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Special insight helps guide the way back to wellness

There’s nothing like first-hand experience to give you special insight. Just ask Ernesto Coelho, the latest massage therapist to join the team at Royal City Health & Manual Therapy.
Ernesto
Ernesto Coelho is the latest Registered Massage Therapist to join Royal City Health & Manual Therapy / Photo: Supplied

There’s nothing like first-hand experience to give you special insight.

Just ask Ernesto Coelho, the latest massage therapist to join the team at Royal City Health & Manual Therapy.

A number of years back, he had racked up a lengthy list of aches and pains while working out at the gym - without the guidance of a knowledgeable trainer - and realized he needed some help dealing with them.

“I finally gave in and booked for physio and massage therapy,” Coelho says. “That experience changed everything. In the weeks and sessions that followed, that sense of feeling your body getting better was incredible. I was being led on the path to feeling pain-free again, and these therapists were the ones leading the way.”

In particular, massage therapy left a deep impression on him for its one-on-one sessions.

“Instead of a divide where a practitioner works on a patient, the nature of massage therapy encourages the practitioner to work with the patient,” he says. “This approach, in my mind, really lends to the feeling of support and focused expertise that is so instrumental to healing.”

So, Coelho decided to study massage therapy and recently graduated from West Coast College of Massage Therapy.

And today he lays out that same path his massage therapists led him on, only now he also enjoys being able to derive satisfaction from seeing his clients improve.

“To me, it is definitely a warm and encompassing wave of satisfaction, pride, and also gratitude that we're able to do what we do for others,” Coelho says. “When I was a patient myself I had gotten that awesome rush of feeling your own body recover - it was an invincible feeling.

“Now, turn that around and imagine you’re the one capable of handing out that invincible feeling to others -that is supreme!”

It is also an intriguing challenge when he meets a client for the first time and begins mapping out a route to regain wellness.

“It's like being given a new puzzle to solve,” Coelho explains. “What's causing this patient discomfort? Is it this or that? Why don't we try this assessment test and see if it indicates anything?

“Truth be told, we may or may not even find any clues at all within the first session. Sometimes it's just not that straightforward. But when we finally solve the puzzle and see the patient fully functioning and happy, knowing that you yourself have had a hand in making it happen... that's when the giant warm wave rides over everything. There's nothing like it.”

For more information about how the talented staff at Royal City Health & Manual Therapy can help you, visit online at newwestminsterphysiotherapy.com, or 604-524-4446.