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Claire Papoulis

Water House Wellness welcomes Claire to the practice from Oregon.

Claire has always been interested in the path of holistic healing, forging a personal mission from a very young age to bring wellness and balance to her own life. After discovering the Amma Therapy program at The Wellspring School for Healing Arts, these values began to blossom as a career path. As a therapist, she strives to create a comfortable space in which clients can explore and enhance this path for themselves through education, healing, and relaxation. She continued her training in herbal medicine in the Professional Herbalist program through the East West School for Planetary Herbology. It is her priority to treat each client through a holistic model, addressing all elements of mind and body in unity.
Amma Therapy is a specialized form of bodywork rooted in Chinese Medicine, combining deep, therapeutic pressure with acu-point stimulation. Like acupuncture, the treatment is focused on Chinese medical principles for accessing and manipulating Qi (energy) in the body, but no needles are used. Amma works with the energetic and musculoskeletal systems to help restore balance and harmony within the body. Sessions include individualized treatment protocols for each client, with the goal of improving health and promoting balance and well-being of all systems.
Sunday 4-9pm
Monday 1-9pm
Tuesday 4-9pm
Wednesday 8am- 12pm
Thursday 8am - 4pm

What is Amma therapy?

The cliff notes are that Amma therapy is Chinese Medicine meridian work that is manual work where the treatment is done with the therapists hands and not with needles.

Amma, the oldest Chinese word used to described massage is a form of bodywork rooted in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).  Amma offers the therapeutic benefit of massage with the ancient knowledge of TCM. Amma combines deep, therapeutic pressure with acu-point manipulation to access and address imbalance in the body’s energetic system according to Chinese medical theory.

Like acupuncture, Amma Therapy focuses on the movement and balance of Qi (energy) in the body. Amma Therapy is a form of wholistic  treatment; assessments and treatment plans address the whole mind-body complex. Amma has been used to help manage a wide range of both acute and chronic conditions including body pain, headaches, digestive disturbances, menstrual imbalance, anxiety, and insomnia.

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Chinese herbal medicine

is a special branch of herbalism, and can be a supportive addition to Amma Therapy.

 

Like most all practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), this approach is focused on treating the root rather than just the branch of an imbalance. There is an old saying in TCM "one symptom, one thousand diseases". This illustrates the idea that there is not just one root cause of a certain presentation. TCM is all about looking at the big picture, identifying what is going on in the body as a whole rather than just isolating specific symptoms (with the exception of certain acute conditions).

 

Everything is understood as one unified whole, each element interacting and inseparable. This holistic perspective is furthered in Chinese herbalism as herbs are rarely used alone. Multiple herbs are almost always combined in formulas to help address the whole picture, as well as to balance each other out. In essence, TCM is focused on treating the mind-body as one interconnected complex.

Herbal formulas are geared to restore balance in the body, addressing underlying factors that give rise to disharmony. Formulas are typically not intended to be taken forever, but rather for a period as harmony is attained.

"Breathe it all in. Love it all out"  Mary Oliver