If you come to see me for a session or more, I am very likely to get to know you quite quickly, even well on some level. Only fair that you should know a bit about me?
I’m a native of San Francisco and the Bay Area. I began my massage training in the spring of 1999 at the Monterey Institute of Touch in Carmel Valley, California.
At that time, I was leaving full-time Japanese language training as a translator in the U.S. Army (California National Guard). I had never received a professional massage, never even considered the possibility. But somehow, it just quietly clicked: this is what I am going to do.
U.S. Government-funded, I entered a 2-year, 500-hour classical, Swedish massage-based bodywork training and fell immediately in love with every aspect of this work. I took course after course – basic and advanced anatomy, physiology & pathology, deep tissue & sports massage, myofascial unwinding, soft tissue release, followed by lymphatic therapy, pre-natal and infant massage, polarity energy therapy, Visionary Craniosacral Work, elements of Thai massage, shiatsu, and trigger point therapy, as well as Reiki levels I & II, and various other ‘attunements’ and ‘activations’ of energy, DNA, cellular memory, re-birthing, and unwinding… Body. Work.
When the vocational funding ran out, I began to assist workshops I had already taken to deepen my knowledge and pay for more training. Within a couple of years, I was leading professional training courses in massage and bodywork at MIT – leading blocks of instruction in hugging! – and driving an old Volkswagen bus. A proud, card-carrying hippy….
For two years, I lived at the Esalen Institute – a ‘center for the exploration of human potential’ – in Big Sur, California where I studied Esalen® massage and CC Flow, apprenticed as an Esalen massage teacher, assisting Esalen certification and professional development courses. I was a practitioner on the Institute’s in-house massage crew, and managed the Institute’s farm and garden. Since then, I have studied elements of Trager and Feldenkrais therapies, even been a model for Fritz Smith in one of his Zero Balancing trainings at Esalen.
In my personal practice and in leading and assisting massage and bodywork training, I have undergone countless treatments in a wide variety of forms through an array of styles and approaches. This body has been repeatedly poked and prodded for pay and demonstration purposes, bent, twisted, rocked, and held, shaken, stirred, jostled, and always moved. I am in tune with my body, which has been very well-educated through many years of focused kinaesthetic practice.
Since settling in the United Kingdom in 2005, I have assisted a professional training course at the excellent – my highest recommendation – Bristol College of Massage and Bodywork and developed thriving practices in London, Somerset and West Wales. I now lead Cosmic Bodies workshops where I teach my own five-element massage and bodywork system.
I’ve spent most of my time here in very West Wales engaged in self-sufficiency practices, such as natural building, organic growing, renewable energy, and permaculture design – chopping wood, carrying water…
My core practice consists of conscious reality creation, rubbing people with oil (always for love, and often for money), and kinaesthetic exploration in quantum consciousness – Cosmic Bodies: Souls, cells, and quanta…
Because what I do is unique in the UK, I’ve become what you might call a therapist’s therapist. I love practicing with other professionals and lay practitioners!
I am a California-trained Certified Massage Therapist, Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (US), certified by the Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association, and formerly of Massage Training Institute, UK.
Whether I call what I do Esalen® or Integrative massage, Integrative Bodywork, Cosmic Bodies, or ayressage, it’s Presence which does the Work – in mind, body, and spirit. Souls, cells, and quanta…..
I look forward to working with you.
Ayres O
ayres@lovingforaliving.org
07848 008 089
Esalen® Massage & Integrative Bodywork 