BRUSSELS – After more than 30 years providing therapeutic services and modalities to thousands of clients, Sandra Giesbrecht is retiring.
Giesbrecht, 77, began her career in 1985, working for a chiropractor who was providing holistic health treatments.
When she went in for the job interview – she was one of four who applied, she recalls – it was for a counsellor position.
“My brain said I could sit on one side of the table, listen to what they have, and be able to, you know, try to help them as best I could. That was what I was applying for,” explained Giesbrecht.
After the nearly 90-minute interview, Giesbrecht recalled that the chiropractor said this position would involve having to return to school.
“I couldn’t contain myself,” she said, “I said, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ And that’s how I got the job, because I was willing (to go back to school).”
She accepted the job offer, left her position as a nurse, and began what would become a nearly 40-year career in holistic health.
She took several courses over the next 18 months – all of which her employer paid for – starting with reflexology. She took further courses in deep muscle therapy, su-jok, reiki, and more.
“I kind of started to focus on the healing modalities and the deep muscle therapy, reflexology, shiatsu, su-jok, polarity and energy balancing,” she said.
After two years with the chiropractor, she opened her own practice in downtown Listowel.
And before she opened her doors, she knew what she wanted to call the business.
“Years ago, when I was in high school, I had a boyfriend and he used to carry a nice, flat river rock– it was kind of blue – in his pocket,” said Giesbrecht. “He’d say, ‘Sandra, this is my touchstone… you’re my touchstone.’ And I always thought to myself if I have a business – because it was because of the connotation of touching – I would call it ‘Touchstone.’”
Originally, Touchstone Therapies was located on Main Street in a building that has since been demolished and turned into a parking lot between Ward & Uptigrove and TD Bank. After a move to Davidson Street, when the building was demolished, Touchstone Therapies relocated to the old public school building in Brussels in 2013, where it remained until March 2020 when the business moved to its current location at 625B Turnberry St., Brussels.
Giesbrecht believes in not only treating her clients, but educating them about what she is doing during a treatment. She is also a pioneer in teaching holistic health to people, creating and teaching countless courses in various modalities over the years. She was also president of the Reflexology Association of Canada for several years.
This career has given Giesbrecht more than she expected, and she is as passionate today about holistic health as she was nearly 40 years ago.
“Maybe it’s the love inside me to help people to heal,” she said. “It’s amazing. It’s been a very, very fulfilling career.”
A family affair
In recent years, Giesbrecht expressed to her daughter, Karen Cowan – who has worked with
Giesbrecht since 1989 – that she was thinking about retirement.
At that point, both Cowan and her step-daughter Amanda Ripper were working at Touchstone Therapies.
Ripper graduated as a personal support worker in 2012. When her kids were ready to head off to school, she wanted a profession that allowed her to work during school hours so she could be home with the kids after school.
According to Ripper, she could come work at Touchstone, if she did one thing.
“The stipulation was I had to learn absolutely every single modality that Grandma knew. And I had to be approved by them to start working in the office,” she said.
After six months of working with Giesbrecht, Ripper was allowed to see clients. With some modalities, it was over a year that Ripper spent under Giesbrecht’s learning tree.
And like all good trees do, they grow.
Growth
In 2019, Cowan and Ripper took over the business and Giesbrecht started easing into retirement.
“I had one stipulation,” said Giesbrecht. “I want to stay with the teaching.”
She continued to teach courses with Cowan… and then COVID hit.
Touchstone Therapies began moving into its current location in March 2020 – one week before the first series of shutdowns and restrictions were implemented.
“We literally had half a wall built and COVID hit,” said Cowan.
Fortunately, Cowan said, their landlord was great to deal with and negotiated a deal where they didn’t have to pay full rent for that downtime due to the shutdowns.
“We have made it up to him,” said Cowan, adding that his support was instrumental in the business surviving those times.
Perhaps the most instrumental was the loyal support of the clients Giesbrecht and Touchstone Therapies.
“We are very, very much appreciative of the business that she established,” said Cowan. “Had she not established that business, we probably couldn’t have survived.”
In a strange way, Cowan said, COVID may have been a blessing in disguise for them. Touchstone moved much of their teaching resources from “pen and paper” to a hybrid model online, which Ripper and Cowan say has improved their reach and teaching methods.
“They changed the way the course was taught,” commented Giesbrecht. “They brought it forward, and made me very proud.”
When Cowan and Ripper took over the business, it boasted a client list of 250 names. Today, more than 700 people from across the southwestern Ontario region receive holistic health services at Touchstone Therapies.
Retirement celebration
Now that COVID shutdowns are seemingly a thing of the past, the time to celebrate Giesbrecht’s retirement is here.
On Saturday, July 22, Touchstone Therapies will be hosting a retirement send off for Giesbrecht, allowing clients and residents a chance to thank her for her years of dedicated care.
The celebration will be held in conjunction with Touchstone Therapies’ annual International Self Care Day event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at its Brussels location (625B Turnberry St.).
For more information on the services offered by Touchstone Therapies, visit touchstonetherapies.ca.
