Hi — I'm Nate.

I've been doing bodywork for 12+ years. Long enough to have stopped chasing technique for technique's sake, and long enough to know that the most powerful thing on any given day is rarely the fanciest tool in the kit.

Why I do this work

At a young age I was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome — one of the most severe cases the doctors had seen at the time. The muscle-tic variant. My body twitched violently. My muscles stayed in chronic fatigue and excruciating pain. There were nights I cried myself to sleep. And other nights my mom would sit beside me, massaging my muscles until they finally calmed enough for me to rest. That was the first time bodywork meant something to me — it was the only thing that helped.

In high school I started working with a chiropractor and a homeopathic doctor who changed my life. Before that, I couldn't function. The twitching was so severe that simple tasks felt impossible. Over four years of consistent, natural care, I went from non-functional and in massive pain to fully functional and pain-free — and it stayed gone. That was the turning point. Allopathic medicine had failed me. Holistic, natural, and energetic medicine succeeded. That's the field I wanted to spend my life in — the kind that finds the root cause and actually fixes the thing.

That's why I became a massage therapist. Because I've walked the walk. I've lived inside a body that wouldn't cooperate. I know what it feels like to be in pain you can't shake, to be exhausted by your own muscles, to search for relief and not find it. When clients lie down on my table, they're met by someone who understands muscle pain and nervous-system overwhelm from the inside — not just from a textbook.

How the practice grew

I started in massage. Swedish, deep tissue, the standard track. Within a couple years I realized that for a lot of clients, the muscle was just the doorway — what was actually stuck was further in. That sent me to Reiki, and eventually to becoming a Reiki Master. The energy work changed how I did the manual work, and the manual work kept me grounded in what bodies actually do.

Coaching came later. I kept noticing that clients would lie down with shoulder pain and get up wanting to talk about a job they hated, or a marriage they were avoiding, or a version of themselves they'd lost track of. The body knows first. So I trained, got certified, and added coaching to the practice. Now I get to work with people on both sides of the conversation.

How I work

Three things, every session:

1. Listen first. I want to know what your body has been doing — not just what hurts. The story matters.
2. Work with what's there. Plans get adjusted. If you came in for deep tissue but your nervous system needs Swedish today, we'll have that conversation.
3. Send you home with something to do. I'm not the whole solution. Two sessions a month plus the right home practice will outperform weekly massage and no homework, every time.

Credentials

• · Licensed Massage Therapist
• · Reiki Master
• · Certified Life Coach

Where you'll find me

I see clients out of Essence Salon and Spa LLC at 15 S Oak St, Union, MO 63084. Sessions Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9 to 5, plus Saturdays by appointment. All booking goes through Vagaro — link below.