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Massage isn’t just for horses

Local resident Stacy Elliot is now offering massage at the Rock Creek Clinic, Saturdays at the Rock Creek Market and through house calls.
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Stacy Elliot gives her daughter Skyra a chair massage at the Rock Creek Market on a recent Saturday morning.

Stacy Elliot is perhaps best known locally as the owner of Wild Horse Power, specializing in horse massage and chiropractics.

But she took that nine years of experience and went back to school to be certified to offer health kinesiology and certified deep massage to humans as well. She uses a combination of Shiatsu massage and a Hawaiian massage known as Lomilomi.

She works on Thursdays from the Rock Creek Clinic with a table and is now offering a chair massage, often at the Saturday Rock Creek Market.

The chair is a special mobile unit that allows her to go to people’s houses or to set up for a group such as at a senior’s centre. She recently took the chair to Mariposa Gardens in Osoyoos.

“You are sitting,” she explains. “It is easy to get in and out of. You don’t need to take your shirt off or anything; it is done on top of the clothing, which is a little more comfortable for people who are new to massage as well.”

She uses the deep massage and the mobile chair to augment her Wild Horse Power business income from the last nine years. Those years of experience have also given her knowledge in human massage.

Since horses can’t tell you where the sore spot is, her years of working with horses have given her a proficiency at identifying which muscles are tense and stressed— and that ability translates to people as well.

“I don’t think I would have jumped into working with people so quickly if I didn’t have that experience with the sense of touch that I gained working with the horses,” she said.

When treating horses Elliot covers a big territory, all the way from Grand Forks to Summerland. But she hopes to stay more local to the Osoyoos and Boundary area with the human massage business.

Rates for her chair massages are $35 for half an hour or 15 minutes for $20.

“If I travel I don’t charge a huge amount of fee on top; it depends on how many people I can do in one area.”

Deep tissue massage on the table at the clinic costs $75 for an hour. “From my experience doing chiropractics on horses, I find working with massage takes a little bit longer, you don’t just come for a quick treatment but the results are very rewarding and usually takes less treatments with longer lasting results.”

When you are tight and locked up in areas, massage helps you loosen up, she said. Benefits of massage include better circulation, relief of tension, increased mobility and it helps with chronic pain also.

“The muscles are attached to your vertebrae or your skeleton and when the muscles are tight and tense they will actually pull bones out of line. So if you are restricted in those areas, if you can loosen up the muscle that has been knotted up you can actually realign your vertebrae.”

Elliot is a local: she grew up in Beaverdell/ Carmi. “ My grand-mother lived in Rock Creek so I spent most of my time between here and there,” she said. “I love the Boundary area and am very excited to have my business here! I have always been into horses. I never really imagined I would be working on people doing massage but now that I have fallen into it I am really enjoying it. It works well and you can see the success of it and I usually don’t have to worry about getting kicked at when working with people!”

She is available on Thursdays at the Rock Creek Clinic— phone for an appointment 250-446-2235 or 250-528- 0177. You may also reach her at wildhorsepower@hotmail.com.

She will often have her chair set up at the Rock Creek Market on Saturdays.