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Meet Alexander Stadler of Full Compass Massage in Decatur

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexander Stadler.

Alexander, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
To be honest, the story of Full Compass is a mixture of creative sparks and destructive forces that coalesced into a way of thinking and dealing with tension in the human frame. I’ve always been creative, and energetically a bit of an outsider. I wasn’t a sports-interested kid, nor did I belong to cliques. There wasn’t a pudgy, freckled kid wearing my face in the band, in the theater troupe, nor in class administration. In a way, I created where I belonged on the fringes of all the other groups. My parents weren’t particularly involved, so I created my own set of rules, morals, and sense of belonging, which was painful. What was more painful, however, was getting hit by cars!

At 11, my younger brother and I were hit on our first-ever expedition to the store down the street (literally across the street from our apartment complex). We were run over by a young, frightened, teenage girl. My brother went into a coma and had a lung collapse with a broken leg, and I cracked open my head, broke my left wrist and shattered my right leg so much that (I would find out years later), I almost lost it. Waking up in a bed with a leg as large as the rest of my body was a shock, and the claustrophobic feeling of being stuck inside the oxygen tubes they had to use to get the swelling down enough to operate was terrifying for that younger Alex.

It was about a year before I could walk again properly, and my legs would never look completely balanced or normal. I continued my odd way of interacting with the world as best I could, made mistakes, learned from them and ultimately wound up doing a bit of construction work before heading to school to become an audio engineer. It was around that time that I had my first marriage, my first child, and then it was time to find work. The marriage, like many had too young, failed. I went back to construction as a fallback and eventually found my way into building management. It was an interesting collection of engineering and construction thought processes, as well as, service. While I thrived, I knew that I wasn’t being properly challenged, and I wanted to find a way to make more of a difference than playing politics with the board of highly-paid attorneys that owned the building.

At this time, I found massage, which was a fascinating mix of all of the thought processed, I’d been using all my life- structure, harmony and efficiency. It had been an idea floating around in my mind, but I wasn’t certain I could make a living with it. I took the plunge, and I found that it was a calling I’d never known. Earlier in life, I’d found music, and that was certainly a passion I could never live without, but healing touch let me connect and express myself in ways I had never imagined. It was at this time that I was hit a second time by a car. I was in the middle of school, I was just about to release the 2nd album with my band at the time, and the accident dislocated and broke my elbow at the radius bone. It was utterly devastating, and it came on the end of a relationship, so I moved away to gain some thinking space and to lick my wounds, so to speak. While healing was slow, I resolved myself to complete my education, heal myself completely and bring hope to those who experienced what I was experiencing.

In my 2nd massage school, as I completed my education, I told my fellow students to give me any clients that were challenging, anything that seemed too complex or difficult for them, which they were happy to do. My clients were people who couldn’t move their neck, who was depressed and beaten. They were the people who really needed help. I gained the respect of my fellow students, the support of the teaching staff, who pushed me through financial difficulties and focused my gifts in the directions that would make the best use of them, and I came out of that program determined and unafraid of pathology. There was no longer a “can’t” in my vocabulary when it came to pain, pathology, and injury.

Full Compass Massage is a collection of individual therapists who have shown strong compassion, intuition, and body-related intelligence, and we are constantly training to improve our ability to deeply hear, feel and see what is going on in the human bodymind. We practice a method I have developed called “Deep Listening”, and we can often see things happening in the body that is hidden to others. Our clients are often amazed that we point out areas of injury before they even speak of them or that we can tell what they do with their time simply by assessing their posture and range of motion.

At Full Compass, we look at things differently. We approach the body without assumptions, without judgment, and we consider its state across a range of health structures each individual possesses. In an effort to bring about a higher level of change in our clients’ bodies, we seek to create a higher level of connectivity between ourselves, our clientele and to their aspects of individual and group support.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It’s hard not to laugh here! No, I wouldn’t say it has been a smooth road. As a good friend of mine likes to say, there are two paths to learning: one is to learn from other’s examples, and the other is from pain. I learned a lot from pain, and only in the later years could I start learning from examples. However, those lessons are impossible to forget, and because of them, it is now so much easier to relate with others struggling later in life.

As I mentioned, I had some serious injuries, but I also struggled with depression early in life. I won’t go into too much detail about this, but I had some (to me) alarming gifts that no one around me could assist me with, and I wasn’t going to share in the close-minded part of the world I found myself growing up in. One of the biggest struggles was convincing myself I wasn’t crazy when I could hear and see the things that I did. Over the years, there were those who helped me to understand such things, and that helped, but willpower was my first and strongest tool and not one I recommend for all things. There is always a price!

I’d like to address this idea of struggles and struggling here to say that I believe all obstacles are opportunities, and the largest part of making that a reality is your frame of mind. Maybe, you can’t beat your way through a brick wall, but you can figure a way around it or find a way for your mind to become free from that burden. Let’s say that though it wasn’t always smooth as a path, it is considerably more so now, and much of that is having an amazing community of people with whom to belong and support.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Full Compass Massage, LC – what should we know?
We are a support group for supporting others. Though it sounds almost like a joke, it’s what we do. We grow by connecting deeply without ourselves, others and to our purpose. The Deep Listening method I spoke of earlier is really about acknowledging the various depths and arrays of health that everyone possesses. While it helps us to see some amazingly in-depth truths, physically, it also allows us to pick up things energetically, emotionally, socially, and in many other parts of an individual’s wellness. We see, we explain, we allow our clients to reflect, and we respect where our clients are in their moment of need for support.

One of the ways that differentiate us involves our way of seeing the world and the concept of client compliance. If you’ve worked in a medical office or watched shows about medicine and that world, then you have likely heard this phrase. I strongly disdain the idea of compliance with regard to health and wellness care. The main reason is that the clients/patients are typically assumed to not know what is best for them. If something that they are given as a task is painful or uncomfortable, then they are still expected to continue this until someone who ostensibly knows better than they do allows them to discontinue.

What I want and work to achieve is client comprehension, which is to say that I do my best to educate my clientele about the why for every single thing we do or ask them to consider doing. When they understand the goals, understand that they not only align but also are effective, then they do their interim care of their own volition. We don’t judge, but we work to validate, support and educate. Our byline is literally, “Providing Wellness Through Healing Touch & Education.”

Not only do we want to ensure our clients understand what we are doing, but we seek to understand them, and so we will listen to each and every related thought process the client has about their experience. Rather than waiting in an office for an hour or more to essentially get 2-5 minutes of someone’s time where they dismiss more than half of what you say and never touch you, we are interested in all of your process and how you got to our office. Sometimes a client may misunderstand something going on in their body, but we work to ensure that we are validating their experience as we educate rather than demonstrating them.

We also understand that we are not for everyone. Our clients are strongly seeking change. If you want to relax and just let go of the world, then you wouldn’t likely appreciate someone explaining why your posture at work is causing your lower leg to turn outward and hurt your lower back. We seek that particular commitment to self-growth, and we seek to further it and support it.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Success is the acknowledgment and validation of goals being met, but also knowing that you are making a difference for those your support. We don’t MAKE people well, we help people make themselves well! The way we are working on a daily basis, people’s lives are changing from one hour to the next. I’ve had people that couldn’t move a part of their body release in one session, and I’ve seen people release some of the worst emotions of their lives in a flash, and it is amazing! However, it doesn’t take miracles to move my heart. What makes me feel validated and the only acknowledgment I need is knowing that the people I support are actively feeling that support and value it. The miracle is the connection.

We are a service industry, and our egos don’t belong in the rooms with our clients. It’s not our goals that matter, but theirs, and when we are meeting their needs, helping them to feel well because of their own efforts, that’s when we succeed. There just is no question!

Pricing:

  • Integrative Care with Alex Stadler, LMT $100/hr.
  • Integrative Care with Ian Williams, LMT $85/hr.
  • Integrative Care with Laura Strickland, LMT $90/hr.
  • Community Discounted Care with Alex Stadler, LMT $80/hr.
  • Community Discounted Care with Ian Williams, LMT $70/hr.
  • Community Discounted Care with Laura Strickland, LMT $80/hr.
  • Community Care Discounts are based on the focus of the individual therapist. Please, ask us to learn more!

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Ashley Kennedy, Earl Skates, Ken Lackner, Lorikay Stone

Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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