For the Heartsick

The Village Wellness Center won?t be doing couples this Valentine?s Day. Kristy Zadrozny, licensed massage therapist, says Valentine?s Day usually means a hike in massage parlor business from couples seeking joint massages. ?It?s kind of like a sexy thing. I?ve worked in spas that have done it, but I think it?s just weird,? Zadrozny said. ?Especially in spas where the female massage therapist is working on the man and the male massage therapist is working on the woman. It?s like, I think, there?s something erotic there.? In January 2010, Zadrozny founded the Village Wellness Project, a co-op of holistic bodywork professionals operating in several modalities from deep-tissue massage to meditation. Zadrozny says the Center isn?t your typical ?Chinatown rubdown.? At the Village Wellness Project, ?It?s not sexy time.? With a stringent screening process for her first-class healthcare professionals, she isn?t after couples? V-day dollars. Instead, Zadrozny is hoping to attract broken-hearted singles interested in exploring reiki. Reiki is a Japanese therapeutic practice with roots in traditional healing. Founded in 1922 by Mikao Usui, reiki involves the manipulation of energy, or ki, by the placement of meditative hands on troubled chakras. According to many reiki practitioners, it can cure almost all ailments?migraines, weight problems, even literal heart disease. Reiki practitioner Devin Febbroriello explains that the many physical and spiritual ailments that reiki treats include broken hearts from Valentine?s Day-related disasters ($75 in-house, $100 for house calls). ?Reiki is about healing imbalances,? Febbroriello said, explaining that Valentine?s Day love angst can result in spiritual and mental imbalance, ?When people call it a ?broken heart,? on a physical and metaphysical level, that?s very true.? I decided to try it for myself. Before my session, Febbroriello cleansed the four corners of the room with a feather and some perfumed bark and knelt down in meditation. Then she asked if anything was troubling me, and I told her about my lack of love-luck. She didn?t give me any of the Pollyanna advice that I expected from a wellness center. She just listened, and then invited me to lie down on a massage table in a small room with soft cream-colored walls and drapes, white noise machines drowning out the racket outside. She placed magnetic hematite stones around my arms and on my chakra points, from my forehead to my lower abdomen. I felt a tingling in my arms from the magnetic fields. She asked that I meditate, eyes closed. I felt her hands on the crown of my head, on my chest, on my stomach. Her hands lingered on some chakras and quickly passed over others. I?m not sure if I fell asleep, but I felt as though I somehow lost consciousness of my body and the weight of all my bad romances. At the end, the reiki master gave me her interpretation of my chakras. My forehead chakra, and the chakra just below my heart, exude a great amount of energy, I was told. She also informed me that I have a strong sense of spiritual intuition. ?You need to find a way to bridge the imbalance between the two chakras,? Febbroriello said, explaining that I shouldn?t have sex with jerks, especially when I already know it?s going nowhere. Offering singles an alternative to spending Valentine?s Day staring half-heartedly out the window of some Ben & Jerry?s, putting on the pounds, the Village Wellness Center?s reiki treatment may help those in need shed the pounds of emotional baggage attached to each failed relationship. And who knows, maybe even more. For more information, contact Devin at the Village Wellness Center, 80 E.11th St., 646-265-2590.