When Vanessa began massage school 8 years ago, she entered with a singular purpose and mission: to build a practice where outsiders, weirdos, and other marginalized people could access healing and therapeutic bodywork. This mission grew out of an intersection of her lived experience as a large, heavily-tattooed trans woman and her commitment to an idea of authentic embodiment. At the time, she was the only trans woman licensed massage therapist in the entire Mid-Atlantic region. Rhizome Bodyworks is the culmination of those years of dedication. 

There is a deep need in Washington, DC for a community oriented massage and bodywork studio where anyone can walk in and immediately know that they will be respected and cared for. Rhizome Bodyworks is explicitly designed with large bodies, visably trans and queer people, people of color, and people with disabilities in mind.

Our intake forms have a space to include both a preferred name and pronouns as well as space to discuss any binding,  prosthetic or aesthetic aids that a person might use.

We will be home to multiple therapists who have the skills and training necessary to work with trans bodies, whether to help with the impacts of binding or aid in either pre or post-surgical recovery.

Our tables will have adjustable width extenders and hydraulic lifts, which add enough space for large body clients to fully relax rather than holding their arms to their sides trying to fit on the table. 

We are committed to accessibility; with accessible rooms and tables, transparent masks and speech to text software for Deaf clients, as well as adjustable lights and sounds, and low scent environments for sensory issues. 

Every therapist at Rhizome has a proven reputation of inclusive and affirming service.

We are the only group practice in the city that can make these guarantees. These vital services have been much harder to access in the city since Freed Bodyworks, which was the previous home for the practitioners of Rhizome, closed at the end of 2021 due to the pandemic. 

With your help, we can bring back a space for affirming, socially conscious, therapeutic bodywork in our community.

What We Need & What You Get

Time and again, we have seen that collective action and monetary power allows us to achieve things that we would never be able to achieve on our own. Indeed the experience of the pandemic has shown the need for collective, community oriented solutions. Everything else, bank loans, angel investors, and other forms of funding has repeatedly proven to be unsustainable, leading to the collapse of vital community pillars. Crowd funding allows us the ability to approach this project with an eye towards sustainability – rather than taking on massive amounts of debt, we can be accountable to the communities that we serve in order to offer the best services for our clients while also having quality working conditions for the therapists. 

This is a significant undertaking. $70,000 is only a portion of what it takes to open the practice. The total capital budget is $125,000, the remainder is made up from practitioner investment and contributions from other community members. $70,000 will allow us to secure a location and finance a build out. We are already in negotiations with a property that is fully accessible and near multiple public transportation routes, but because of the nature of DC commercial real estate, we must prove that we have all of the money on hand before we can move forward. All of the funds raised will go directly towards renovating this space to suit our needs and the needs of our clientele.

One of the chief perks is that everyone who contributes will have their name included on a wall of community members who helped make Rhizome possible. From experience, it is wonderful to walk into the space and see all of the interconnections of friends, family, loved ones, and community members reflected.

The Impact

Massage and bodywork offer a significant physical and emotional therapeutic benefit. However, prejudice and stigma often mean that queer, fat, disabled, and POC people wont trust that their bodies will be cared for in more traditional spa environments. The spa mentality can be actively hostile to these communities, with narrow ideas of a “good” or desirable body, communicating that the body is something to be fixed or changed. Instead, at Rhizome, we focus on what we do well, offering high quality therapeutic bodywork. 

With a therapeutic approach informed by our body positive values of accessibility and inclusion, we can ask questions based in reality rather than upselling unnecessary services. Is this body part more functional today than it was yesterday? Is there less pain? Do you have more capacity for the things you want to do? With each question we can meet the body where it is; free from shame or judgment or agenda. 

Each of the talented healers on our team have been working with these populations for a combined total of over 35 years. Our clients rave about what this approach can accomplish:

By drawing from this history and the importance of an all encompassing body positive ethos Rhizome will quickly become a pillar of the queer, “Health at Any Size,” progressive, and broader holistic healthcare communities of the city. These things together mean that any client will be able to find a good fit for what they are looking for and receive a custom-tailored session to meet their needs.

Risks & Challenges

Our biggest hurdle is navigating the world of commercial real estate – thankfully our team includes experts who specialize in getting small businesses like Rhizome up and running. From day one, we will be able to offer some of the best bodywork in the city. Each of the massage therapists have the skills and experience as well as an established reputation and client base necessary to thrive. The demand for our services is there, we just need to have a space. There are abundant professional and informal networks in DC that, once they hear about our services, will readily keep our books full. 

We also must acknowledge that the pandemic has fundamentally changed the massage industry both in terms of safety and in terms of the number of available therapists. Each room will have it’s own air purification system. We will be maximizing the amount of space that can be devoted to bodywork while also maintaining quality of life in order to be financially sustainable. As needed, we will recruit new massage therapists from the area training programs.

Other Ways You Can Help

Some people just can’t contribute, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help!

• Get the word out and make some noise about this campaign!
• Use the Indiegogo share tools!