MaMassage Brooklyn Owner / Founder Kiera Nagle MA, LMT, CLC, CMLDT, ADS shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Kiera, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. Have any recent moments made you laugh or feel proud?
A recent moment that made me feel proud was when a local non profit organization reached out to me because they had heard in their community (from someone I don’t even know personally) about my commitment to community care. While the structure of our business at MaMassage Brooklyn is fee for service, I do strongly believe in creating access to massage therapy and other modalities for community members who may not ordinarily be able to utilize these services. We all deserve care, healing, and connection with our bodies. I was proud that this mission of mine is clear to folks in the community, enough to pass it on and connect us with further opportunities to provide massage care in perhaps-unlikely settings for folks who need it.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi, I’m Kiera Nagle from Brooklyn, NY. I practice massage therapy, manual lymph drainage, reiki, NADA, and lactation counseling because I’m passionate about providing inclusive, gender affirming and trauma informed care to folks who are dealing with fertility, perinatal care, and recovery from surgery and trauma. I’ve been practicing for over 17 years. My practice, MaMassage Brooklyn, includes members of a diverse and highly trained staff who share my mission of creating safer spaces for women and gender non conforming / queer folks to access care for their bodies. Our studio is nestled in the quiet back-end of a transformed industrial building on a quiet street. It is filled with plants, and lit with natural light during the day and the warm glow of candles and twinkle lights in the evening. Folks generally feel very relaxed and comfortable as soon as they walk through the door- both our clients and our therapists can settle into themselves in this environment. Our branding logo is a crescent moon- the moon is representative of the reproductive cycles and our grounding in with the patterns and rhythms of the earth and the universe beyond. While that notion may be “woo” for some folks, we counterbalance the ethereal with the crispness of our color schemes- black and white and neutral tones. That contrast is mirrored in the way our soft, trauma informed approaches and energetic work is balanced by evidence based treatment planning and intelligent understanding of anatomy, physiology and pathology. We continue to work to expand our reach from inside the studio out into NYC to provide access to care in community settings.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
As a team, we’ve been thinking about this a lot and discussing this in the context of reading and responding to a book we all read called “Liberated to the Bone” by Susan Raffo. In the book, Raffo discusses the intersection of healing work and restorative justice, and the interdependence of the two. In order to unpack the history of medical care which is rooted in the violence and oppression of supremacist systems / colonization, Raffo leads the reader / practitioner through actionable steps: stopping violence, restoring presence, and creating conditions for healing. At MaMassage Brooklyn all of our diverse practitioners and clients are part of some oppressed group or other, many with overlapping identities, and some with more privilege than others. As a team we’ve taken steps to raise awareness and take action in the ways that we can as practitioners- by providing equitable care, doing our own healing work so we can fully show up for our clients, and expanding the reach of our services beyond the studio.
When you were sad or scared as a child, what helped?
When I was sad or scared as a child, what helped me most was either being held and listened to, or being outside in nature. Both the oxytocin of loving touch and the clarity of fresh air and natural elements helped me to calm down and feel connected to the universe. I have tried to bring both of these important grounding elements into our practice of massage – within our hands on touch / communication, and within the studio space. That way, even when we aren’t physically there, we can bring our nervous systems back to a place of calm by visualizing how we felt during treatment.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
While many in the industry view massage therapy as a luxury, and market it that way, we truly believe in massage as a medical health care practice. When framed as health care it is seen as essential – we definitely learned that during the early stages of covid, when it was determined that massage was included in essential health care practices. In the context of health care, we also are more able to increase respect for our services, and educate clients about their potential benefits. The health care model also allows us to work as part of care team for our clients, who are often interfacing with other health care practitioners: doctors, surgeons, midwives, psychologists, PTs, and more. While relaxation and nervous system downregulation (taking clients from fright or flight to rest and digest) are an important part of what we do, we are not limited to those approaches and outcomes. Integrating nervous system work into medical approaches allows for more expansive healing to take place.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
If I knew I had 10 years left to live, there’s not much I’d stop doing, but I would definitely increase the amount of time I spend with friends and family and also do more mentorship so that my mission can carry on in my absence. I think about this in the context of older practitioners and relatives whose knowledge and stories may die with them. It also makes me want to learn all I can from my elders before they walk on.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mamassage.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mamassage_brooklyn/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiera-nagle-ma-lmt-clc-cmldt-18b44952/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamassagenyc
Image Credits
David Meanix
Dorota Micali
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
