It was Meryl's martial arts mentor and future business partner, Marian Sing, who first encouraged her to pursue massage therapy as a vocation. In 2009, Meryl was accepted to Asheville School of Massage and Yoga. Less than a year later, she completed the first phase of her formal education after completing 675 hours of intensive training and study comprising both theoretical and hands-on elements.
Meryl’s time at Asheville School of Massage and Yoga gave her an awareness of the latter discipline’s role in providing compassionate self-care—an awareness she resolved to pass on to her clients. After starting her own private massage practice in 2013, she traveled to Costa Rica to take part in her first 200-hour yoga teacher training with Frog Lotus Yoga International. In 2017, her ongoing quest for knowledge led her to India, where she earned not only a 500-hour teacher training certification in traditional vinyasa yoga, but also a 50-hour specialty certificate in yin yoga. Subsequent educational excursions included two months-long sojourns at the idyllic Suryalila Yoga Retreat Centre in Villamartín, Spain, which she considers her spiritual home away from home.
Meryl has spent the past decade refining her skills by working as an individual therapist and partnering with prominent local businesses and events. She has shared her gift in yoga studios, chiropractors’ offices, behavioral health facilities, arts festival healing sanctuaries, hospitality venues, and private residences. Her broad expertise enables her to treat each client using a unique, personally-tailored approach, inviting them to take an active part in their own restoration. She specializes in myofascial release (MFR), a delicate form of massage that involves manipulating the body’s interstitial tissues to relieve tension, enhance circulation, improve mobility, and promote healing.
An addition to MFR, Meryl’s wealth of techniques encompasses deep tissue and relaxation massage, trigger point and craniosacral therapies, and, her newest technique, ashiatsu (foot pressure). She has experience using these modalities to treat conditions as diverse as minor injuries, post-surgical tightness and scarring, breast explantation, trigger finger, sciatica, chronic headaches, neuropathy, TMJ, thoracic outlet syndrome, and anxiety and depression.
Trauma-Informed Massage Therapy:
Meryl spent over two years working at Knoxville's out-patient eating disorder facility, Focus Integrative Center, as the Center's Director Of Movement & Body Awareness.
The extensive mental health and trauma sensitivity training Meryl received at Focus, in addition to spending numerous hours via direct hands-on patient experience, uniquely enables Meryl to compassionately provide a safe space for massage clients who have gone through emotional hardships and suffer from over-stimulated nervous systems.
Touch therapy is greatly beneficial for the trauma healing process by calming the nervous system when being exposed to safe touch.
Please inform Meryl if you are specifically seeking a trauma-informed massage therapist.
Book an appointment with Meryl today and treat yourself to a transformative therapeutic experience that will leave you feeling renewed.