Glens Falls Business Journal
By Paul Post
Dana Russell has no trouble attracting people to her Glens Falls business, Adirondack Salt Cave LLC.
“The hardest thing is getting people up and out,” she said. “Nobody wants to leave.”
The firm’s soothing environment—walls made from blocks of beautiful peach-colored Himalayan salt—relaxing music and halotherapy, which promotes respiratory health and combats allergies, skin conditions and COPD, keeps clients coming back time after time.
“A lot of people come in after work and just need that Zen, that decompression from everything,” Russell said. “When they walk through the doors they’re just so happy to be here.”
A Warrensburg native, she’s been a licensed massage therapist for 18 years. But in 2016, a friend convinced her to visit a salt cave in Vermont. After finding a suitable space in the Union Square building at 11 Broad Street, she decided to create one of her own.
A former garment factory, the 126-year-old structure oozes with history and character. “We love it here,” Russell said.
Soon, a truck delivered four tons of Himalayan salt from Pakistan, procured through a New Jersey supplier, and a Texas firm spent eight weeks designing and building the site. Adirondack Salt Cave was open for business.
The “cave” is a 300-square-foot room with 12-foot ceilings that replicates the microclimate of deep natural salt caves. When lights are dimmed, the backlit Himalayan salt wall creates a mesmerizing glow.
“It’s a wow factor when you walk in,” Russell said.
Health benefits are derived from a halogenerator that emits pharmaceutical-grade dry salt into the air.
“People are here for an hour. We give them neck wraps, they’re covered with blankets and they recline back, listen to meditative music and breathe in salts,” Russell said.
One group nicknamed the “Salty Seniors” visits two or three times per week. Some sessions have special offerings such as a cello sound experience, yoga or halo acupuncture and meditative hypnosis.
When not busy at the Salt Cave, Russell is likely found at her other small business, Tranquil Massage Energy Healing, also in Union Square with its own entrance.
Russell has completed over 1,000 hours of clinical and classroom training at the Center for Natural Wellness School of Massage Therapy in Albany. Her skill set includes Therapeutic Reflexology, Himalayan Salt Stone Massage, Swedish Massage and Pregnancy Massage.
A standalone energy session at Tranquil Massage includes Reiki infusion, energy work and sound healing. One of the most unique offerings is vibrational sound therapy. When Tibetan bowls, placed on the client, are tapped, the vibrations and sound reinstate wellness and healing.
“We all run on frequencies,” Russell said. “With vibrations of the bowl it brings your body down to the cellular level.”
Prior to becoming a licensed massage therapist, she worked as a special education teacher’s assistant at Prospect School and Queensbury Elementary School. In many ways, Russell brings those same skills to her current entrepreneurial pursuits.
“It’s educating people about wellness,” she said.