Owner of the
Month
PHOTO Andrew Hutchins
INTERVIEW Dan Mathers
Amber Osborn is an Ashiatsu massage therapist. Yup, the kind that walks on your back! How’d you end up in massage therapy? I went to West Chester University for health science, and my favorite course was an alternative and complementary medicine class. My professor, Roger Mustalish, made the class awesome. I knew I wanted to be doing something that helped people—massage seemed like a nice fit. After I graduated WCU I went to the Cortiva Institute in King of Prussia to study massage. Was it intense? I went from 9am to 4pm every day for six months. And that's just a general therapeutic massage license. Wow. That’s a lot more than I assumed.
Yeah. A lot of information goes into being
a massage therapist—we know as much about the body as a physical therapist. So you got your degree, then what? I moved back to the Lancaster area, and I helped start a small practice in my hometown with a childhood friend. How’d that go? It went well, for being a small town and a new business. A lot of people weren’t open to the idea of massage being a therapeutic necessity but rather saw it as a luxury. But I’m sure you learned a lot. I learned a lot of the business side. I never took any business courses—never thought I’d own my own business—but you’re just thrown in there and have to figure it out as you go. People don’t realize you can be good at your trade but bad at running a business. What made you decide to come to West Chester? West Chester is a great place for
starting a business: there are a lot more like-minded people here, people who are open to massage being part of their health plan. Between that and a desire to be closer to my now husband, West Chester was an obvious choice. Happy? Oh my gosh, yes. I’ve been in this new space for just about two years, and I’ve made it to the point where I have steady clients, and I’m not worried about,
“Am I going to have clients today?” Is it fair to attribute some of your success to the unique type of massage you practice?
Definitely. At first I was a little hesitant about Ashiatsu because it’s such a new thing on the East Coast, but once I started working on people and they realized the benefits—especially people who enjoyed deep pressure—I found people stuck with it, then told other people about it. What made you decide to study Ashiatsu? I was intrigued when I first articles
about it in Massage magazine, how it was working with gravity and allowed me to take care of myself. After a long week of work my body hurts, and while I was helping other people I was neglecting my own health. I no longer have to force or strain— I’m kind of floating on people and the pressure is there because I’m using gravity. What sets it apart? I’m really able to deliver 120lbs of pressure, plus the foot is broader than the hand, so I can get more work done in half an hour than a person can do by hand in an hour. I have to ask: is it painful? It’s not a painful at all because the foot is so broad I can do long, deep strokes. It's like a deep Swedish massage, all the benefits of deep tissue without the pain.
MARCH 2015 THEWCPRESS.COM
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