NOVA Alternative Wellness opened its doors in Shepherdstown last week at the historic Entler Hotel. Owners/healing therapists, Melissa Savory and Tim Lisbon offer many alternative healing treatments such as massage, reiki (energy channeling), hypnosis, nutritional support, craniosacral therapy, shamanic healings and more.

“What we do here is subtle work,” said Lisbon. “It’s not the kind of place where you just come to get a massage. Even though we do massage, we’re looking at people from a holistic perspective. For example, there’s a reason that your neck is hurting and it may be something a little bit deeper than just massaging it out. We’ve been really trained over the years to look at the body in its totality.”

Lisbon started out as a massage therapist in 1993 and a few years later learned the art of craniosacral therapy, which is a practice that gently manipulates the bones of the skull to balance the cerebral spinal fluid in the body.

“Many people think that the skull is one big bone,” said Lisbon. “We’re trained that each of the skull bones have sutures in between, and the bones fit together in different ways. These bones correspond in a lot of ways to the brain underneath. We use 5 grams of pressure (the weight of a nickle) to gently manipulate these bones. Imagine if you ever bumped your head or got hit in the head, those bones move and need to be adjusted. All sorts of issues could result from that, like sinus issues, or TMJ (lock jaw), for example.”

Lisbon and Savory met in 2007 at a health coaching school and decided to pursue hypnosis training together.

“What we found in health coaching was that people knew what to do to change a certain aspect of themselves-to lose weight, for example, like eat this healthier food instead of the high calorie food, etc.,” said Lisbon. “But there’s something that’s keeping you from following the directions that you know. So we’ve integrated hypnosis into our practice because it allows us to get behind what it is that’s causing you to eat. There’s a lot of diets and books out there, weight loss techniques that work, but through hypnosis we can actually get to the root of the problem or find out what’s triggering the eating.”

Savory has been doing reiki for over 19 years, getting into that treatment therapy due to her son having a bad asthma attack. She began searching for, and employed alternative methods that were healthier for her son than the drugs that were typically administered, thereby greatly reducing his asthma symptoms.

“We both went to the Sylvia Brown School of Hypnosis in California,” said Savory “and we’re certified by the National Guild of Hypnotists.”

“One of the unique things we offer,” continued Savory, “is that we do multiple therapist technique. We both work on a client at the same time. I’ll do the reiki and Tim will do craniosacral therapy. That is our signature treatment, and our most popular.”

Lisbon added, “Imagine having multiple people working on you at the same time. It allows us to get more work done in the time that we spend with the client. We balance the energy work from the reiki and the physical work of the craniosacral therapy, working as a team.”

One of their regular clients, Courtney Turner, had a powerful testimony of working with Lisbon and Savory.

“Tim and Melissa are great healers,” said Turner. “I came to them almost four years ago. I came back from a State Department assignment really, really sick. I was almost on the verge of death due to me being allergic to a lot of the vaccines and drugs you have to take when working over seas. My liver was almost in failure.”

Turner said that she had been having night terrors, couldn’t sleep and was in a great deal of physical pain. She had been to other healers, but really wasn’t getting any better.

“When I started seeing them (Savory and Lisbon),” continued Turner, “there were genuine smiles of love and compassion and they helped me come back into my body. Working with Tim and Melissa has been a godsend because they have been available to me any time I need them. It has been a joy and I feel really lucky. There’s a level of integrity with them that is so deep that when they work, it really is completely different.”

NOVA Alternative Wellness is located at 129 E. German Street, Suite C200. Call for an appointment, 304-885-0093, or find them on Facebook.