I help people.

I provide modern, evidence-informed bodywork to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons.

I treat comprehensively. Each session is a full re-set. Each time you visit, we unwind your entire musculature, head to toe, and settle your nervous system. What you get:

1. In a word, you get recovery. This means less pain and more comfort, suppleness, and mobility. It's a concentrated dose of restorative downtime that boosts many healing processes in the body, including brain function, immune competence, and tissue repair.
2. You get a safe, friendly container where you'll be helped, not judged.
3. You get expert nondogmatic info about how your body really works.

Many of my clients are regulars who have a monthly appointment with me as a kind of ongoing healthcare and performance tuning. These are people who understand that maintenance is the way — that staying healthy makes life less stressful, more productive, and more fun.

Regular appointments are not required. You can also come see me occasionally, or just once. 

My message to you: helping your body helps everything.

— Mike Papciak

In-office appointments are two hours. Cost is $450, no gratuity. A first appointment is usually forty minutes assessment and consultation, and an hour-twenty on the table. Subsequent sessions are usually ten minutes checking in, and an hour-fifty on the table.

I also offer 60-minute video sessions. Cost is $250, no gratuity. Working virtually, I provide assessment, consultation, self-treatment instruction, and practical ways to deal with pain, rehab injuries, and feel good in the body you have right now.

It's totally unlike traditional massage! Will you like the way I work, and find it helpful? Read this, then go with your gut. Questions are welcome.

Surprise #1) Cost is approaching what other professional therapies cost in this area. Historically, massage therapy has cost less than other private-practice healthcare. This is changing, as science validates its benefits and as modern life gets more intense.

Surprise #2) It doesn't hurt a lot. Fifty years ago, practitioners thought they changed the body by pressing really hard on it, so people came to think that bodywork had to be painful and intense to be effective. That's how you know you're getting serious therapy, and not some wimpy spa massage — right?

In fact, pressure is placebo. Decades of contemporary research have shown that we do not change human tissue by pressing really hard on it. The truth is more complex.

Your muscles don't have minds or wills of their own. Your brain is in charge of them. Tension and pain are controlled by the nervous system, not by the muscles themselves. Our session helps you feel better and perform better — but not because we dug some bad stuff out of your body. Not because we forced your tissue to obey. You feel better and perform better because your nervous system, reassured and guided by touch, feels safe enough to unclench. That's how bodywork works, folks. One of those pesky science things that's true whether we like the sound of it or not.

When I explain this, some people think: oh, the work will be delicate. It's not that, either. It's not dainty or artificially gentle. And it's not super painful. It's a middle way.

Surprise #3) We never spend the entire session working only on "the problem." We carefully treat your whole body every time, because — as you may have heard — it's all connected. It may seem like your problem is in just one spot or one muscle, but the human body is not actually like that. Science! Your body is a complex system, where everything affects everything, in ways that are not always predictable or controllable. So we treat broadly. We address specific complaints like headaches or knee pain by working with the entirety of your musculature and your nervous system.

Surprise #4) Relaxing and enjoying the session amplifies its benefit. Did you think it had to be grim? You can't switch over to repair mode unless your limbic system feels safe and comfortable. When you relax and enjoy the session, the downregulation of your nervous system produces a surge of neurochemical and hormonal benefits. I call this burping the brain. The good molecules flourish, boosting health and performance.

Surprise #5) A permanent fix never arrives. This is because you are a living organism. Your body cannot be permanently fixed. Your body is maintained. Hello, reality.

Surprise #6) I'm only part of your solution. It would be nice if you could just come see me from time to time, and your body wouldn't need anything else. This won't happen. You'll only thrive, or heal, or improve sustainably if you also take care of yourself in other departments like strength, sleep, mental health, and nutrition. Yep: more reality.

Surprise #7) There's no fancy name for it. I just call it bodywork. It's my own method, derived from many methods and teachers and 15 years of professional practice. I use myofascial and deep-tissue techniques, trigger point therapy, craniosacral therapy, relational therapy, structural integration from the Rolfing/Hellerwork tradition, some ideas and tools from the ancient instrument-assisted and manual therapies gua sha and tui na, and some ideas from Zen practice, like staying with reality instead of what sounds appealing but isn't true. I untangle your body, settle your nervous system, and tune you up for performance and health.

Contact me about appointments.

Hygiene info:

I'm a healthcare provider. Here are some of the ways we keep clean in my practice:

There's no waiting room. I meet you at the building entrance and we go directly to my office.

We both wear masks, regardless of vaccination status, as a proven and easy precaution against viruses and droplets of all kinds while indoors in close quarters. Fewer colds, no garlic breath.

There's no sharing of linens between clients, and I wipe everything down between appointments just like you'd hope I do. All linens are dried in a hot dryer before use. 

I run a couple HEPA filters and there's a ceiling exhaust fan in the treatment room.

I wear nitrile gloves, which might seem unusual in a massage therapy setting, but my method unwinds the deeper structures of the body, instead of gliding on its surface. Gloves are no impediment. Gloves also keep our skin funguses off each other, and things like that.

In Zen, there's a cool way to say it: When the dojo is clean, we can really sit there.