Health Center to provide massages

College students lead stressful lives, balancing work and play, coursework, organization meetings and sports practices.  Students carry backpacks filled with too many books and sit at their computers for too many hours.  

All of this stress, both physical and mental, combines to cause a great amount of tension in the back, neck and shoulders of students, according to John Carroll University’s new massage therapist, Mandy Bartolovich.

Bartolovich has been working as a massage therapist for eight years and typically travels to the homes of her clients for appointments.  As of April 1, she will be spending Tuesdays in the Health Center at JCU and her partner, Cori Woolfe, will be available on Fridays.   

Neuromuscular, a technique that applies varying levels of pressure to the muscles, is what Bartolovich uses most frequently to create a deep, therapeutic massage treatment. She is also trained in reflexology, which targets hands and feet and ortho-bionomy, which uses movement and body positions to alter the patterns of stress and pain.  

As a general rule of thumb, Bartolovich advises students to “take advantage of the service for at least an hour every month.”

The director of JCU’s Health Center, Jan Krevh, was helping with a transfer student orientation earlier this semester when a student asked whether massage therapy was available on campus.  

Krevh began to look into other schools where the service was available and after talking with students and the other nurses in the Health Center, she decided there would be benefits to offering massage therapy on campus.  

Just as with the other schools who offer the service, JCU students will be charged to receive a massage, the cost being $25 for half an hour and $50 for a full hour.  No money from the Student Activity Fee will be used to provide this service.  

Krevh hopes the availability of massage therapy will enable faster healing for athletes, strengthen immune systems, and foster calmer thinking. “Massage therapy is another outlet besides activity for stress and there is some benefit to taking a time out to promote holistic health,” said Krevh.