Discover Shanti

Shanti Medical Massage Clinic

About Shanti

About Shanti

The Shanti Way

At Shanti, we are committed to the healing process of our clients. Our goal is for you to leave a bodywork session feeling noticeably and incrementally better than when you arrived. We want clients to feel a sense of relationship and connection with us, and for you to experience validation of your own physical experience in your body, with all of the messages it has for you.

Educating clients is an important part of our relationships with them. To this end, we provide not only massage therapy but also, if desired, connection to a matrix of resources and information with the potential to further increase your healing beyond what massage may have to offer. These could be other websites, classes, referrals to practitioners in other related disciplines, helpful books and videos.

In addition, we participate in a growing network of practitioners in the tri-state region who also serve the community’s health, healing, and wellbeing. This network helps us connect clients with services and practices that complement massage therapy, increase healing, and change lives.

The Therapists

Shanti is a group of diverse licensed massage therapists attending to our community’s health, healing and wellbeing.  The practitioners are independent contractors with private practices built from word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals from area physicians and other professional colleagues.

What is Medical Massage?

A question that comes up a lot is “what is medical massage”?  While there is no substitute for receiving the experience yourself, our definition for those inquiring is as follows.

Medical massage is referring to a session with purpose and sustenance facilitated by a therapist advanced in their training. There is no one specific technique or modality that is medical massage.  A medical massage therapist is making discerned choices, moment by moment, that would be relevant to you and the desired outcome of your session.

The Shanti Story

The call for answers from the client community drove the philosophy and current formation of Shanti. Many clients first came thinking massage would provide them a bit of relaxation or temporarily reduce the soreness and discomfort that brought them there. They did not expect more. However, many were astonished to experience great release from physical issues and pain that had been chronic for years.

Some were overjoyed that their problem was resolved, but wanted to understand why they had not known about the relief they could get, since massage had been more effective for them than surgeries or pain medications. They wondered: Why isn’t the public more aware of this? Why had they suffered for so long? Why hadn’t they been referred for massage therapy earlier when it was the only thing that helped?

Shanti Open House
Shanti Open House 2007

The response of her clients inspired Joy to try to answer those questions and fill the need behind them. Part of the explanation, she was convinced, lies in the massage therapist’s engagement with the art of massage and the dynamic crafting of an individualized bodywork session for the client based on their training, experience, and continuing education. When this happens, clients get results that are noticeable to them.

However, the other part of the answer lies in ongoing training and education for newer bodyworkers, with the more experienced giving back to the profession by sharing what they have learned. Clearly there was a need to increase the number of healing massage therapists in the profession and to raise public awareness about the healing process and bodywork’s integral role of bodywork in it, and to help therapists help more people. It would be necessary to form relationships and develop trust with other healers in the medical industry and create a cycle of collaboration with them.

Joy’s individual practice was at capacity, so she decided to open a larger office that could accommodate like-minded massage therapists wanting to be part of a shared mission. Without having recruited a single therapist, Joy took a leap of faith and leased a space twice as large as her single-therapist practice. She reached out to the medical massage community and began offering free classes to bodyworkers who wanted to learn more about neuromuscular massage therapy and energy work. Through these classes, Joy connected with massage therapists who were interested in learning new techniques, developing deeper relationships with clients, sharing their knowledge, and growing as healers.

Within three years, Shanti Medical Massage had multiple therapists and a thriving practice that grew entirely from word of mouth, without advertising. Shanti quickly required a larger space to accommodate the increased clientele, and so moved to its current home in Washington Township.

Today Shanti has seven therapists on staff, offering a range of modalities to facilitate your healing. Each of us is committed to growing as bodyworkers and sharing our knowledge with each other and our profession.