A CHILLINGLY close call with terrorists has led Jacinta Di Prinzio on a new journey towards positivity, which she’s hoping to share with others at a “Mind Massage” next Thursday.
A year ago, the Fremantle chiropractor and lifestyle coach was walking along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, watching the Bastille Day fireworks with her partner when nature called and they popped into a hotel to use the toilets.
Her day had already been harrowing as she’d witnessed the drowning of a young boy at a local beach, then later had to run away from a gang of thieves, but it was about to get much worse.
• Jacinta Di Prinzio
“We went into the hotel to go to the toilet, and then two seconds later there were all these screams, and there was chaos everywhere,” shxe says of the moments an ISIS-linked terrorist drove a 19-tonne cargo truck into the crowd on the promenade, killing 86 people and injuring 434 others.
“We were told terrorists were targeting hotels and to stay inside, so every noise we heard after that we thought was terrorists coming.
Carnage
“Afterwards we left the hotel and walked along the promenade and for one kilometre there was just carnage and blood all over the streets.”
The horrifying experience severely dented her natural optimism and Ms Di Prinzio found herself living in fear of what seemed a scary world around her.
“I had to work through that internal dialogue,” she says.
Ms Di Prinzio drew on the experience of the revellers comforting each other and working together in the aftermath of the attack to help her restore some confidence.
Now she wants to share that experience at the Mind Massage event to help others who might be struggling with feelings of negativity.
• Jacinta Di Prinzio works on a client at her new premises in Duoro Road. Photo supplied
Ms Di Prinzio says she’s very aware of the need to approach the issue from both a physical and emotional perspective.
“As a chiropractor I see a lot of people with digestive issues and depression and that is related to their thoughts,” she says.
“So it’s about unwinding that and seeing what in your lifestyle could be impacting on that.”
Ms Di Prinzio says her own journey towards a healthy lifestyle didn’t pan out as she’d originally intended.
A sugar addict, she poured what seemed like boundless energy into exercise and qualified as a personal trainer, but slowly the wheels began to fall off as she strived for what she thought was the personification of health—a perfectly shaped body.
“I remember counting out five almonds in my hand and restricting myself to that,” she says.
Body image
“But one day when I was going to my third exercise class of the day I started seeing white spots in front of my eyes and I pulled over and vomited.
“I was crying because I didn’t have a six-pack of abs,” she says, adding that her boyfriend of the time had been subtly feeding her inappropriate body image messages.
“Then I got glandular fever and basically could not get out of bed for three months.
“I started looking at the quality of food, my thoughts, the patterns in my life and the people I hung around with, and that led me to chiropractic practice,” she says.
Ms Di Prinzio recently moved her chiropractic practice into the flash new n19nteendouro development on Douro Road, South Fremantle with her colleagues from the Open Space Healing Centre, but is actually holding the Mind Massage at Stackwood creative space at 10 Stack Street, Fremantle.
It’s on July 13 from 6.30 – 9pm and costs $27.00.
Tix at http://www.themindmassage.
by STEVE GRANT