A TOUCH of Health Massage, LLC

Judy Antonelli, OMP, NCBTMB

74 Riverside Drive / Riverside, RI 02915

401.247.2220

Judy@ATouchOfHealthRI.com

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Judy Antonelli

My passion comes from my own health crisis experience

and how massage with a benevolent intention can help

coax the body to re-awaken its own natural healing

abilities.

In the mid 1980s I sold jewelry as a New England

manufacturer’s representative, tripling their profits.

One morning I woke to an intense, unbearable migraine

accompanied by non-stop vomiting and nausea. I was

in aphasia, talking in gibberish. After being rushed to

the hospital, I was diagnosed with Viral Meningitis.

I recognize many similarities that Viral Meningitis has to cancer or any other life threatening illness. During my hospital stay, I felt so alone, thinking I would die (a priest made a visit asking if I wanted last rites.)

The combination of pain and fear is very isolating as well as extremely difficult to manage, both physically and emotionally. I often thought I could end up with brain damage or be paralyzed. The other symptoms of nausea, vomiting, fatigue and constipation only added to my distress.

As my body began to improve during a 2-week stay in the hospital, I felt the “blocked” energy needing to move freely throughout my body. My body was crying out for warm skilled hands to comfort my neck, back, and legs. I asked for a massage and was told, “Well, that will make you feel better, but it won’t cure anything”. Make Me Feel Better? Something needs to help me get relief for my aching back, neck and legs. Just to feel my legs again would be so empowering. If my body could be allowed to walk the halls for natural healing when it was ready. But no, the hospital’s protocol was to depress, repress, and suppress with medication. That was over 30 years ago and as Oprah says, “When you know better, you do better” and the hospitals are definitely doing better.

Vowing to never get that sick again, this experience led me to exchange the corporate world for a holistic healing practice, creating a career in massage therapy. Completing my initial training in 1991 from the Bancroft School of Massage Therapy in Worcester, MA, I opened my private practice. Along with the required continued education credits to maintain my licenses, I also studied with Caroline Myss, a pioneer in energy medicine and before his death Jack Schwartz, who worked with the Menninger Institute on self-regulation through conscious, sub-conscious, and para-conscious levels which speak through the body, Practicing their work, I noticed how massage transcended the separation between body, mind, and thought. From here, my personal and professional experience has taught me the fundamental truth that health emerges from all aspects of being, not just treating the body. And should we find ourselves suffering from an illness, what we can do for ourselves from a nature point of view, to help accelerate healing has become a major focus in my practice.

Since 2009, I have worked in the Oncology/Hematology Department at The Adele R. Decof Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Miriam Hospital in Providence comforting cancer patients receiving chemotherapy infusions, bedside, pre-op, and post-op.

I am also an adjunct teacher for Sanford-Brown College in their Cranston, RI and Boston, MA locations.

My work is grounded in clear clinical, common sense thinking … that works!

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