Prism Touch Soothes Muscles One Kink at a Time

“People think you can just do it, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can hurt them,” said Vicki Carpenter of her line of work. Carpenter is a professionally trained massage therapist, with a practice in High Ridge called .

Carpenter has been a massage therapist for seven years. Her business, Prism Touch Massage, operates in conjunction with Shave No More, a laser hair removal service in Coachlight Plaza, where she rents her office space. She also provides services at Ballas Chiropractic and Nutrition Centre in Creve Coeur.

Carpenter said she was always interested in massage and thought it might make for a good home-based business. She offers massage for parties, offices and does the occasional weekend retreat.

She decided to get trained after seeing massage therapy in action while working as a medical secretary in a local chiropractor’s office. She started as a “floater,” which is like a substitute teacher for massage therapists, providing back up to various spas. She now splits most of her time between two offices where she offers massage therapy as an additional service for a related business.

Carpenter provides many types of massage, from Swedish to hot stone massage, but her latest interest is sports therapy massage. This type of massage is becoming popular with athletes as a way to complement their conditioning regimen.

“Neuromuscular therapy can realign the muscles and facilitate healing,” she said. Sports therapy massage is a type of deep tissue massage. “You work with subsurface levels of the muscle. It’s good for repetitive motion injuries. You work out the adhesions in large muscles.”

She said that sports therapy massage is not as relaxing as a Swedish massage, but it’s very helpful for any type of athlete looking to improve their performance, their endurance or to recover from an injury. She said the technique is also useful for freeing “frozen” muscles, where someone has lost their normal range of motion.

Carpenter said that giving massages can be strenuous work and that learning to pace yourself is key to being a professional masseuse.

“The hardest I ever worked was at Trout Lodge for a women’s wellness weekend,” she said. Carpenter gave massages to 26 women that weekend, a record she doesn’t plan to break.

Carpenter loves what she does and how it provides an alternative medical tool for people in pain. She is Licensed Massage Therapist and a member of the American Massage Therapy Association and the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork.