Meet Gabe Petty | Massage Therapist

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

Hi Gabe, we’d love to start by asking you about lessons learned. Is there a lesson you can share with us?
I think the most personal lesson I’ve learned is that the more I am myself in my business, the more it succeeds. For example, im not great at every single style of massage, but I am really exceptional at the type of massage I do. An old boss told me that the secret to being successful was to get really specific on my what and why and then commit to honing in on that! The more I settle into who I am and why I love massage and what specifically I love about it, the more I thrive. And, the more I find clients that truly appreciate both me as a person, and the work I am doing. I don’t want to be just okay at many things, I want to be really good at the one thing that I am doing.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I picked artist and creative category here because while massage is not typically considered that, it is! Sometimes I get people who come in the studio and say, “can we do what we did last time?” and while I can draw out the general moves and stretches and what oils I used, I never give the same massage twice. I am a new person every day and so are my clients. I take them that day, just as they are, right where they are in their healing journey, and we dance together. We create movements and fluid exchange between my hands and their muscles and we arrive at new stories and secrets and pains and points of contention every single session. With the same client, I have never touched the same body twice. It has taken me years to be where I am, thousands of hours of me getting body work from people I wanted to learn from, trial and error, and deep communication. One thing I value is enough time to really talk to my clients before and after sessions, asking what today needs to look like. And then after, how does your body feel, what feels different, what feels the same, what needs more work next time, what did you love, what didn’t seem to work well. It all adds up. I don’t think I’ll ever be done learning from my clients and the bodies I get to witness. Nothing good in life is easy, and massage is certainly not an easy profession to become proficient at. My story with massage is long and complicated and I didn’t seek massage as a career choice originally. I sought it out after a childhood filled with abuse and neglect and a knowing that I needed to learn how to be in my body again and to trust the people around me. Massage school was really intense, lots of crying on the table and having to heal parts of myself that at the times I didn’t think I was ready for, nor capable of. Massage became solace for me and so it is with my deepest honor and respect that now I get to help people come home to their bodies. Some thing I’m really proud to be a small part of is, the Victims Comp Program through which the district attorneys office in Durango offers domestic violence and sexual assault survivors rehabilitative aid, with massage being one of the modalities offered. When I heard about this program, I immediately applied to become a provider and to bring massage to these people who deeply deserve to be back in peace within their bodies. One of my biggest core values in the work that I do is that if I am listening to my clients nervous system and what it is able to tolerate, we CAN move mountains and create incredible amount of change! Our bodies are miracles and they are never too broken to heal!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I love durnago for many reasons and mostly because the easy access to the outdoors. I would stroll down Main Street and pop into Dancing Willow for some herbal teas for the week, and then head down to Durango Diner for a smothered green Chile breakfast plate! I would take them to Ecstatic dance on Thursday night at the legion hall and the farmers market on Saturday. We would pop in to Still life for a coffee before our hike at junction creek. We would grab pizza at schoolhouse after our hike and swim at spud lake. We would ride our bikes along the river trail after grabbing burritos from Zia and playing some volleyball at Santa Rita park. We would end our week at the sweaty buddha for a restorative class taught by Paige and id send them home with some Animas chocolate. The list of places that make this town great is so big and beautiful and I am honored to be here and be a part of it all.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My old boss Megan Ward back in North Carolina is one of the people who I owe a lot of gratitude for. I hadn’t spent much time in the massage world yet so I didn’t know much. She has a collective of incredible massage therapists in Boone, NC. I always aligned with the power of many in a business world, specifically the healing arts world, so right away I respected her approach. Once I started working there she really pushed me to get specific. She didn’t want me to be good at Swedish AND deep tissue AND this AND that, she really urged me to get specific on what type of massage I personally did and enjoyed. She taught me that when we enjoy our work, we put our whole hearts into it, and naturally it becomes better.
My massage school teacher Angela Leslie was pivotal in my becoming. She really put a lot of emphasis on listening. Anyone can pick up an anatomy book and learn muscles and insertion points and the way things are physically in the body, and she certainly spent a lot of time teaching us those things as well, but she would walk around us practicing and say things like “how’s the muscle responding?”, “is the muscle letting you in?”, or “are you overworking that area, does it need a break?”. All of which was constant pointing to us really paying attention to how the body and the work we are trying to do, has to be in unison otherwise we won’t get anywhere.
When I moved her I ran into an massage school classmate Kylie Cartwright who owns Aloha Kai Massage, and she offered me to share her space. I am so indebted to her and the opportunity she gave to me upon landing in Durango to grow and expand and really start my own business. I am forever grateful for her kindness and gentle ways of showing me the ropes!
And I think my biggest person on this journey of opening my studio is simply my clients. The trust, the support, the encouragement, the continued showing up. I have built my whole business on word of mouth and in a small town, it seems to be the best way. My clients care how my day is, or what’s happening in my world and I see that when we care about each other, it allows for a new level of personalized care on the table. I feel supported so I can then give more. I had several clients who would ask when I was moving to open a new space and when I finally let them in that I was thinking about it or about to make the leap or that I had finally signed a lease, they backed me up 100%, and that kind of devotion is what keeps small businesses alive!

Website: https://www.theroundhousecollective.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.roundhouse.collective/

Image Credits
All photos are thanks to Ri Ganey with Wild Child Media Co.