When Nancy Dail opened her massage business in Waldoboro in 1974, she wore a white uniform and called her work “therapeutic massage.” Soon after, massage professionals in Maine followed suit. But pioneering is nothing new to Nancy. Her mother Mildred Waltz, from Waldoboro, was flying planes by 1930 and might even have been the first transatlantic female pilot except that Amelia Earhart beat her to the sponsorships. And Mildred taught her daughter that she was capable of anything. She just had to do it. And Nancy did. When she was learning and practicing massage in New Mexico, Nancy got the call that her mother was dying. She flew back the day before her mother died. She on stayed to execute her mother’s estate. Within a year, she’d met her husband, bought some land, built a home and established a practice. Six years later, with the assistance and encouragement of four determined students, she founded the Downeast School of Massage, welcoming students from all walks of life -- from pipefitters to nurses to home-makers. Today, twelve teachers, supplemented by guest teachers from all over the world, train students in massage so that they are ready for licensing, whether in the one-year, full-time program, the two-year, part-time program, or in continuing education program, open for anyone who wants to learn more or increase their professional expertise. At the school, science is the foundation, with courses in anatomy, physiology, pathology and kinesiology. The core curriculum is therapeutic massage which extends to massage for pregnancy, children, oncology, elders, and cranial-sacral. Acupuncture, ethics, hydrotherapy, reflexology and setting up a business are also studied. There is even a program in equine sports massage. Nancy has never stopped being a pioneer in her field. In 2010 she published the seminal textbook Kinesiology for Manual Therapies with a second edition to come out next year. She helped create the Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation. She traveled to Atlanta to be part of the 1996 Olympic Village Sports Medicine Clinic. This is a small fraction of what she has done for the field. She wears many hats. She’s a school owner, a school director, she teaches, she writes, she does massage therapy, she speaks all over the world about it. She even, among her many interests, makes and markets a zucchini pickle relish called Relish It with Love, on sale at Spears Farm Stand and Simmonds Seafood in Damariscotta.
I don’t call myself a healer. Jesus Christ could do that, but I can’t. I can release soft tissue. I can do mechanical things to people’s bodies. It’s your body that does the healing. So, I like to say that I’m in the healing profession. We teach the skill of hands. But science is the foundation of our art. As I see it, hands provide the therapy for someone to use as a catalyst to heal. We are only helping people to heal and help themselves.
In this school we have a focus on individualized treatment. It’s an intimate way of learning about yourself because you’re learning, whether you’re a student or a client, about all the ‘ologies’ – pathology, physiology, anatomy and kinesiology – and you’re learning about yourself as a human being. For the student, you’re learning compassion and empathy for another human being, in addition to the bookwork. You’re learning about centering yourself and focus, and about boundaries. For clients, it’s learning about your body and having a sense of well-being, beyond relieving pain and discomfort. And when you feel good about yourself, you end up doing acts of kindness. You end up doing things for other people and paying it forward.
We’re the only ones that work on soft tissue, besides acupuncturists, physical therapists and chiropractors. Pain is a motivator. Massage reduces pain. A doctor can’t x-ray soft tissue, can’t blood-test soft tissue. Yet ninety percent of people with back pain have some kind of soft tissue problem, something massage can help improve within three months. Massage increases serotonin and reduces the stress hormone cortisol, all of which makes you feel good about yourself. After, people are more likely to do exercise and take on the small pieces that help themselves feel better.
I wasn’t always doing this. When I went to college in Florida in the 1960s, I had a double major in English and art where I was painting hands. Then, I met someone, and we went to New Mexico together. We backpacked horses into Carson National Forest and lived in a little town called el Rito. At one time we had fourteen horses. One day we got a horse that had been abused by a former owner who had used a bridle and bit that had cut the horse badly. But my partner forgot to tell me this, so when I went to touch the horse’s face, he reared and slugged me between the eyes and broke my nose. If he had been a big horse, I would have been dead.
I had a concussion and for months, terrible headaches. Finally, I sought out Jay Victor Scherer because he was well-known for his ability to help with soft tissue. And he was a naturopath in Santa Fe. When I got the massage, I remembered my paintings of hands. It was an epiphany. I thought, “Oh my God. This is what I’m supposed to do. I can do this. I’m meant to do this.”
He had this school where you could pay five dollars at night and go to a class. After two weeks, Victor asked me why I hadn’t left. I said, “I don’t want to stop. I want to graduate. I want to have a degree.” And as it has turned out, I was not only meant to do this. I was directed to do this. I had visions. I’ve always had visions of where the work could go and what it could do.
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