Trauma-Informed Massage Therapy ·
5896 Ellsworth Ave. || Shadyside, PGH
You belong
in your body.
A somatic massage practice for people carrying more than their body should have to hold. Located in Shadyside — Caesura, by Transitional Characters.
To Anyone:
Caesura offers expert massage therapy guided by decades of trained hands.
(It’s “SAY-JURA” )
Why the name Caesura?
If you’re unfamiliar with Transitional Characters, we really like books and poetry..
A caesura is the pause that makes the poem (aka your story) make sense. It creates emphasis.
Without it, even the most carefully constructed poem becomes a wall of sound. With it, the meaning lands as intended.
Learn more about the importance of somatic massage in therapy.
To TC Clients:
Caesura offers a membership for regular somatic massage and healing, directly informed by your talk therapy at TC.
The science behind the work
Why the body is part of the conversation
Trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind.
Traumatic experience leaves a physiological imprint — one that talk therapy alone cannot always reach.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
Touch activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
Safe, attuned touch directly stimulates the vagus nerve, shifting the body out of fight-or-flight and into rest and repair.
Porges, S.W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. W.W. Norton.
Fascia holds emotional memory.
Connective tissue throughout the body responds to and stores stress, trauma, and emotional experience — making bodywork a direct pathway to release.
Schleip, R. et al. (2012). Fascia: The Tensional Network of the Human Body. Elsevier.
Integrated care produces better outcomes.
When somatic and psychological treatment work in tandem, clients experience deeper, more lasting healing than either approach achieves alone.
Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books.
For TC Mental Health clients
Your mind and body are already connected.
Now your care team can be too.
Caesura sits three doors down from TC Mental Health — and for clients active with both practices, something genuinely rare becomes possible: coordinated care between your therapist and your bodywork practitioner, built into the same block.
Learn about the TC + Caesura membership ↓What we offer
Two offerings. Both guided by Roxanne.
Both built around you.
Custom Massage
No menu of modalities to choose from. Just a thorough intake, two decades of experience, and hands that know what your body needs before you do. Every session draws from the full range of Roxanne’s training — Swedish, trauma-informed, neuromuscular, myofascial— applied intuitively based on what you’re carrying that day.
30 min · 60 min · 90 min · 120 min
Book a SessionIllumine
To bring light to the darkness.
Roxanne’s signature mind-body session — a 120-135 minute experience designed to shine light into your awareness of body, spirit, and mind. Each session includes a VARIATION of massage, stretching, and/or corrective exercises, Reiki, and energy work led by Roxanne's own intuition during intake. Practical details about session setup and what to bring are discussed once session is booked.
120-135 min
Book IllumineRates
Pricing
All Custom Massage sessions are priced by duration. Illumine is a fixed 120-minute experience.
Your practitioner
Roxanne
Licensed Massage Therapist
Roxanne was named Best Massage Therapist in Pittsburgh by the Pittsburgh City Paper — and if you’ve spent an hour on her table, you already know why.
Her connection to this work goes back further than her training. Growing up, she watched a family member’s mental health journey plateau again and again — until a massage treatment program moved something that nothing else had. That was decades before the research existed to explain why. The research has caught up now. Roxanne never needed it to.
What sets her apart isn’t a list of certifications, though she has those too. It’s a level of awareness that’s hard to train and harder to fake — an intuitive read of what your body is holding, where it’s compensating, and what it’s ready to release. Roxanne doesn’t follow a script. She follows you.
For clients navigating both mental and physical trauma, her work sits at exactly the right intersection. And for clients who are also working with a therapist at Transitional Characters, something even rarer becomes possible: a genuinely coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach to healing — where your therapist and your bodywork practitioner are not strangers to each other’s work, and the connections and disconnections your body reveals in session can inform the work happening in the room next door.
This is integrated care in the truest sense. Not a referral. Not a coincidence. A deliberate alignment between mind and body, built into the same practice.
This is bodywork that meets you where the talking stops.
Ready when you are
You don’t need to have it figured out to tap in.
You don’t need to know what kind of session you need. You don’t need to arrive feeling ready or open or certain. Roxanne’s intake process is designed to meet you exactly where you are — and work from there. If you’re a TC Mental Health client, mention it at booking and we’ll make sure your care is as connected as possible.
For TC Mental Health clients
Two practices. One plan. Your whole self.
Most people treat their mind and body in completely separate rooms, with completely separate practitioners who have never spoken to each other. Caesura was built three doors down from TC Mental Health on purpose.
For clients who have been with TC for three or more months, Caesura offers something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in Pittsburgh: a genuinely coordinated care experience. Roxanne’s intuitive read of your body doesn’t happen in isolation — it happens in a practice that shares a block, a philosophy, and a deep familiarity with the connection between mental and physical trauma.
The connections and disconnections your body reveals on Roxanne’s table can inform what’s happening in your therapy sessions — and vice versa. This is integrated care in the truest sense of the phrase.
Membership Pricing
TC clients active for 3+ months are eligible for monthly membership pricing at Caesura — one session per month at a flat rate, so showing up for your body consistently doesn’t cost more than it should.
30 min
$60
per month
Saves $15Maintenance focus
60 min
$100
per month
Saves $20Custom Massage
90 min
$135
per month
Saves $25Custom Massage