the Montavilla neighborhood. “It’s going well,” Sarah said. “It seems like after digesting all the bad news about the economy, last month people finally realized that, yes, things are bad, but I need to take care of myself.”
About what she does, Sarah said, “I believe in the mind-body-spirit connection. People are incomplete if all three aren’t humming along. Massage is not a cure-all, but it’s a powerful healing therapy. Our bodies store so much information, hold memories, and lock up trauma. Talk therapy can only do so much. If you ease the tension and let go of the stress in your body first, your mind and heart will catch up.
“My massage combines therapy and relaxation. My hands are often catalysts for people to move to the next stage of their lives. I don’t fix things, I’ll just facilitate the process of change for those who are open to it. It’s you on the table that goes home and does something with what you’ve experienced.”
(May 2009)
