I give shiatsu purely and simply because I discovered I had a gift for it. Actually, that's not quite right, I didn't so much 'discover' my gift, as I was not looking for it, it was more that my gift came up to me one day and 'healed' me in the face.

The universe works in funny ways, at the age of 20 I found myself quite accidentally, but very happily living out of a tent on a beautiful bush property just meters from the northern NSW coast. Wondering down the street of nearby Byron Bay one day I happened upon a street stall selling crystals. Without any prior experience in crystals and very little money I found myself attracted to a particular flourite crystal cut into a long cylindrical shape with a point on one end. This stone is beautiful, a transparent green and purple glassy like crystal, smooth, powerful and of the heart chakra. This crystal showed me how to heal by conducting and moving energy. It guided me, my intuition tuned into this rock, and it absolutely blew me away.

I then found myself giving massages. It was like the crystal opened up the door to an inner wisdom, a knowing. People tend to be weirded out at the prospect of a crystal healing (a what?) but are very open to have someone physically manipulate their muscles. I had no massage training and no prior experience but somehow I knew how to run through a massage routine and relieve stress and strain. Even more incredible is that I met certain people who would seek massage from me and pay me for it. This was not something I had to look hard for, they came to me. I guess the moral of the story is that I tuned into the universal healing flow of love that allows us to heal.

Libby is a damn good shiatsu massage therapist.This is the crystal that inspired her healing path.

I have since completed formal massage training with a diploma in Shiatsu, thereby gaining an understanding of Traditional Chinese Medicine. After a couple of years I had developed a passsion for discovering the biological science behind our wonderful bodies and took up Biomedical Science and the University of Notre Dame. I completed a semester, studying hard while at the same time developing a relentless obsession with healthy food and new recipes. I decided to look into nutrition and found myself drawn to the nature cure promise of Naturopathy. Five years later I'm a naturopath who absolutly love's to practice Shiatsu. There is a therapeutic elegance in the simplicity of a massage.

My massage studio is not a clinic, it's a true escape from the outside world. Some clients feel like it's an alternate universe. I think of it as a more a medititative haven. However you see it, once your inside there's nothing to do but release stress, pain, and worries.