By Emily Garland
Patty Phillips has had many falls in life. The first fall was into massage. The fall was off a horse and landed her in physical therapy for 10 months.
Her treatment convinced her she loved the profession, and she worked as a physical therapist aide for the next seven years.
Her work included doling out heat, ice and the occasional massage.
Soon Patty’s patients said they didn’t want the heat and the ice, they just wanted her massages. Patty liked hearing that, and she loved watching her patients heal. She fell again.
This time the fall was in love.
“I fell in love with massage,” Patty recalls.
Massage school in the Tri-Cities taught Patty there was more to the practice than “rubbing someone’s skin,” and she fell in love with massage again.
After graduating from massage school, Patty worked as a massage therapist in Yakima, Bellevue, and finally, Renton.
She opened Get in Touch Therapy in Renton in 1995.
A few years later, her husband David joined her.
Both are members of the American Massage Association.
After eight years of getting dragged to conventions, David says he became a massage therapist “by default.”
Get in Touch was just Patty and David at first, and one massage table.
The clinic now has five massage tables, used by seven massage therapists. Several other healthcare services are also available at the clinic, including counseling, hypnotherapy, physical therapy, acupuncture and holistic skin care. These services are provided by individuals who rent space at the clinic.
Other common guests at Get in Touch include externs from Renton Technical College.
Patty fell into externing, too.
She first met massage students from RTC at a massage awareness day in Olympia about 14 years ago. The students said they were looking for a place to serve their externships. At that time, Patty was also looking for a place to start her business.
Both parties soon found a location.
That first year, Get in Touch hosted four RTC massage students. The clinic has hosted RTC students every year since.
Get in Touch recently hosted seven RTC students for five weeks. The clinic will host several more in mid-August.
Patty serves on the advisory board of RTC’s Massage Therapy Practitioner program. The program is a nine-month course that prepares students for the Washington State Massage Licensing examination.
Patty calls RTC’s massage program one of the best in the state.
Her clinic is just one of the many sites for the five-week externship in RTC’s massage program.
But it’s one of the favorite sites.
“I think that it’s wonderful that this place is calm,” says Elyse Irish, a recent extern at Get in Touch. “It’s not a crazy busy spa with girls everywhere getting their hair done. It’s very, very serene, and, I don’t know, very, very friendly and warm. I love it.”
Irish, in her early 20s, also externed at a spa in Bellevue.
She hopes to open her own day spa.
Katie Murphy, another recent RTC extern at Get in Touch, also wants to eventually open her own massage place.
Here’s more about Get In Touch Therapy
Get in Touch Therapy is run by Patty and David Phillips.
Patty recently won the American Massage Therapy Association
Washington State Meritorious Award, and is in the running for the national award.
Get in Touch Therapy is at 1900 S. Puget Drive, Suite 110. For more information, or to make an appointment, call 425-277-1123.
Murphy wanted to be a nurse, but doesn’t like blood. So she turned to massage.
“I want to help people reconnect,” she said.
She calls externships “the best experience.”
“They give you a chance to see what the real world is all about,” she said. “You learn a lot more with this hands-on experience.”
Murphy’s clients at Get in Touch seemed to benefit from her “hands-on experience.”
One client, Jacqueline Perriella, extended her massage by an hour, taking up the time scheduled for her husband Bob.
“Ahhh, it was heavenly,” Perriella said after finally emerging from the room.
Perriella of Fairwood is an accountant for Get in Touch. She receives massages at the clinic once or twice a year, while her husband Bob comes to Get in Touch about once a month.
Get in Touch gives 60 to 70 massages a week, of all varieties. There are hundreds of massage techniques.
Most people are initially sent to Get in Touch by doctors, or by nagging injuries.
But even after injuries fade, clients often continue coming.
Patty says one of the best compliments she has received was from a patient referred to Get in Touch after a car accident.
The patient continued coming even after his whiplash healed and says now, simply driving by Get in Touch relaxes him.
David and Patty have many regular customers, including clients who call a massage from Get in Touch their secret weapon in their golf game.
Parents have also brought their children in for massages before tests.
David says a massage is said to improve comprehension skills by up to 20 percent, and that after only a 15-minute chair massage, work production is said to go up 30 percent.
“It is the most amazing thing, you can be working on someone’s tight muscle, and use a technique and feel the muscle melt into your hand,” David says.
He and Patty both receive massages regularly, but rarely give them to each other.
“Once I get a massage I handle life much better,” Patty says.
Emily Garland’s last day was June 26. Contact Editor Dean Radford at 425-255-3484, ext. 5050.
