#19 Someone Else: Neva Rose
A monthly feature of Some Sundays! Plus be like a bear in winter, two book recs from local Portland writers, and a 5-ingredient cookie recipe that anyone can enjoy...
Someone Else is a feature of Some Sundays: Once a month, I ask people I really like and am inspired by some questions about what they like and are inspired by. 🙂
Neva Rose is the beautiful human behind Full Heart Healing, a space for therapeutic massage, intuitive energy work, and, as the name suggests, gently collaborative healing. Neva has a way of holding space — slow and deeply intentional — that feels like letting out a big deep breath. Her work offers more than care for your skin or body; it’s an invitation to settle into yourself.
I’ve been on the receiving end of Neva’s care for over five years, and it has been a joy to see (and feel) how her practice has evolved in that time.
With 20 years of experience as a licensed esthetician, massage therapist, and energy worker, Neva has shifted her practice away from the esthetics side to focus on treating the whole being, rather than the parts alone. Her approach is rooted in the belief that the most profound healing can be felt when we’re able to fully relax, release and receive.
Neva lives in Portland with her wife, Danya, their pup, and a growing garden. I love watching how that garden creeps into her studio through the seasons, with chains of marigolds and posies in glass jars.
Here, Neva shares her philosophy on rest, the best spot in town for a very special cup of tea, and why your own two hands are the best skincare tool you’ll ever need. You’ll probably want a mug of tea while reading this one — my current herbal allies are nettles, oatstraw, raspberry leaf, and alfalfa, steeped long, with a big spoon of honey stirred in.
A daily ritual:
Tea, loads of tea. Especially when greeting the day. With each cup it’s an invitation inward for a sort of meditative inventory. Any sensations, any body systems, organs, mood or unfolding emotion has at least one herbal ally.
Sometimes I steep one single plant, sometimes I blend an array of roots or petals, for myself or my family or friends. Tea is love.
Advice for nourishing skin in winter:
Think nectars and warming movement.
Give your winter skin (and entire system) good fats and oils and honey, inside and out. Soak in warm water as often as you are able. And find a way to achieve optimal circulation of blood, lymph and craniosacral rhythm through supported movement of the body. Warm yoga classes or stretching at home, treading water, foam rolling, bundling up for walks.
Act like a bear: eat honey, rest more, stay warm, and move slowly.
Three words to describe your studio:
Inviting + Serene + Warm
On the importance of rest:
Rest is pivotal for wellness. As an introverted human in a world that feels more demanding of outward energy/extroversion with each passing day, I have no choice but to practice understanding my need and meeting my need for rest.
In sessions, I can detect the need for rest in a client’s skin, spirit, and energy first, before any other feedback I receive. Lack of adequate rest effects us greatly.
My love for rest/naps/cozy downtime is a running joke within my community, but they express gratitude for my influence in doing less and prioritizing rest more.
On hero skincare products:
I’m going to let you in on a radical secret: your skin’s hero is your own two hands. No thing outside of yourself can know you or heal you/your skin better than you can yourself.
Touching and self-massaging are not only the best ways to stay healthy and beautiful, you will stay most healthy and beautiful by connecting with yourself each day. Tapping into your own deepest knowing of yourself and what you need or need to tend to in order to be most well is the key to whatever form of longevity your heart desires. Wellness and longevity will not come from a jar of cream. I promise! Not even the most expensive one.
With that being said, if you have the incredible privilege of a garden space to grow (Portland is full of community gardens if you’re in need of access), plant all of the colors, aromas, herbs and flowers that bring you joy and interact with that fertile space as much as possible.
The joy of tending to the Earth alone will heal your skin, but if you’d like an item to lend itself to your self massage and connection practice, grow calendula. Lovingly harvest it and dry it. Once dry, place the calendula is a clean glass jar and pour organic olive oil over it until the flowers are fully submerged. Allow it to infuse for 30 days, then strain it into another clean glass jar. Anoint yourself and nourish your skin with it daily.
Current read:
Kimberley King Parson’s We Were the Universe and Giovanni’s Room by the ever wise and insightful James Baldwin. I enjoy having two books going at once that have different tones. Blending a recent release (most often by a local, queer author, poet, or playwright) with an extremely deep and important piece with historical significance often strikes a nice balance for me.
Last great read:
I cannot recommend these two books enough, they were truly moving: Madwoman by
(local Portland author) and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. But please look into their content before digging in, as they’re both upsetting glimpses into challenging topics.Favorite 5-ingredient cookie recipe:
Sweet Laurel Bakery’s chocolate chip cookies. They’re delicious, and have an incredible texture. They have only five whole ingredients and are safe for almost everyone to enjoy.
I urge you to purchase their grain- and dairy-free cookbook online to support them and their community through the fires and rebuilding of Los Angeles.
Tip for getting through Portland’s dark and wet winters:
Learn to give into it!
We are told to stay busy and work hard, never stop. Trying to push through our different needs this time of year creates such resistance to it. Consider a soft and soggy Portland winter as the perfect medicine to unlearn our internalized capitalism.
It’s good to move slower. This is the time to charge our brain and body batteries, light beeswax candles to illuminate your home after those early sundowns, eat soups, take more baths. Give into winter so then you can celebrate spring and revel in summer’s fleeting bliss!
I know I’m a rare case, but I love what these winters can provide if you can be mindful of nature’s cycle of gifts.
Favorite spot for a cup of tea:
Anytime I recommend a meeting spot, it’s Fly Awake Tea House in North Portland.
Please do your nervous system a favor and order their very special Jujube Leaf tea. Then purchase a little golden sachet of the delicate leaves and ask one of the kind folks that work there to teach you how to make it at home.
For extra credit: order one of their rich chocolate truffles to melt in your mouth with each sip of tea. Your heart will feel so light and full!
Favorite memory captured in a photo:
This is me feeling my most relaxed, my most loved by another, and my most connected to the earth.
It was taken in early summer of 2019 by my now wife as we were tending to our dear friend’s farm while they were traveling. It was just us two, out in the quiet of many acres in the Willamette Valley, sitting down to a farm meal that she made and I decorated in flowers after having our hands in the dirt all day.
That is my idea of a perfect day and I’ll remember it forever.
On finding gardening inspiration everywhere:
Walking my Montavilla neighborhood (I swear some of these neighbors are master gardeners), all nature walks from the ocean to the mountains, and through my personal and professional practice of connecting with plants and flowers for deep energetic healing.
One flower can teach you where it wants to be in your garden, what other healing ally plants it likes to be near, and what it can provide energetically in times of need.
Something healing practitioners don’t talk enough about publicly:
How challenging it can be to have longevity with this work.
My job is the best job I could possibly imagine, I love connecting with people and earning their trust, bringing them comfort and helping translate messages from their bodies. I feel so grateful every work day, but boy can it be tough at times.
Caring for ourselves in imperative. Receiving bodywork ourselves is crucial. Having energetic clearing practices that bookend the workday or each client session has made a huge difference in how I feel at the end of the day. Making time before and after our workdays to stretch and soften our bodies is so important if you hope to make this work a career.
Sometimes practitioners can care so deeply about your wellness that in ways both large and small we can sacrifice our own, so we have to be careful. Taking good care of ourselves is a part of taking care of you! And taking care of you is such an honor.
Something you’re really excited about right now:
I am such an excitable person, with many hobbies, interests, and passions!
I am really excited about a new direction and new depth of work that I’m taking my business (Full Heart Healing) in. I’m excited about diving back into my reading appetite — I read three times as much in 2024 than I did in 2023. I’m almost non-stop daydreaming about the poppies I’ll be growing for the first time this year. I’m trying something new and putting an igniting spin on how much more I’ll be needing to use my voice to fight for the rights of people I love this year. I’m really looking forward to turning 40 next month. I love aging! I can’t wait until I see my first grey hair come in, truly. And I’m excited to begin working on the ceramics wheel I found in a free pile near my house last year — what a score!
Leaning into excitements is what will help us get through these hard times with greater ease and balance.
Favorite element of providing care every day:
I believe my purpose in this life is to help people feel more seen in who they are. To help them feel so very deserving of care and loving touch, even in their darkest moments. I can’t believe the honor of sitting with someone in their grief, in their joys and growth, or when they’re feeling lost and in need.
I wish everybody could receive the care they need when they need it.
I’m sure one day my body will ask that I take a rest and no longer offer this form of care, but I will continue to advocate for folks to receive the care they need for the rest of my days.
I schedule my time with Neva at the turn of the seasons: a moment when my skin (and whole self) needs extra transitional support. She’s seen me through big stress (like taking a school online during the pandemic 😵💫) and big healing (post-surgery recovery that lasted far longer than 6 weeks).
She’s a Portland treasure, and if you live here, I hope you might also be able to feel her magic.
⭕️ Puttering Around Why small tasks feel so therapeutic. Days when I can just go moment to moment, doing the little things I feel like doing right then, are the best days.
⭕️ 2025 Beauty Predictions “DEFYING REALITY will be all the rage. I foresee a continuance of concealer marketed as ‘not concealer,’ beauty ads with taglines like ‘This is not a beauty ad,’ overconsumption framed as ‘underconsumption,’ $300,000 cosmetic surgeries explained away as ‘getting sober,’ etc.”
, always spot on.⭕️ Two Things for Flu I’m (🤞🏼) just about on the other side of a bad flu and the two things I found most helpful for my symptoms — deep chest cough & full body aches — were castor oil packs x2 daily and warming socks at night.
⭕️ Help After about a month of odd intermittent aching on the top of my arm (as well as roving neck and shoulder pain), I think the culprit may be the most obvious thing: when I’m at home, I don’t work at a desk, because the desk chair I have gives me immediate discomfort. Instead, I work on the couch or on a futon, with my laptop propped on a pillow — which gives me delayed discomfort. Do you have a non-ugly ergonomically supportive desk chair you like? I need it to fit in a teeny, tiny space, under a rather low desk… 🙏
