Across the street from Covington’s old cemetery, a sea turtle keeps watch over a small white cottage.
The sign bears an ancient Hawaiian word: Mana.
For Jenny Wolfe, owner of Mana Massage & Wellness, the word means “the life force, energy force, the healing power within.”
The contrast is hard to miss. Stillness on one side, movement on the other. And somewhere between the two is the question that goes to the heart of Jenny’s work:
What does it take to feel fully alive and at home in our bodies again?
When the Body Says Stop
A former Southeastern Louisiana University cheerleader, Jenny spent years asking her body to leap, stretch, brace, catch. A spinal condition at nineteen didn’t stop her.
Then, six months after she stopped cheering, Jenny woke up and collapsed with back pain.
“I couldn’t walk,” she says. “I just laid there. My mother drove from Baton Rouge to lift me off the floor.”
“Back pain in general, it robs you of something,” Jenny says. “It’s more personal than any other pain I’ve experienced, more than giving birth somehow. I was twenty-two with a walker. They told me I wouldn't be able to have children naturally.”
With pain medication and surgery as the only options on the table, Jenny kept looking. That search led to the Raindrop essential-oil technique and, eventually, to a deeper understanding of the body itself and a career in therapeutic massage.
Ancient Waters
In Hawaii, green sea turtles are remarkable navigators, traveling hundreds of miles to return to beaches where they hatched.
In 2022, Jenny made a crossing of her own, returning to the turquoise shore of Hilo, on Hawaii’s Big Island, to reconnect with her family roots.
Her maternal grandmother, Jane Hualani, lived there. She was a nurse who met an Air Force serviceman in California, then followed him to Central Louisiana.
“Such a beautiful soul,” Jenny says. “In massage school, I thought about her all the time. I just knew this gift for massage, this awareness, had been passed down to me through my mother’s side.”
Jenny came home from Hawaii with a vision.
“My logo would be a sea turtle and my practice would be named Mana,” she says.
The Space Between
Life in the 21st century teaches us that every interval must be occupied. Answer while walking. Scroll while waiting. Plan while resting. Deadlines. School pickups. Another hour folded over a screen. Somewhere along the way, even self-care becomes another box to check.
Jenny sees massage as an interruption.
“It’s an opportunity to disconnect,” she says. “It gives the body a break. It gives the nervous system a break. It’s like turning off the computer. Rebooting.”
Massage has moved well beyond the spa menu. Research suggests it can reduce stress, ease muscle tension and stiffness, support relaxation, and help with some types of pain.
For Jenny, the argument is even simpler.
“There is something about choosing to take care of yourself for the sheer fact of taking care of yourself,” she says. “It teaches your brain that this body is worth taking care of.”
“Nothing blooms all year round,” Jenny adds. “Why do we put the pressure on ourselves to bloom all year round? Our bodies are demanding that we just be. To be, not to do.”
Then the camera catches it.
Between poses, Jenny sits on the massage table, eyes closed, smiling. Nothing to perform.
“That is me,” she later says. “That is Mana.”
Body Language
Jenny has another way of describing what happens on the table.
“I massage in cursive.”
Cursive does not treat a word as a collection of letters. One movement becomes the next without lifting from the page. Jenny approaches the body much the same way, following relationships rather than isolated parts.
Much of that work happens in fascia.
For years, fascia was treated as biological wrapping. Now researchers are studying it as a richly innervated sensory network involved in movement, proprioception, and pain.
Jenny is fascinated by it.
“I would describe fascia as a supportive, intelligent, adaptable structure,” she says. “To me, it’s where all the communication happens for the body.”
Her work moves constantly between anatomy and intuition. Sometimes that means deep pressure. Sometimes stretching, cupping, guided breathwork, or Swedish massage. Sometimes, very little movement at all.
For people who arrive carrying stress, guardedness, responsibility, and the invisible burden of keeping everything together, Jenny has a talent for lifting what we cannot quite put down ourselves.
“The body just wants to be heard,” she says. “I find the heaviness, and I just tell it that it’s okay.”
The Way Home
Jenny still calls herself a cheerleader.
At home, that means Isaac and Myles, the sons she delivered naturally, often hear “I’m so impressed by you.”
At work, that instinct turns outward, helping clients listen to bodies they’ve spent years asking to perform.
“I’m just a facilitator,” she says. “I listen, understand, and trust that your body knows what it’s doing.”
Across East Kirkland Street, the cemetery holds its silence, a reminder that bodies are temporary and worthy of thankfulness.
But inside the white cottage, where the sea turtle keeps watch, Jenny Wolfe invites us to experience the miracle of Mana: not an escape from the body, but a return to it—a way to feel fully alive, fully at peace, and fully at home.
“There is something about choosing to take care of yourself. It teaches your brain that this body is worth taking care of."
Jenny Wolfe is owner and licensed massage therapist at Mana Massage & Wellness in Covington, serving clients across the Northshore. She works alongside licensed massage therapist and certified personal trainer Clayton Williamson, licensed massage therapist Hannah Graves, and certified nutrition counselor Melanie Palma. Mana offers therapeutic, deep tissue, Swedish, and prenatal massage, plus cupping, stretching, reflexology, Raindrop Therapy, and infrared sauna sessions. The practice is located at 323 East Kirkland Street in Covington.
To learn more, schedule an appointment, or explore available services online, call (985) 777-4274 or visit manamassageandwellness.com.