★★★★★
“The passion for healing and the skill in facilitating treatments was unbelievable — and then came the massage of the century. I highly, highly recommend it.”
Read on Google ↗About Alex, DOMP
What I focus on
My field of expertise
My work centres on the everyday tension that builds up in people who spend long hours at a desk and screen:
- Neck and upper-back tension — easing the tightness that builds from hours looking at a monitor.
- Shoulder and rounded-posture tension — releasing the shoulders and chest that pull forward during focused screen work.
- Tension headaches — calming the neck and scalp muscles that often sit behind desk-related head tension.
- Lower-back tension from prolonged sitting — restoring comfort and movement after long stretches in a chair.
- Hip and glute tightness — freeing the hips that stiffen from sitting through back-to-back meetings.
- Mouse-arm, wrist and forearm tension — relieving the repetitive strain of daily keyboard and mouse work.
My background
Many years of hands-on practice
My first training was as a mechanical engineer, which still shapes how I read the body: everything is connected, and the sore spot is often not the real cause. From there I spent years in wellness and spa settings around the Ottawa area — creating treatments, training practitioners, and giving thousands of hours of hands-on bodywork myself: sauna rituals, relaxation and therapeutic massage. Along the way I learned to feel where a body holds its tension, and how to help it let go.
Clients kept telling me my hands seemed to find the problem before they finished describing it, so I trained properly — completing my Diploma in Osteopathic Manual Practice at the London College of Osteopathy and Health Sciences in 2025. That engineering eye, many years of hands-on practice, and osteopathic training are how I work today: calm, careful, and gentle.
There's a life outside the treatment room, too — a boyhood on the rugby pitch, a turning point in the mountains, and years of writing that continue alongside the practice. If you're curious about the person behind the hands, I've gathered some of it in Beyond the Treatment Room.
What you can expect
Gentle, soft-technique work throughout — slow hands, low force, and room to breathe (the full list is public). I practise as an osteopathic manual practitioner (DOMP) and stay within that scope: adults, with everyday tension and stiffness. And I'll always guide you toward the right care — if a physician would serve you better, I'll say so plainly and help you get there.
Osteopathy or relaxation massage?
Under the hands, the two can feel wonderfully alike — warm, slow, unhurried. The difference is the intent: an Osteopathic Treatment is assessment-led and works to resolve the underlying cause, with deep relaxation along the way and lasting change as the goal. Every session opens with a short consultation — I assess you, and together we agree on the specific techniques and tools that suit your case. It's eligible for reimbursement under many extended-health plans, with a DOMP receipt provided. If there's something you'd genuinely like resolved, this is the service to book.
My academic interest & signature practice
Thermal osteopathy
Thermal osteopathy is my own academic interest and my signature practice. Over twenty years of sauna and spa work taught me what every osteopath values: warm tissue lets go. Heat — a warm room, warm oil, the old hot-leaves ritual — softens muscle and fascia before my hands even ask, so the osteopathic work that follows can be gentler, deeper and more precise. Over the last twenty years I've promoted this approach and helped make it known across Canada, and it became the subject of my osteopathy diploma thesis.
This isn't just a feeling — it's my research. For my osteopathy diploma I wrote my thesis on exactly this: how warmth makes soft-tissue and osteopathic techniques work better, backed by the clinical evidence. Read my thermal-osteopathy research & thesis →
A sauna itself isn't part of the current Ottawa practice — but the same warmth, the same reading of the body and the same unhurried care carry straight into every session.
On television, I promote this holistic thermal-treatment approach — here in a feature demonstrating the hot-leaves thermal ritual:
On television, I promote this holistic thermal-treatment approach — here on Rogers TV's daytime Ottawa (January 2024):
Prefer to know the person, not just the practitioner? Beyond the Treatment Room is the more personal side of this story — and Body, mind, and spirit is a quieter note on how I hold the work.