Our Therapist

I started my journey into healthcare as a personal trainer back in 2014. It started out in a Goodlife Fitness and soon found out the privatization of healthcare services came with corporate greed culture. Although I found myself on the other side of the spectrum of their corporate culture, I stuck around to improve my skills. In 2015, I took a course in powerlifting fundamentals, then in 2016 I became a certified Level 1 Fascial Stretch Therapist. Eventually, I had to leave Goodlife Fitness and start my own personal training brand in Niagara Falls in 2017. That same year, I certified myself further in Fascial Stretch Therapy and took the Level 2 course.

It was shortly after this I realized the barrier to providing care as I was not a registered healthcare professional. Which meant potential patients could not access my services through insurance and benefits as I was not part of the Registered Healthcare Professionals in Ontario. This led me to take an Advanced Massage Therapy program in 2017 at Ontario College of Health and Technology, which had all the hours of a regular 2-year program compressed into a 1-year program. During my schooling, I travelled to Arizona to take the final and third level of Fascial Stretch Therapy in April of 2018. Shortly after my graduation in August 2018, I became a Registered Massage Therapist with the College of Massage Therapist of Ontario in October 2018.

After a year of being an RMT, I recognized the severity in the lack of care for the lymphedema population in Ontario, let alone in all of Canada. Did you know there are potentially 400,000 people in Ontario with lymphedema but there are 86 (at this time of writing) registered Certified Lymphedema Therapist in Ontario? That means that for one certified lymphedema therapist, they would have to service approximately 4650 people in order for everyone to receive appropriate and evidence-based care. Lymphedema is also a misunderstood and often misdiagnosed disease, which further complicates the treatment and treatment plan. By acknowledging a few outstanding facts and numbers, it led me to become a Certified Lymphedema Therapist with Klose Training in August 2019. Shortly after this, I took a standardized national examination for Lymphology Association of North America. Only 3 out of the 86 certified lymphedema therapist in Ontario has this designation to show their extended knowledge in both practicality and information regarding lymph, lymph and vascular physiology and lymphedema.

By recognizing this intense gap in healthcare and the growing population of lymph disease, it was both an easy and a heartfelt choice to create a clinic that would service this underserviced need. Additionally, throughout the years of practicing, it seems strikingly clear how important soft tissue hygiene is. To be clear, I am not discussing the smell of the soft tissue but rather the integrity and its ability to be malleable under load and stress. Healthy soft tissue is a must in order for an individual to experience their highest quality of life. My main objective as a therapist is this: alleviate pain, soothe the suffering and make you leave the clinic better than you came in.