After six years with a career in nursing, Cara Barrett is hoping to channel that experience into a new career as a massage therapist.
Barrett, owner of Body Care by Cara, who previously worked for six years as an orthopedic nurse for Central Kansas Orthopedic Group, decided six months ago she wanted to offer patients a more natural form of healing.
“I like focusing more on the natural healing side of things, rather than just prescribing pain medicine for patients,” Barrett said. “I’m showing them that there’s a natural way to help people with gaining more mobility and things.”
Now a licensed massage therapist, Barrett said there are a lot of misconceptions about what massage therapy is, and is not, and with her work she hopes to change some of those misconceptions.
I think people are becoming more understanding of it, and it’s being more talked about now,” Barrett said. “Just getting people out of the mindset. It’s not all about sexualizing it, it’s more about gaining mobility and more muscle tone and things to that effect.”
Massage therapy in its proper form is a natural form of pain management, as well as healing.
“Massage is just so beneficial. It is very complimentary to people that already enjoy having chiropractic treatment,” Barrett said. “When combined with massage therapy, you just take your body’s health to the next level. It’s really a great way to not only make your mind feel better, but your body feel better.”
Barrett offers several types of massages. She offers relaxing style massage through deep tissue work, which is the manipulation of soft muscle tissue. This includes hot stones and “cupping,” a release of the fascia from the muscle, which Barrett said allows the muscles to expand and breathe more.
She offers spa services such as ear candling, which clear out the sinus passageways for issues such as allergies and sinusitis. She also offers facial services and body wraps and scrubs, which she said are good to pair with massage services.
Other services she offers include Thai stretching, pregnancy massage, and kinesio taping, a therapeutic taping technique designed to alleviates pain and facilitate lymphatic drainage lifting the skin.
She hopes her background in nursing helps her bring even more to the table as a massage therapist in terms of helping patients heal.
“It has helped me (better understand) the anatomy of people’s bodies and why we have the aches and pains we do, and being able to correlate that to your everyday activities, (what’s) causing this pain and what we can do to get you feeling better again,” she said.
Her hours at her office at 2015 Forest Ave. are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with evening sessions available Tuesday and Thursday, and all day every other Saturday. Sessions can be 30 minutes for $35, 60 minutes for $60, or 90 minutes for $90.
She can be found on Facebook, or reached by phone at 620-680-0356.
