Meet Dawn Ramsden | Licensed Massage Therapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dawn Ramsden and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dawn, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
When I was younger, I can remember times where I worked three to four jobs at the same time. I would go to school and work five days a week, then helped my parents with their businesses on the weekends. I had watched my mother work long days when she managed a medical office, then she and my father worked hard growing a jewelry business from traveling trade shows to a brick and mortar store in Virginia. After post high school education, I was working a full time job in medicine, but couldn’t let go of my massage practice so I worked all day and most evening and weekends, but could never get ahead. I longed for deeper relationships with my daughter and felt so guilty that her teachers, after school providers and the teens running the child care room at the gym had more time with her than I did.

Five years ago, my family and I moved back to Colorado after spending two years in North Carolina. I went from working for someone else where all I did was show up, do what I loved to do and went home to starting my own practice where I was service provider, practice manager, marketing manager, book keeper, and the list goes on. I convinced my husband to buy a Ford Transit Passenger Van and convert the back to make a platform bed and we packed up our two kids and the dogs and explored wherever the Colorado roads took us.
I loved the balance of working hard during the week and driving away from it all on the weekends, or taking weeks long cross-country trips. As my practice was steadily growing, I was busier and began trading out my weekend time to work in extra clients. I was reaching a burn out point just before the 2020 stay at home orders were issued. I hated working late, I longed for exercise outside or just having days where I wasn’t in back to back appointments all day long with no room to breathe or go for a walk.
I learned a lot during those weeks at home. I had time to cook dinners from scratch which felt like I was making up for 3 years worth of missed family dinners. I played board games with my kids, watched movies, went for hikes and we found a new hobby of mountain biking as a family.
We traded our adventure van for a travel trailer this past year and now our adventures have a little more creature comforts. The good thing about having a trailer is making reservations ahead of time. This down time is non-negotiable, mandatory family fun.
I also learned that it is better for me to schedule time to take care of my body, whether it be short walks in the morning, chiropractic care, massage therapy, or taking a few minutes to listen to a simple guided meditation on my phone app just before bed, than it is to go into crisis mode with my health due to an illness or injury. Our health and well-being will not be ignored.
I think accountability is important when you want to make changes to your habits and routines, identity and execute boundaries with your schedule. I have worked with business coaches and mentors for the past two years and while I can look back and see a lot of progress, I still look at my schedule and see room for improvement for more ways to balance my time more evenly between work, family, self care and fun. For me, work life balance is more about boundaries and assigning importance to each area that feeds my mind, heart and soul as well as making sure that I show up in the world to serve others with my happiest, healthiest version of myself.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I went through massage therapy school the year after I graduated high school. Back then, we were these mystical healers who existed, but were hard to find unless you traveled to a day spa or knew someone that was a client of a therapist to get a direct referral to their home practice. We charged about a dollar per minute for treatments back then in the late 90s.

I have had the opportunity to work in gyms, spas, franchises, medical offices and for myself I have offered mobile massage, in home studio, shared space and now my own office.

I have seen instant healing episodes, I have helped people go from barely walking due to pain, to feeling virtually no pain. The human body is capable of incredible things and when we understand how the brain communicates with the rest of the body and all of the operating symptoms, it is fascinating to see what’s possible with the right tools or movement applied.

When I worked in a franchise setting, I was so excited to return from a continuing education class where I had learned all about kinesiology taping, fascia and how to do instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization. I experienced my own unbelievable results in my neck pain and movement dramatically improve within 30seconds of using this tool on the upper layers of tissue. Sadly, because that technique was not on the menu of services there, I could not offer this valuable treatment to my clients. I was limited in what I could offer because they needed to be the same across the franchise.

I noticed how little massage therapist were paid because 20 years later, we are still charging a dollar a minute, or offering ‘add ons’ like aromatherapy or scalp massages to increase the price of the session.

When I started my practice, I had a vision of establishing a collective space where knowledgable and experienced therapist like me could share office space and overhead so we could have a receptionist and someone who did our marketing, supply orders etc and we could stick to doing the things only we can do and go home at the end of our work day leaving work behind.

After hearing about illicit massage parlors where women are sex trafficked or unsuspecting clients become victims of sexual assault at the hands of a sexual predator posing as a therapist, even at nationally recognized franchises (Massage Envy just had a class action law suit a few years ago with 150 victims of sexually assaulted clients, and another one from their employees where they allowed customers who they knew had assaulted other employees return for more services where more therapists were injured). I wanted to create a trusted resource for the public that they knew therapists were rigorously vetted and committed to the highest of ethical standards, in addition to being trauma-informed where victims in trauma recovery would be able to know their safety is our priority.

I am learning that it takes a team to see this dream of mine come to life. We know have 2 therapists in addition to myself and I am working with a professional business coach to develop systems and practices to scale to additional locations as well as teach workshops to give access to everyone to learn how to use massage therapy at home with their loved ones.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I love our zoo! We have had memberships over over a decade. It’s been beautiful to see the updates to the habitats over this time. I might bring them along for a bike ride along the Sante Fe Trail from Monument to Downtown where we would stop for food. My boys often love to get a cheeseburger from Drifters when we do this ride, but that’s as far as we’ve taken the trail. I think it would be fun to go all the way beyond Colorado College to one of the delicious restaurants downtown. Maybe a Bingo Burger so they could try the delicious green chili magic in their burger.
We would soak our muscles at Sunwater Spa in Manitou and maybe walk downtown to relive childhood memories at the Penny Arcade, or stop for nachos at The Loop.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Julie Miller Davis She’s my Productivity Coach.

Website: www.wholistichealingexperiences.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/wholistichealingexperiences

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wholistic-healing-experiences-colorado-springs

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYTJZ67Vrn-1ZyjDxvjZTFg

Other: www.warriortrappedwithin.com Veteran workshop series coming 2022!

Image Credits
Tricia Turpenoff Maria Bay (headshot with white background)