Myotherapy Practice Opens in North Adams, MA.
By Breanna Steele
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A new mind and body therapist has opened for business in Greylock Works.
Owner of Holistic Myotherapy, Georgette Yannetti-Peña, started her muscle therapy practice in her native Brooklyn, N.Y., to help those with spinal problems like herself.
"I started my practice in Brooklyn in 2015 specifically to help teenagers with spinal deformities, scoliosis, because I myself struggle with that since I was an adolescent, I had four spinal surgeries and was disabled," she said.
Yannetti worked as a massage therapist at the Greenwich Hotel and started doing myotherapy as a side project until it took off and she could focus on it full time.
Myotherapy is a deep-tissue massage and stretching treatment that focuses on muscle and joint pain.
"The practice just took off, and it wasn't just for scoliosis," she said. "It branched out to other spinal deformities and just other kind of people suffering with other kind of disabilities, and not even just physical disabilities, but psychological, you know, anxiety, depression, anything that people really needed space to be held for."
She explained her process as building a connection with clients and being able to talk with her about their problems before they get on the table.
"It needs to be more than just like, well, you're gonna get undressed and now I'm gonna touch you for like 60 minutes. To go from I don't know you to now get on the table — you can't, there needs to be more," Yannetti said. "So I provided this seating area and tea and like a little bit of connection. So even though I'm not a psychotherapist, I mean, I am very clear with people, like I'm not your therapist ... but I provide the space for people to also share more about themselves, what's happening."
She said she couldn't find the type of service she is now giving and wanted for herself.
"I basically started my practice, and I was like, when I receive body work, this is what this is the kind of work that I would want because this is what I need when I'm receiving body work because of my trauma, and I can't find that," she said.
Yannetti moved to Berkshire County earlier this year because she had always enjoyed visiting the area, saying this was her preferred vacation spot and even came here for her honeymoon.
"I've been visiting consistently for the past 10 years, specifically to Berkshire County, just because I love it here. It's been a safe space for me. I never wanted to leave," she said. "Every time I came, I was always like, I don't want to leave, and that said something to me. Whenever I had the opportunity to travel, if it wasn't internationally, I was like, I want to go to the Berkshires."
She was looking online one day and found a house, and her husband agreed it was their perfect place. On a whim they decided to buy it and move out here. While she was not initially planning to restart her practice, she decided to do a free class with Greylock Yoga and fell in love with the renovated mill building. She immediately asked about a space for rent and signed the lease in early June.
She held her soft opening on July 1.
She hopes her clients know this is a safe space where she will support them.
"That I'm here to support them in whatever their process is. That this is a safe space. A lot of people release emotionally in here, because the body stores emotion. A lot of people are still learning that."
Yannetti said she would want people to know that if they wanted to start a business to be themselves, follow their passion, and trust your gut. She said she would not be here if she had listened to others who said her business name was too unheard of and told her not to move.
"I would advise people to be unique and don't try to be like everybody else. Don't try to fit in and do what everybody else is doing. Find your own approach, and be passionate about it. Be passionate about it because when you're passionate about it, it doesn't feel like work, and then you really enjoy it," she said. "And when you really enjoy it, people can feel that, and people want to be around that."
Holistic Myotherapy is located in Studio A3 at Greylock Works; book an appointment through her website.
https://www.iberkshires.com/story/83391/Myotherapy-Practice-Opens-in-North-Adams.html
Greenpoint’s New Massage Specialist is Sort of Your Therapist Too
Steph Koyfman - October 27, 2015
If you’ll readily accept that your thigh bone’s connected to your hip bone’s connected to your generalized anxiety disorder, we might be able to put you in touch with someone who’s good with that kind of stuff.
Georgette Yannetti took a bold step away from her corporate job this summer and opened up shop in Greenpoint, where she’s now running her Holistic Myotherapy practice out of a cozy, dimly-lit room in Java Studios.
Myotherapy literally means “muscle therapy,” but the implications run far deeper.
“I didn’t want to use the term ‘massage’ because everyone thinks massage is just being rubbed down, but it’s more ‘muscular therapy,'” Yannetti told me. “I’m realigning the structure of your muscles.”
In a way, too, Yannetti is realigning your brain. Her treatment of musculoskeletal pain takes muscles, joints, nerves, and even organs into consideration, as well as your overall mental and emotional state. Whether you’re dealing with actual trauma or you’re overly liberal with your day-to-day use of the term “PTSD,” each session begins with a tête-à-tête on the couch near the entrance of her studio. The idea, she says, is to bring trust and intimacy into the doctor/patient relationship, which takes you to a place where you can actually receive therapeutic work from someone who’s suddenly not that much of a stranger.
“Our whole body — everything is connected,” she said. “So if I’m going to be working on your body, I need to know what’s going on. A lot of people don’t tell me everything, but as I get to know people, they open up more and more. I’m not a therapist, but I mean, that’s why there’s this little area right here so people can talk to me first about what’s going on with them psychologically.”
As someone who was diagnosed with scoliosis at a formative age, Yannetti has been there and back again when it comes to incapacitating back pain, surgeries, and therapists that left her feeling somewhat cold. Now that she’s doing her own thing, she’s able to give herself — and her patients — the time and thoroughness she needs to be effective. Yannetti spaces all her clients out with an hour or more in between to remove the clinical, clockwork feeling of working in a corporate spa. That leaves plenty of time after the session to talk at length about what did or didn’t work about her approach.
“It’s intimate work — it’s not just touching someone,” she explained. “And if you’re not being mindful about where they’re at psychologically, you can’t really give them a good session.”
In just a minute or two, I, too, would turn my recorder off and unload my pedestrian worries. If you’re wondering, they’re definitely not that interesting. Other than that, I have persisting tightness along my IT band that I’m pretty sure is related to some lower back troubles from before, as well as a possible herniated disc. Yannetti is also calling attention to my weird habit of touching my neck when I’m speaking.
Armed with this deep knowledge of my person, she proceeded to work out a fair amount of my hip tension using a variety of manual techniques, deep breathing on my part, and a touch of aromatherapy for good measure. But this is holistic work we’re talking about, and getting to the source of the problem often involves taking the roundabout way. To get to my hip, Yannetti started by getting my quotidian anxieties out into the open, then working on every other part of my body with sweeping, all-encompassing motions — a total reset, as she explained earlier. It’s the body-work equivalent of a deep clean (versus just pushing the dirt around).
It’s hard to say whether our informal chat at the start of the session actually diminished my pain in a tangible way. But there’s something comforting — dare I say therapeutic — about knowing that I wasn’t just another body on the assembly line.
Massage For Your Mind At This Greenpoint Practice
Tanay Warerkar - October 12, 2015
At Georgette Yannetti's Myotherapy practice in Greenpoint, massage isn’t just about a rejuvenating your body but it’s a comprehensive treatment of your ailments.
Myotherapy is a form of manual therapy. It focuses on the treatment and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal pain and the conditions associated with. There is a comprehensive evaluation process before the therapist undertakes the treatment of the joints, nerves and muscles in question.
Yannetti takes it a step further with her unique modality. For Yannetti it’s important to know not just about your physical pain about your emotional state of affairs as well. In addition, Yannetti incorporates her training as a nutritionist into this practice by asking clients about their diets. As a result, armed with this arsenal of knowledge about the patient, she is able to conduct a massage to best meet the needs of her client.
Yannetti also encourages her clients to talk about what worked and what didn’t for them after each session – in fact a large couch located next to Yannetti’s work desk just as you enter her studio, also affords clients an opportunity to relax and process their treatment once it is complete.
Prior to opening her own practice at the Java Street Studios, Yannetti worked at the Shibui Spa at the Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan. She found the work to be all consuming – often focusing more on the massage itself rather than the overall therapeutic aspect of it – not to mention the number of clients she had to see each day. She does emphasize, however, that her experience at the Shibui Spa has made her practice all the more strong as she pursues her own.
At her own practice she’s able to give more to each of her clients, and be able to process all of their concerns and discomforts without the pressure of pleasing a corporate overlord or rush to her next client.
Yannetti’s career path was inspired while training to be a professional gymnast. Her budding career was cut short when she was diagnosed with scoliosis. She had been operated on 4 times by the age of twelve. But instead of that letting it defeat her she decided to take up a practice that would help her to process her own pain but also aid others in a similar situation.
“I still have pain, but I have just learned to manage it better now,” said Yannetti. “But I’ve been able to channel those struggles into my practice, and that’s where my passion comes from – to be able to help people. I want to be able to teach people how to take care of themselves as well, aside from the therapy.”
Greenpoint was a natural fit for Yannetti to start her business because her husband has been working in the neighborhood for the past five years. Plus the studio, located on a quiet industrial corner of Greenpoint, also provides an alternative to the hustle and bustle of Williamsburg, where she had originally planned to open.
http://greenpointnews.com/2015/10/12/massage-for-your-mind-at-this-greenpoint-practi