What are you, Heather Dalton, passionate about treating / achieving with your clients? 

I look to scaffold clients in their journey to "come home" to themselves, to validate their discovery that their body is an amazing, wonderfully designed and highly adaptable creation. The system is highly plastic (malleable) and adaptations to trauma can be integrated and re-adapted to some extent with bodywork and neural reprogramming.  

I am a certified personal trainer (NASM) with a specialization in corrective exercise, and have used this in combination with massage to ease holding patterns of folks living with stroke, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, and Multiple Sclerosis. 

I am the private-pay helper for someone continuing to reach personally defined monumental mini goals when insurance cuts off due to benefits exhausted or the insurance doesn’t deem “significant” enough for funding. For example, I had a stroke client(permission granted to speak of her) who would participate in PT and OT for a few weeks until exhausted, continuing with me to build on skills and keep limbs supple.  This woman, considered by the system as not worth allotting more than the minimum in therapy due to needing more time to reach insurance goals, with the loving diligence of her health care team and her own grit was brushing her hair and teeth, self-feeding, and able to communicate not just by blinking her eyes as when I first met her but by writing short notes.  

I am also here to help folks living with terminal illness keep a quality life as long as possible.

Being a Reiki master enables me to add an additional mode of access for the healing process and calming the autonomic nervous system.  

Working in Holmdel Acupuncture positions me alongside acupuncturists that are passionate about holistic healing from women's health and fertility to oncology support.  I love being a part of this community, offering massage and education for self-care for all types of chests, from the intact, to post-mastectomy and lumpectomy breast. Folks, understand that cording can be softened.  Cording, also known as axillary web syndrome (AWS), is fibrosis (tissue thickening) that develops in the connective tissue surrounding the lymphatic system after a surgical or radiation disturbance.  Most commonly experienced as decreased range of motion in the arm/shoulder complex over time it may thicken into a visible cord.  The cord may also extend the other direction into the chest and abdomen.  Massage and gentle stretching with an experienced provider can help soften cording (AWS).

I offer care and management of lymphedema with lymphatic drainage massage and compression garment guidance.  I am a helpful resource for community that may have had lymph nodes removed or significant surgical or radiation scarring. 

What inspired you, Heather Dalton, to become a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT)?

My goals and inspirations have matured over the two decades I have been in practice. Initially, I was purely a problem solver. I lived for the frozen shoulder that I could melt over a series of sessions. I continue to be involved in sports massage.  Helping folks achieve more is still an important aspect of my practice. 

I was given the gift of several clients that invited me on their journeys with terminal illness. That woke me to the beauty of simply being. Our culture makes this difficult and I am grateful for my clients that showed me how to hold space for them in this process. 

My passion today is best described with the analogy of a mansion when thinking of your human, perfectly imperfect body. Imagine having a trustworthy companion along as you explore the many rooms in your mansion, especially if you have been living cramped, but safe, in two pretty rooms.  The rest of the rooms may have been locked and dusty for many years. I look forward to being an assistant on your journey to discover and integrate all the wonderfully human bits and pieces of you as come to realize with gratitude the wonders of the body, the vehicle of the soul.

Tell me about your schooling.

I graduated in February 2004 from Somerset School of Massage Therapy and have been a life-learner since, much more than I can list here. The highlights on my list includes a full week, hands-on cadaver study led by Gil Hedley, Qigong, Reiki, Active Isolated Stretching, Neuro Kinetic Therapy, Breast Health and mastectomy massage, and a 135 hour course of study in Complete Decongestive Therapy (for Lymphedema) including Manual Lymphatic Therapy with the Norton School.

Any other hobbies you would like to share?

I love woodsy walks and splashing in muddy puddles with my husband and daughter.  I am active in a community that recognizes there is a Higher Power and that individually "We aren't it."  Foraging, tea blending and petting the furry creatures in my home also bring me bliss.

Heather Dalton, LMT

908.692.3181

hdaltonmassage@gmail.com