DrCrey

- I believe everyone brings a unique experience. I have met a number of masseurs and rentmen who I admire for their overall uniqueness and diversity. Oscar Wilde famously penned "There is no accounting for taste," commenting on the tendency for each person to have as many unique qualities that make them attractive as they have qualities that they are attracted to. That being said, I am rather a free spirit and have embraced a lifestlyle that has provided me with the flexibility to move locations easily, and I have enrolled in formal education for 15 years since high school, across 7 states. I am experienced In multiple disciplinary settings including emergency rooms, trauma surgery, inpatient and outpatient settings in neurology, psychiatry, pediatrics, gerontology, psychology, and neuropsychology, holding a license for more than 20 years to practice in health care. I have also worked in big pharma as an executive for 15 years, acquiring knowledge of specific disease areas. And I have training from the SF School of Massage. I am not afraid of but drawn to clients with specific or general health care needs and am using this medium to bring a more intimate approach to healing.

- My first "client" was someone with AIDS in Cincinnati in 1990. My boyfriend has just passed away, and I was still HIV negative. A grief counselor told me about the local Healing Circle based on touch and massage as a way to bolster the immune system and ease the isolation and stigma of having AIDS, a disease for which many people in our society at the time had zero compassion. The only catch was that to be at the Healing Circle you had to be HIV+. I wanted to go so badly I just let everyone presume I was HIV+ as well. I didn't let on any different, and rumors began to fly that I was also an AIDS patient, of which I would neither confirm nor deny. The first day I went, I was terrified that I would get HIV or worse, that that fear would show on my face and give me away. But that tension went away when we started by holding hands in a circle, then we embraced. You have to remember this is 7 years before antiretrovirals and the men in this room had all been given a death sentence. And not only that, until this Circle, many of them had only felt the touch of another through a latex glove. So when we embraced, WE EMBRACED. And then massaged one another for an hour. It changed my life.

- Well in the same sense that breathing is addictive, human touch is also "addictive" or essential. The early years of HIV/AIDS, researchers were incredibly interested in the immune system and how human touch was involved in healing. In the 80s and early 90s, many people including gay men, were terrified to touch anyone who was known to be infected, including their companions. It is why one of the most historic moments of Princess Diana's life was when, on international television, she held a baby that was HIV+. That moment broke the touch barrier, so to speak, for HIV patients. During that time, I became involved with Healing Circles in the Tristate area (KY-OH-IN). Those meetings were simply for men who were HIV-positive to receive touch from other people in the form of massage, caressing, hugging and holding with intent. What we found at that time is that the lack of human touch compromised the immune system horribly, and some estimated that lack of touch was responsible for many HIV-related deaths. Whatever the health benefit, I knew then that I wanted to be involved with touching and holding others, especially those who need it most. I cannot imagine I will ever stop.