Meet Deanna Townsend of Cincinnati Prenatal Massage

I remember one evening I waited for my mom to get home from work so we could have our moment to talk, watch one of her favorite sitcoms, The King of Queens, and get her nighlty foot massages. This evening was a bit different from the past nights, she was more tired– exhausted, I’d say, from the 16-hour shift she had just worked. Instead of talking, I let her rest.  It wasn’t long after that I began massaging her feet that she fell asleep. After I was finished, I went to my room and went to bed.

The next morning, when she woke me up for school, she stood in my bedroom doorway and expressed to me how the foot massage I’d given her was the best massage she had ever received. She claimed to have slept better that night than any other previous night.   She handed me a twenty-dollar bill, thanked me, and told me she couldn’t wait for the next foot massage. I felt closer to my mom and learned what it felt to be appreciated. It was then, at the age of 7 years old, I thought to myself, “If I could make my mom feel that way, I wonder who else I could make feel that good after giving them a foot massage.” That’s when I knew I wanted to be a massage therapist when I got older.

After graduating high school in 2016, I worked in restaurants and a call center for about a year before I enrolled myself into Cincinnati School of Medical Massage in 2017. I graduated and received my massage diploma in 2018 and began my career by working in spa for about a year. During that time of working in the spa, one of my best friends came in for a massage while she was pregnant and received a prenatal massage from me. It was one of the first few prenatal massages I’d ever done on a pregnant woman in my career. Though, the experience with her was much different than any other prenatal massage I’d done and the experince will always live vividly in my mind and soul. There was a certain energy exchanged between my bestfriend and I that put me in a place of peace. The energy felt familiar. It was the feeling I got when I used to massage my mom’s feet when I was younger. It felt loving, caring, and sacred. Serving my best friend and her unborn baby with a gift of massage changed my perspective on massage therapy as a whole. After the massage ended, her aches and pains were relieved, and she felt a deep sense of relaxation, which I’d hoped for. I had a deep desire to recreate that feeling for all pregnant women and moms. I knew working at the spa, I wouldn’t be able to provide the individualized one-on-one care I desired to have during appointments. In 2019, I took a chance on myself and opened up a private massage practice where I could serve women– pregnant or not, pain relief and relaxation. Cincinnati Prenatal Massage was born.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Haha, absolutely not. I feel that I’ve been hyper-independent since the age of 18. Putting myself through massage school for 11 months while working two jobs to make ends meet has been the most challenging experience of my life. There was a time my parents and I had a huge argument over the lack of support I felt I was receiving while in school. I felt alone, unmotivated and stressed. Understanding the physical and psychological demands of being a massage therapist were new and scary to me, and felt I had no guidance on how to fully balance my work and personal life.

Being an energy worker and providing a constant physical touch to people is just as tiring as it is rewarding. But when you have no sense on how to balance your career and personal life, you find yourself in a whirlpool of giving yourself to others and being depleted of your own life force. I enrolled myself into a self-paced course to be certified in prenatal massage while also taking a course of becoming a certified doula. The doula course was more desired to understand the best way to support pregnant women during labor and delivery, as I had learned the staggering mortality rate for pregnant women. I wanted to know how could I, as a massage therapist be of service to the pregnant women in my community.

Being a massage therapist and a massage doula gave me challenges that I didn’t expect to take a toll on me emotionally and spiritually. There was a time while in my internship for being a massage doula that I broke down. The physical demand wore me out to the core on top of the emotional baggage that I carried with me. So much so that I began to spiral into a slight depression of not being emotionally available for my doula clients and my massage clients. I feared myself being unstable and unavailable for my clients, my business, and myself because I had not poured into myself the way I poured into others. I felt I was always on the constant go of teaching myself the tools on how to provide the best and most efficient services that I abandoned my personal life completely and ignored my routine of self care.

I had to make the decision to show up for myself the way that I hadn’t done in a very long time, and that was to take a huge step back from overexerting myself into spaces and being as available as I made myself to be. I was embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t ready to serve as a doula, but then I realized that it was it just wasn’t in the stars for me to take on at that time. I stepped away and focused on the mastering soft tissue massage for pregnant women and mothers.

We’ve been impressed with Cincinnati Prenatal Massage, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Cincinnati Prenatal Massage is a private practice located in Clifton on Jefferson Avenue. We offer medical massages and specialize in prenatal and postpartum massages, catering more to pregnant women and mothers. We do offer Swedish massage and deep tissue to people who are not pregnant or are mothers. What I am most proud of is that I’ve cultivated my office space to be a safe space for mothers and women to come in and feel “here”. What I mean by that is that my approach is gentle and patient. I’ve made enough space in between appointments to listen and talk with my clients if they choose to stay for a little while after their appointments. I have no desire to quickly get people in and out. My desire of getting to know my clients by listening and asking questions helps to me to share resources that may benefit them outside of my office. I love to listen and share with them the wonderful recourses Cincinnati’s birth community has to offer. I enjoy seeing them bask in their stillness after their massage by providing private conversation and emotional support. We offer a free add-on service called “10 Minute Rest & Recovery,” which allows the client to rest uninterrupted for 10 minutes after their massages. It was created for those who need that extra time to recollect before returning home to the kids. The 10 minutes is to be used to nap, relax, meditate, pray– just be. Some moms bring their newborn babies to their massage appointment, and I offer to take the baby with me in the lobby area so mom can fully enjoy her 10 minutes of rest. One thing that stands out to me is that I’ve learned that the majority, if not all, of my clients just want to be supported and listened to. Cincinnati Prenatal Massage offers that space to do that in.