Helping people live better without pain
At Aware Health, their goal is to help people live better without pain.
The Newport multi-disciplinary clinic offers remedial massage therapy, myotherapy and clinical pilates in one handy location. Their clients include athletes, pre- and post-natal women, post-operative patients requiring rehabilitation and office workers living increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
“We help people to correct postural dysfunctions, prevent injury and get fitter,” explains founder and principal practitioner Lahn U. “We help peel back those layers of pain and stop the cycle. In fact, if I don’t see a client for a while, I know we’ve done a good job!”
Lahn actually trained to be a fashion designer, but after graduating and working in the fashion industry for a year she realised that it wasn’t fulfilling for her. She wanted to do something to help people more directly.
“One day I met a young lady who gave me the best massage ever and we had a discussion about what she did,” says Lahn. “I thought ‘If she can do that, I can do that.’ So I went and took one subject, loved it, and continued furthering my education.”
In 2004 Lahn started her business sharing a premises in Williamstown, before moving to Spotwood and then opening a bigger space on the first floor of a building in Mason Street Newport in 2012. At Aware Health there are now seven practitioners and instructors plus Lahn.
Lahn believes that what makes her service unique is that the clinic offers different types of massage and clinical pilates. Treatment plans encompass both types of therapy.
“We always conduct an assessment with a new client when we talk about their problems and possibly why they’re getting pain,” says Lahn. “Then we work alongside you to determine treatment strategies. It’s not just a massage - we give you take-home exercises, we guide you into the pilates studio and give you exercises there. So the consultation is quite fluid.”
Lahn also explains that their Clinical Pilates and group reformer classes are purposely run with a small number of people, despite being less profitable.
“Offering large pilates classes doesn't align with the type of practitioner that I am, with the goal of helping people to move pain free,” explains Lahn. “I don’t want clients just to ‘wing it’ and in a large group you just don’t get enough personalised attention.”
After almost twenty years in the industry, Lahn still enjoys it.
“A lot of people I studied with sort of dropped out of the industry after two to five years. Massage therapy can be physically draining work and you’re often doing long hours. I’m really glad that I trained as a pilates instructor about ten years ago, because it still allows me to have contact with clients but it is less physically demanding.
“After this long I still really enjoy my work and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it - I don’t think I could ever stop. I jokingly say that my retirement plan is that if I don’t want to run a business anymore, I’ll just go work for someone else!”
