April McKnight

I love my work! I facilitate pain relief and mind-body healing as a practical pathway to peace. Pressure typically stays in the realm of "delicious discomfort" with slow movement and gentle stretches to melt muscles and achieve lasting results. I can also show you take-home stretching & self-massage techniques for even greater relief. I am mobile in Hemet, CA and surrounding areas.

My specialties include Somatic Bodywork for stress and trauma, Deep Tissue and Deep Circulatory, Sensory Repatterning, Neuromuscular (trigger point), Sports and Thai. I provide pregnancy, elderly, and chair massage as well as infant massage classes and coaching. I am mobile from Hemet and work with all ages and enjoy helping people with special needs. I am an optimistic healer and am honored to help clients experiencing big (and small) emotions by creating a safe rapport, holding space, asking thoughtful questions, and letting the body find its voice.

Somatic Bodywork sessions combine intuitive hands-on work with dialogue, visualization, movement, journaling and art. Somatic bodywork doesn't replace counseling with a qualified psychotherapist, but is complementary. We may do coaching in Nonviolent Communication and Arbinger to improve relational skills around nonjudgment, recognizing needs and feelings in ourselves and others and making specific requests while seeing people as people, not objects, leading to changed hearts and way of being, not just techniques.

Education and Training: I graduated from International Professional School of Bodywork (IPSB) in San Diego as a Holistic Health Practitioner in 2010, also when I started my massage business. I graduated as valedictorian with a B.S. in Psychology from BYU and worked in the mental health field for 16 years, mostly with struggling youth. I am nationally certified by NCBTMB and stay current with continuing education and studying professional articles.

Volunteer work is important to me and I have offered massage to leprosy patients in India, homeless people, women in emotional recovery, and chair massage for teens in residential treatment when I was employed at San Diego Center for Children.