THE EXPERIENCE
Registered reflexologist and shiatsu practitioner Claire Blondeau began her business Massage on the Go (416-566-3690) while living in Barbados, where her clients relaxed in the open air of their tropical back patios or stretched out on the beach while enjoying their treatment. After returning to Toronto over a year ago, Blondeau realized that while the setting might be less spectacular, people appreciate not having to leave their homes — especially as the weather grows more damp, grey and cold.

Blondeau prefers to travel light, arriving with simple essentials — Tiger Balm and a few other lotions she uses during reflexology sessions — so you don’t need to worry about moving your furniture around to accommodate a makeshift massage table. Blondeau made sure I was in a position that I’d be comfortable in for a full hour — on my couch with pillows behind my back did the trick — and told me a little about reflexology, in which pressure is applied to points on the hands or the feet to address corresponding areas of the whole body. “There are 7,200 nerve endings in each foot,” she explains.

Blondeau has a calming, immediately likeable presence, but she digs right in when she feels trouble. “I don’t have a light touch,” she says, laughing, “and when I find a knot, I’m like a dog with a bone.” It felt great, but I had a number of tender spots — unsurprisingly in areas related to my neck and shoulders, which have been killing me lately — and so the experience was closer to deep tissue massage or shiatsu than a gentle foot rub. And since she spends at least an hour ($75 for one hour; $90 for an hour and a half) on the feet, the treatment feels amazingly thorough.

For me, one of the best things about the service’s house-call angle is that I didn’t destroy that post-massage buzz by biking through traffic to get home. After Blondeau left, I just made a pot of mint tea and curled up with a book and a blanket. Spas are nice, but sometimes there’s no place like home.

THE STORY
Blondeau believes that reflexology originated in ancient Egypt. “There are images of people performing reflexology on the wall of the physician’s tomb in Saqqara,” she says, referring to the tomb of Ankhmahor, a high-ranking official who lived at the beginning of the 6th Dynasty, over 4,000 years ago. Other theories suggest reflexology originated in ancient China, where it has been practiced as part of traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years, and the system also has a long history in India and Japan. Despite reflexology’s many roots, it’s still largely unregulated as a holistic therapy and is not united by a single governing body in Canada. In Toronto, practitioners must be members of the Reflexology Registration Council of Ontario (www.rrco-reflexology.com) to be eligible for licensing. Reflexologists are not able to diagnose illnesses, but Blondeau is confident about the therapeutic benefits she’s seen in her clients.

“I find it really helps people who have trouble sleeping,” says Blondeau, which may explain why I’ve been dozing off more easily during the week after my treatment. And like many forms of massage and touch therapy, it can be very effective in relieving chronic stress, which was enough to knock my socks off.