Finding Minnesota

ST. PAUL (WCCO) ― Over the holidays, gift certificates for massages may have been a common gift. Having someone work out the knots and kinks in your neck and shoulders and arms is indeed, a treat.

This week in Finding Minnesota, WCCO-TV's Angela Davis sat down with the woman who was a pioneer in massage therapy in the state -- and who came from an unlikely place, a convent.

It's not uncommon to see fancy massage centers all around the metro area. But 27 years ago when a St. Paul nun decided it was time to make therapeutic massage accessible to more people, it was downright scandalous.

Sister Rosalind Gefre's business immediately caught the attention of police officers assigned to prostitution investigations.

The vice squad shut her down for not having a proper license.

"I am not really sure what they thought, except that massage meant prostitution," she said. "There was one massage house of prostitution. I think it was two blocks from me. They lady, she heard about massage and she went there and the ladies met her in their fancy gowns. They said 'No, that's not what you want, you want the sister.' So they came to the sister's place."

Sister Gefre's name is synonymous with "healing hands."

Not only does she have massage clinics and wellness centers all over the state, she has massage schools in several locations.

And let's not forget about her 17 seasons with the St. Paul Saints, where you could find her and her fellow massage therapists setting up their chairs and working on achy muscles.

"I love it, massage energizes me," Gefre said. "It is tremendously exciting to see someone come in with a headache, a back ache, a whatever ache, and you get rid of it. That is very exciting to see. People don't have to suffer the pain that they are going through."
Gefre said when she was a young woman, she suffered from chronic chest pain, unable to get relief from any treatment. This went on for nearly 20 years.

"I was in and out of the hospital every year, trying to figure out why I had to walk the floor at night in pain, why I could not lay down. My nights were painful all those years," she said. "Doctors never found anything. Nothing showed up in the X-rays, and then I had a massage that evening and that night I had no pain."

And that is what moved her to study massage, and eventually start her massage ministry in the early 1980s. It wasn't easy, though.

She had to make several appearances before judges and city council members, explaining the medical benefits of skilled massage and her calling.

"I believe really God was in charge, he prompted, he started all of this. I don't take any credit," Gefre said. "I think like Mother Theresa said, she was a pencil in the hands of the Lord. I guess for me, whatever God's using me. I always believed that every time Jesus healed people, he touched them. So I feel it is really the Lord's work, the healing comes because he uses us as his hands."

After Gefre won her battle with city hall, she kept fighting for others. She worked with St. Paul city leaders in changing the ordinances, so that legitimate massage therapists could practice more easily.

Gefre turned 80 years old back in November.

For more about Sister Rosalind Gefre's massage and wellness center locations or to read about her massage schools, click here.

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