The road to wellness often takes many twists and turns. Such was the case for the road to Complete Body Wellness.
Another way to put it is this: How does a young woman who grew up on a buffalo ranch in North Dakota find her way to opening her own Complete Body Wellness practice in Los Banos?
It’s a long story, with stops in Modesto and Sacramento, along with a romance that began via email.
This is the story of Christon Eslinger, who came to California to meet her eventual spouse who was living in Los Banos, earned a degree as a physical therapy assistant, earned a massage therapy license, and then started her own health practice featuring a treatment with an unusual name: myofascial release therapy.
The journey started in 2001 when she was 18 and decided to leave North Dakota, along with an older brother Brandon, and come to Modesto, not far from Los Banos, where Jeremy, a longtime family friend, was living.
Christon’s and Jeremy’s fathers were close friends in North Dakota. Jeremy’s family was relocated to Los Banos when his father was a young boy but stayed connected as family friends. Their fathers thought that Christon and Jeremy might be a good match. The two young people started corresponding by email, with Christon in North Dakota and Jeremy in Los Banos.
As a high school senior in Ellendale, North Dakota, Christon decided to spend her spring break coming to California to meet Jeremy in person. He impressed her enough that she thought it was a good idea to move after high school to Modesto with her brother, about an hour’s drive from Los Banos.
Christon enrolled at Modesto Junior College, where she began taking prerequisite classes for a physical therapy assistant program. She had always valued fitness, since she, by necessity, developed a fitness routine by working on her family’s farm, which included a lot of shoveling.
She thought a career in a health occupation, in which she could help people feel better physically, would suit her interests and temperament.
Jeremy and Christon’s romance flourished, and they were married in 2003, after which Christon commuted from Los Banos to the closest college that offered a physical therapy assistant program, Sacramento City College.
Two years later, she had a degree and a job offer—from Sports & Rehab Physical Therapy in Los Banos, where she had worked as an intern while attending college.
She continued to work at Sports & Rehab for 11 years, during which time she did the usual tasks of a PT assistant, along with some new approaches that she and the owner, Scott Russell, thought made sense. That included a treatment called “functional mobilization.”
Functional mobilization, according to the textbook on “Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy,” “couples active and resisted movements with specific, directional pressures to restore functional mobility.”
Christon was impressed by the use of hands-on pressure, which helped patients in their recovery. She followed that with an interest in myofascial release therapy (MRT), which she learned about by taking a three-day hands-on seminar in 2015 offered by John F. Barnes, a physical therapist who has promoted this therapy for decades.
Myofascial release therapy, according to the Science Direct website, is a “therapeutic technique that involves gentle, low-load long duration stretching and massage” to alleviate tension, reduce pain and restore range of motion.
It is based on the principal, the website adds, “that connective tissue, or fascia, interconnects with various bodily structures, where tension in one area can lead to pain in another.” (By the way, “myo” comes from the Greek word meaning “muscle.”)
Christon continued to work at Sports & Rehab for the next two years incorporating both MRT and FM techniques with the approval of the owner. By 2016 she realized she wanted to focus on these techniques to help others at a deeper level, plus share how these techniques helped her heal from her own health crisis. She left Sports & Rehab and worked part-time as she prepared to open her own practice.
She enrolled in a program to become a licensed massage therapist (LMT), since as a PT assistant, she couldn’t get a business license, but she could as an LMT. “I didn’t learn a lot, but it was a hoop I had to go through to achieve my goal.”
She achieved her goal by opening her Complete Body Wellness practice in a rented facility on I Street in 2017. Her practice grew from a one-person operation to a staff of six. Soon she realized head had outgrown the space she was in.
In 2021, a door opened, as Christon put it. A friend of hers told Christon that she was moving her business out of a building at 638 K Street, across from Westside Elementary School. (At one time, Los Banos old-timers will remember, the building housed Joe Ferry’s sewing machine and vacuum cleaner repair business.)
Since moving into the K Street facility, her team has grown to 10 individuals (including herself), and her client list continues to grow. “I’ve had more than 1,700 clients and currently have 400 active clients,” she told me.
She emphasized to me the importance of the name of her practice, “COMPLETE Body Wellness.” As she writes on her web page, she uses “a whole body and mind approach” to reduce pain, restore movement and improve function.”
Anyone who goes to her website — cbwlife.com – can find out more about the many services Complete Body Wellness offers.
I was impressed by her mission statement on the website: “Complete Body Wellness empowers individuals to achieve optimal health and well-being through a holistic approach that integrates mind, body and spirit.
“We are dedicated to providing a nurturing and supportive environment where clients can explore natural healing practices, alternative therapy techniques, pain relief, cultivate mindfulness and embrace a balanced lifestyle.”
If you talk with Christon and listen carefully to her, as I did, you will see she has a passion for living up to that mission and for helping people.
Thank goodness –for in our world, a lot of people need help. John Spevak’s email is john.spevak@gmail.com
