Special to the Seattle Times
Somali women who fled their war-ravaged homeland are finding compassionate, “culturally competent” health care at Daryel, an exercise, massage-therapy and social support group in Seattle.
The Harborview Medical Center nurse faced a conundrum.
Several doctors had told Bria Chakofsky-Lewy that a group of Somali women patients had aches and pains they could not treat successfully. Chakofsky-Lewy, who supervises a program for immigrants and refugees, reasoned the trouble could be a combination of physical trauma and emotional pain from fleeing war and relocating thousands of miles from their homeland.
One solution could have been a regimen of pills.
Chakofsky-Lewy had another idea: massage therapy.
So, on a Sunday morning in 2009, about a dozen Somali women in loose-fitting Islamic garb arrived at a South Seattle community center. They drank tea. And volunteer massage-therapy students kneaded the knots out of their backs.
read entire Seattle Times article here
I am so happy to be a part of this amazing and inspiring program. If you are interested in helping in any way with ideas, funding, time or massage, please let me know!