Conscious Bodywork, Portland

Heather Harms felt the lure of the healing arts long before she discovered massage therapy. As a prenursing student and instructor to developmentally disabled adults, she paid a visit to a health fair that would prove serendipitous. It was here that she first understood massage as her true calling. Before long, she enrolled in massage school and received her license.

She puts that license to good use at Conscious Bodywork, a massage-therapy center informed by the direct teachings of John Barnes, a world-renowned expert in myofascial release. Barnes’s conscious-systems therapy charts out the layers of consciousness, attempting to identify their physical corollaries across the human body. Harms stays true to this aim with a fusion of myofascial-release and craniosacral therapies that allows her to read bodies and gently manipulate fascia to relieve pain at its source. She carefully evaluates each patient before treatment, getting to know the rhythms of their bodies and scanning their muscles for booby traps.