Photo by Skip Lawrence Angela Ferri is an herbalist and massage therapist.
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Ferri is a healer who came to the career through her own needs. "I realized I didn't have the tools to create a rich, balanced, functioning life," she said.

Ferri trained as an artist, but found more satisfaction in healing therapies, and is now a certified massage therapist, a Maya abdominal massage instructor, a clinical herbalist and a belly dance instructor.

Ferri works on women and men, but specializes in women's health. "My work is mostly beneficial for women," she said. Abdominal massage helps women not only with fertility difficulties, but with digestive, urinary and menstrual problems.

Abdominal massage helps reposition the uterus, which Ferri said leads to easier conception. "I have helped a lot of women conceive," she said.

It also leads to better organ health, she said. The colon, the liver, the kidneys and other vital organs are all in the body's midsection. She teaches clients how to massage their own abdominal area, to promote what she calls self-healing.

Abdominal massage also promotes better, deeper breathing, she said. "We breathe from our diaphragm, which helps us to breathe better and get more oxygen."

Many people do not breathe deeply enough, starving their organs of much-needed oxygen, she said.

"It's not only physically better, but symbolically better. It opens your heart center to counter all that closing in of yourself."

People tend to hunch, not necessarily from bad posture, but from constantly sitting at a desk, bending toward a computer. We often do it without thinking, Ferri said.

In her practice, she demonstrates breathing exercises that help people loosen parts of their body that feel rigid.

Ferri was a graphic artist in the 1980s when the field began shifting toward computers. She has a master's degree in painting. "I didn't want to sit before a computer," she said.

At the same time, she was going through a divorce.

In 1990, she enrolled in massage therapy training in Santa Fe, N.M., at the Scherer Institute for Natural Healing. She graduated in 1992 and returned to Maryland. She opened a practice in Germantown.

In 2000, she began training as a clinical herbalist at Dream Time Center for Herbal Studies. She is now a member of the American Botanical Council and United Plant Savers.

While talking about her career, Ferri was walking in a field near her home. She looked around and saw pokeweed, which she said has many healing qualities.

"I don't prescribe," she said. "I suggest."

Goldenseal, black cohosh, majelica, motherwort are all native herbs that can be healing. "I find native medicinals walking around," she said. Yellow dock root is one, which helps the liver. "It's all right here. It's free and it's healing."

Another healing influence is the sun, she said. "Everyone's got a vitamin D deficiency."

At her home in Jefferson , she teaches spiritual belly dance classes. "I teach people to pay attention to where your energy is stuck and held," she said.

All her practices help people to open themselves and their hearts, countering the tendency to close oneself off to the outside world, she said. "People are caught up in their lives, and too busy to think about opening up."

Natural healing requires people to take an active role in their own health. "Hopefully, people will realize there's a lot of stuff they can do," Ferri said.

"We as a society are in our heads all the time. There's so much fear of the body and what the body knows. Our minds are so strong; we can cut off our bodies, for a while anyway."

But eventually we become aware of our physical problems, whether through pain or dysfunction.

Then we can choose to heal, she said.

"We make choices daily. We can create our own lifestyle."