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Victor Maccharoli- Kathy Gruver gives advice on how to be healthier at the office to Daily Sound Ad rep Aaron Mercer.

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Therapist teaches healthier office habits

By RAY ESTRADA — July 20, 2009

For the thousands of office workers on the South Coast, Kathy Gruver has a great deal of advice, such as take your wallet out of your back pocket.

It’s part of the “Healthier Office” program, said Gruver, who has been a medical massage therapist for 20 years.

“We’ve convenienced ourselves into a state of weakness,” Gruver said. She explained that office workers don’t get much exercise on the job and develop unhealthy habits by sitting in chairs that may not be the right height or by staring at a computer screen for too long.

Gruver said many years ago workers often hauled heavy objects and performed much more manual labor that kept them more fit and strained their eyes less. Today, however, Gruver said she sees more and more carpel tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress cases that could be prevented with proper hand and arm stretching.

“How can a golf ball, a pillow case and a wallet give you a healthier office?” Gruver asks in her 50-minute workshops she puts on for business audiences of 20 to 50 employees. She also offers private consultation.

Men who sit on their wallets all day – “like George Costanza” – will develop lower back pain, she said, referring to the “Seinfeld” TV show character, whose wallet was crammed with so much stuff, it exploded.

To learn more about the golf ball and pillow case, businesses hire Gruver to deliver an in-office lecture about her Healthier Office program last year, a part of her business called Healing Circle Massage, which she started in Santa Barbara nine years ago.

Gruver also is a natural health consultant, Reiki master and birth assistant with a master’s in natural health and a doctorate in traditional naturopathy. She also works with athletes others who wanted to develop a more healthy lifestyle through better habits.

She also recommends office workers get better nutrition by eating foods with B vitamins – to fight off carpel tunnel syndrome – and amino acids in them, such as fish, to help deal with stress.

Gruver’s ambition has fueled her success in her business.

Dealing with about 28 clients a week, “I’m the busiest massage therapist in town,” she said. “Or definitely one of them."

Gruver joined the Santa Barbara chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, or NAWBO, not long after it started in 2007 after a client mentioned the group to her. She said meeting other successful business women in NAWBO inspired her to make her “Healing Circle Massage” DVD, which offers instruction in how to “rub people the right way.”

Gruver said earlier this year when the recession slowed everything down, she waited for things to improve before continuing her push to help office workers avoid repetitive stress injuries, which cause the average loss of 19 days a year for employees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

She said she would rather have people learn in advance how to prevent such injuries instead of having them come to her massage table afterward.

Gruver can be reached at (805) 680-5287 or at her Web site, www.healthieroffice.com.

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Sit on this : 7/20/2009

If you want to voluntarily adopt healthy ergonomic habits, good for you. If you want to be forced into an exercise / nutrition program under threat of federal penalties, support national health care.

Health prison

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Kathy Gruver, teaching on the job. : 9/8/2009

I think it's great that Kathy gets into the workplace and shows people how to keep healthy, loose and feeling good on the job. Taking responsibility for living with a greater quality of life is sure easier when someone shows you easy ways to do it.

Calla Gold

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