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Senses Offers Healing Touch: The Bethlehem Massage Business Treats Chronic Pain, Trauma Patients.

Posted on: Monday, 3 April 2006, 09:01 CDT

By Sam Kennedy, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Apr. 3--Sometimes a simple job change can transform your life so completely you end up halfway across the country, sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of your daughter's college apartment.

That's what happened to April Prather between the time she walked away from a long career in the travel industry and the time she opened Senses Therapeutic and Medical Massage, a medical massage practice in Bethlehem.

"How you doin', sweetheart?" Prather, 59, greets a patient entering the stately Broad Street house where Senses moved last year.

The famous can-do attitude of her native Texas is as clear as the twang in her accent.

"We help a lot of people," she says of her practice. "We help people to gettin' feeling better."

The genesis of Senses occurred in 1999, when April, who was then living in Kansas City and working for American Express, visited her daughter Ashley Prather, a student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem.

It was Ashley who suggested to April that she go into massage, and who since then has helped her mother manage the fast-growing business.

Senses has been no less transformative for the daughter as it has been for the mother. At Lehigh, Ashley double-majored in philosophy and psychology. She had planned on continuing her studies at Oxford University.

Today, however, she processes insurance paperwork, does payroll, handles the marketing and keeps an eye on the bottom line.

"Never thought I would be in business," Ashley, 29, says with a laugh.

Most massage parlors in this area are of the spa variety. They focus on the sensual.

Senses, however, specializes in medical, or therapeutic, massage. The goal is to heal.

That means that April, and the six other massage therapists who work for her, have to have special certification. And it means that Ashley has to deal with insurance paperwork and other red tape.

Since few massage parlors in the region are equipped to accept payment from insurance companies, Senses has become the go-to practice for a number of local doctors and lawyers.

Dr. Robert Roeshman, a Salisbury Township neurologist, regularly refers patients to Senses. Their problems range from car accident trauma to chronic pain, such as headaches.

He said his relationship with Senses is collaborative, because the massage therapists in the practice share their findings with him, often helping him refine his diagnoses and recommendations.

"They have a very good sense of the holistic approach," he said, "of what's going on with the patient, either from the medical or emotional standpoint."

Despite the emphasis on the medicinal, the old stone house built in 1922 that Senses calls home hardly resembles a doctor's office. It has many spa touches -- hardwood floors, antiques, potted plants and gurgling fountains. "Who wants to go to a cold place and get naked?" Ashley says.

April is a natural caregiver, according to Ashley. It's part of her makeup.

And that, she recalled, is what she had in mind in 1999, when she suggested to her mother that she go into massage.

April had worked at Eastern Airlines for more than 25 years, until the company was dissolved in 1991. She was unhappy in her new job, managing several American Express offices.

So, she took her daughter's advice. She packed her bags, grabbed her dog and headed east. She moved in with her daughter and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Institute of Massage Therapy in Quakertown.

After graduation, she started a practice that consisted of a small rented room in a psychiatrist's office. Over time, her clientele grew through referrals.

Today, Senses's annual revenues are approaching a half-million dollars.

Ashley says, nodding toward her mother, "We were able to create seven jobs thanks to this woman's hard work."

sam.kennedy@mcall.com

610-820-6517

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Source: The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania

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