The Remedial Massage Guy Rockingham

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Arthur Galletly, also known as The Remedial Massage Guy, who passed away peacefully on Saturday, 10th October 2026. The clinic is now permanently closed.

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of Arthur’s clients who trusted him with their care over the past few decades. Helping people was at the heart of everything he did. Nothing gave him greater satisfaction than relieving pain, easing stress and helping people find comfort after years of suffering.

He genuinely found his purpose in this work, and the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives meant so much to him.

Funeral Service

For those wishing to pay their respects, Arthur’s funeral service will be held on Tuesday, 20th October 2026, at 10:00 am (AWST, UTC+8) at:

Chipper & Purslowe
6/8 Robinson Place
Rockingham WA 6168

For those unable to attend in person, the service will also be available via livestream, commencing at 10:00 am. The livestream link will be posted in the comments below.

On behalf of our family, we would like to thank the more than 6,000 clients Dad had the privilege of helping throughout his career. Your trust in him allowed him to do what he loved most: helping others. We are deeply grateful to each and every one of you.

After the open heart surgery, I felt like superman as I joined the zipper club.

Different story with liver cancer removal with weight loss, feeling cold and lethargic.

Now with chemotherapy. Can’t see me reopening before end October.

May reopen the clinic later but who knows?

So if I can reopen, I will.

Continued from previous post. It was wonderful to come home yesterday. It was SO COLD in the hospital I felt they had put a living body in the morgue by mistake!

I am viewing this as an unpaid long service leave! Pity we couldn’t go to Uzbekistan though!

Now enjoying the simple things in life to the max: taking wife and dog to Lulus followed by a short walk. Now firmly esconced in a chair on the front lawn catching some much needed sun, with Mishka lying in the shade next to me, watching the world go by. But with the school run over, our cul de sac is so quiet we could be in the bush.

Only the sounds of birds, the distant hum of Read St and the vision out the corner of my eye of our daily visitors, the Ibis.

Thanks for the well wishes. But I am just going through my 200k service. Just so lucky I caught it all in the nick of time, and that our health system is way better than many people give it credit for.

Someone mentioned the “big c”. I don’t consider it so at all, approaching it as a minor flesh wound. The key word here is RESECTABLE. That means the c can be cut out and your liver regrows. The liver op is urgent but the heart surgery was a necessary “pre-op” to the liver op. It does delay the liver op, but with my positive mental op, I am sure that I will be practicing again.

Excuse the Keith Richards look, about time for a shave, but I’m in no hurry to do anything, just time to take it slow. If all goes well I’ll take a handful of clients each week from August. Not enough to justify the cost of HiCaps / EFTPOS machine, so payment will be PayID or cash and I’ll give a receipt to claim from Health Funds. That will be the only change.

So that’s it, I won’t post again for a couple of months. Apologies for the detailed accounts, but want people to know how these miracles are now routine.

Still don’t know why the universe decided to pick me to give an extension to my life, but I think it might mean my life’s work is not yet complete. We’ll have to wait and see!

A hundred or even 50 years ago I’d have carried on joyfully practicing 7 days a week until suffering a heart attack or stroke and for it to be discovered I had liver cancer. Each time you relieve pain in others using your hands, you absorb a little of that pain. And I have worked on many more different people than most practitioners. Being trolled and with the stress that comes with it didn’t help. But it was brilliantly picked up in the nick of time. I have arrived home after urgent heart surgery, and I need liver surgery after that. I will only be taking a few clients a week and will only increase that very slowly. But I will be back. To be continued!

My slogan is the relief of aches and pains and headaches. Sounds so simple and I try to make it so. However the power of touch works on many systems of your body. We’re not just talking tight muscles and soft tissue such as myofascia, tight tendons etc. The shared article delves a bit deeper!

Why does manual therapy work?

It’s a question most of us have been asked — by patients, by students, sometimes by ourselves mid-treatment.

A 2025 living review in PLOS ONE (Keter et al.) pulled together 62 systematic, narrative, and scoping reviews to map the current evidence.

Manual therapy doesn’t act on one system. It produces measurable responses across the following:

- Neurological
- Neurovascular
- Neurotransmitter,
- Neuroimmune
- Neuromuscular
- Neuroendocrine
- Biomechanical

The strongest, most consistent signals are central, not local: increased pressure pain thresholds at sites distant from treatment and enhanced descending pain modulation.

The biomechanical “joint-out-of-place” model? It's not supported by the evidence. The treatments purporting to do this may help, but for the reasons above, not because the joint has been popped back in.

What this means in practice: our hands are interacting with the central nervous system at least as much as the tissue beneath them and the language we use with patients should reflect that.

The full one-page clinical summary is below 👇

📖 Source: Keter et al. (2025), PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0319586

A trip to GP for ear infection, routine blood test, urgent CT scan, also revealed blocked heart vessels, echo test, MRI, angiogram, petscan, ultrasound, 2 heart operations with liver operation later. I will resume my practice on a part time basis

Instead of the ANZAC Day Dawn Service, I’m off for a coronary artery bypass grafting. I will hence be known as Arthur 2.0

Due to the likelihood of imminent urgent surgery followed by a period of recovery, I have provisionally blocked off online bookings for 3 months.

If by happy circumstance, I can reopen earlier, I will let you know.

Apologies for inconvenience, and I hope you find someone who provides good service in the interim.

Although I think everyone else charges more, sometimes much more. Someone advertising THE BEST REMEDIAL MASSAGE IN MANDURAH, for example, charges $145 per hour.

But I am sure there are other practitioners who provide as good or better service than I do.

Sincerely, with apologies for the inconvenience, and with a dose of sadness, as my Trading Name actually defines my identity.

Arthur

Closed Tuesday to Thursday this week from April 21
Open Sunday 19 and Monday 20 pm