TEMPLE — Destiny’s Wellness has offered therapeutic massage in the Farmington area for over two decades, and currently serves clients with studios at two locations, on Main Street in Jay and Day Mountain Road in Temple. Owner Destiny Cook has also recently begun offering Thai massage techniques in addition to traditional practices of deep-tissue and Swedish massage. Cook says this business decision was one result of her own personal journey of physical healing, following a horseback riding accident this past spring. She spoke with us recently about employing these new techniques and about how she has learned to be more effective as a healer and physical wellness therapist through her own experience as a patient.
Following her accident and surgery this year, Cook reported following not only her doctor’s orders but her own intuition and expertise in human physiology, yoga, and massage, prescribing her own immersive methods in addition to the physical therapies recommended to her. Her recovery process is objectively astounding compared to the normal healing time in cases similar to hers, she said, to the amazement of her doctors.
Relating that the process of her healing involved “doing daily meditation and incorporating Yin yoga, where all the postures are held for 3 to 5 minutes or longer,” Cook shared her belief that some healing requires deep work with connective tissue. “It’s deeply restorative, the real mind-body connection of relaxing. Your mind relaxing your body, staying on the mat.”
Inspiration for manifesting the change she wanted to see in her life came early on from her father. “My father was the most wonderful man that I’ve ever known. He always said, ‘If that’s what you say, that’s how it’ll be. If you talk negatively, you’re going to have a negative life. Every situation, whether it’s good or bad, is an opportunity for growth.’ And so, I never felt alone, even when I was physically alone, dealing with trauma or loss. I always had that as my backbone, knowing that it didn’t matter what anybody else said, it didn’t matter what anybody else did. It was all about how I thought about the situation, and being very gentle and kind with myself.”
The horseback riding accident and subsequent rapid recovery this year is not the only personal journey of healing Cook has traversed. “When I moved here in 2008, I was having some neurological issues. I was really having trouble with my memory and putting sentences together. I was having to overthink everything before I opened my mouth, and it was causing a lot of anxiety. I made an appointment with [my doctor] to go in for some acid reflux-type stuff, and we’re talking, and he goes, ‘Well, I can prescribe you something for the acid reflux, but I think you have epilepsy.’
Cook said although she had never been screened for epilepsy before, neurological testing confirmed that the seizure activity was happening at different levels nonstop, day and night. For a while, she tried the different medications her doctors prescribed to treat her seizures. “I was on one medication after another, and they were making me feel worse. Tired, nauseous, lethargic. I thought, if I’ve had epilepsy my whole life and I’ve gone to school and gotten an education, and I’ve moved myself to different states, and I’m running a business now, I feel like maybe I can figure this out on my own.”
“The last straw was the last medication that they wanted to put me on. I read all the paperwork before I took it, and side effects included burning urination, rectal bleeding, uncontrollable weight gain, no sex drive, and I just decided, I don’t want anything to do with any of that.”
Cook described how she weaned herself off the medications her doctors were prescribing and made radical changes to her diet. “Diet was huge, cutting out sugars and processed foods. I’ve always eaten pretty healthy. I just started eating really clean, being aware that I don’t always need to have something in my stomach. I did a modified Atkins for probably two or three years, and then slowly introduced more carbohydrates. I still eat very clean, hardly any processed foods.”
She also started seeking out alternative herbal therapies. Cook explained that her research indicated that some natural compounds had strong evidence of efficacy for epilepsy and were safer in terms of potential side effects, contraindications, and adverse events, and when sourced safely and taken in the right doses, they also helped form new neural connections. Not finding a lot of success by trying cannabidiol-rich hemp products, she turned next to what she described as a “safe source of low-dose psilocybin. I understood that it helped with meditation, and I thought if it can help make neural pathways form quicker and stronger just for meditation, maybe I’ll try fixing my brain.”
Cook followed a strict protocol, taking a minuscule amount every three days, and also started meditating every morning: “I was slowing my breath down. It was making me aware of my heartbeat, and so I was able to slow my heart rate down. [The practice] was relaxing my nervous system, increasing my threshold for seizures.”
Cook said she realized these practices were adjusting her biofeedback mechanisms, a set of physiological and pain responses related to electrical impulses throughout the nervous system. “I knew I could control my breath. I knew by controlling my breath it would slow my heart rate, and the psilocybin helped me connect to that part of myself, that was my spirituality, my oneness, my safety, my father, that part of myself that felt always safe.”
Yin yoga was another practice Cook incorporated into her daily routine, where postures are held for three to five minutes or longer. “It gets deep into your connective tissue, it’s deeply restorative.” The diet and lifestyle changes resulted in what she describes as a prolonged period of being ‘seizure-free,’ enjoying good health while running her business and devoting her time to her family and her hobbies, even enjoying overseas travel.
Then, this past March, while excitedly preparing for a trip to Portugal to visit with family, Cook decided to go for a ride with one of her horses, and an unfortunate, serious accident occurred. The injuries she sustained that day were serious, and the following week, she had reconstructive surgery, which placed “pins and plates in my arm. They put everything back together.”
Following the surgery, the doctors laid out a long and strenuous recovery period during which Cook said she would be restricted from working for up to twelve months. That was difficult to accept, “as somebody who had made her living as a massage therapist for almost 20 years at that point, to be looking down the barrel of pins through my wrist.” The doctors estimated at least eight months before the bone would heal to a point where some use and physical therapy would be possible.
She said she knew she’d have some challenges, but with renewed vigor and commitment, Cook completely devoted herself to another personal healing process for her arm. Starting with zero function in a hard cast, she began by imagining that she was now left-handed and would have to reteach herself how to do everything.
“I started just touching my fingers and doing little exercises on my own. I started holding a pencil and practicing writing with my left hand, just to try to break that blockage that I felt like I had from my brain to my hand. I didn’t necessarily have a bunch of nerve damage. I had feeling in it, but it was like it had forgotten what it was supposed to do.”
While “retraining her hand,” Cook also reported that she employed kinesthetic tape, “to pull my tissue apart.” She also bought and used a vibration plate on her arm, “because I thought I knew that the shaking would help stimulate bone development.” Finally, Cook also described how she “incorporated my arm with all my yoga sessions,” with extra rotation of all her arm joints and using graduated weights.
After a few months of this intensive process, Destiny took her first steps in getting back to work and booked some new training in Thai massage in North Carolina. Eighty-four days after the day of her reconstructive surgery, Destiny went back to her doctor for “what ended up being my last doctor’s appointment. He walks in, and he’s looking at his tablet, and he says, ‘Wow, your x-rays look really good. I mean, they look really, really good!’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not surprised about that. I’d like to start working again.’”
Her doctor was skeptical while administering additional assessments, but once she confirmed Destiny’s level of physical ability and range of motion in her arm, she was “completely flabbergasted,” wanting to know more, and describing her recovery period as “amazing” and “impressive.” She gave her the green light to go back to work and to stop going to occupational therapy, and even to attend the training Destiny had booked. “At that time, it wasn’t one hundred percent. I couldn’t even completely flip it over, but I was going to work with it, within my comfort level.
Having taken several more Thai massage training courses since her first intensive training this past August, Cook is now preparing for an advanced training program in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in January of 2026.
Describing Thai massage as “a different type of body work,” requiring less forceful motion by the practitioner, Cook said, “With traditional Swedish massage, you know, there’s more of a relaxing depth, and then there’s deep tissue. Deep tissue can be very uncomfortable. It almost always requires oil, requires the client to get undressed, and it almost always requires me to be doing all the work, and I’m not really getting anything out of it. I have so many clients that I knew would benefit from this.”
Cook also explained that Thai massage focuses on “energy lines” or “pathways” in the human body, maps of which predate modern anatomical diagrams. These are traced during the session to help balance and heal the body. “Getting deep into your connective tissue is the fountain of youth. You see old people or even young people who aren’t stretching regularly. Their bodies are tight. You can’t move around the way that you’re supposed to, your intestinal organs aren’t functioning the way that they’re supposed to, if you can’t even turn. Your ribcage is not just affecting your breathing. With your ribcage moving freely, it’s affecting your lymphatic system, everything inside you.
“Thai medicine is about hitting all the energy points so your body can heal itself, and letting your body figure it out. I really love that part of it.” According to Cook, her new techniques are “like assisted yoga, deeply relaxing, you stay fully dressed and wear comfortable clothing. It’s really cozy. It’s all done on the floor. And I’m supposed to get as much out of it as the person that I’m giving it to – it increases my own range of motion and flexibility.”
She also prescribes additional stretching exercises clients can do at home after their two-hour session. “I’m teaching my clients stretches… giving them the information in their muscles, and then they’re able to bring it back home and do it, because the muscles remember. I’ve put them in the position, held them in the position long enough so that they can psychologically wrap their head around what’s happening and what they’re feeling.”
Cook says her clients come away with the knowledge they need to take care of themselves, and she’s glad to be able to work from the perspective she gained with this most recent accident. She says devoting herself to a prolonged period of self-care made all the difference in her healing, and the trust relationship with clients is the key to her success. “That makes me feel really good. This has worked for me. It was a practice, and there was no magic to it. Just the glimmer of possibility.”
Clients can book appointments with Destiny’s Wellness by calling or texting 207-897-8737, seven days a week. Weekly Yin Yoga classes are also offered in Jay at 99 Main Street, on Thursdays at 6 pm. Clients can also be seen at her studio in Temple, if that is more convenient. Destiny’s Wellness also offers yoga and meditation practices on her YouTube channel, Yoga_with_Destiny, and posts with links are available on her Facebook and Instagram pages.
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