Photo of Agnieszka Kadula at Bodyfix on 9th of November
It is a humid but clear Wednesday afternoon and the sun is reflected by the expensive cars that are all parked in front of massage parlor Bodyfix in the South of Amsterdam. Owner Agnieszka Kadula assures that she treats all her costumers the same way, even though many of them are Dutch celebrities, and expands by firmly stating that “People I don’t like, I don’t treat”. Her message is very clear: Celebrities don’t come to Bodyfix because they get paid to promote the place, they come because they heard good things about it through the grapevine. Dutch celebrities like Chantal Janzen, Lieke van Lexmond and Monica Geuze visit Bodyfix on a weekly basis for years now.
Bodyfix is certainly not your standard massage parlor. The mix of Polish babble, a ringing phone and the buzzing doorbell all prove that this is an unfit place for a relaxing massage. “What we do here, is medical work for female health” says Kadula. The connective tissue massage, Bodyfix’ specialization, eliminates adhesions between the tissues and improves the blood circulation. On the one hand, articles in the Dutch Vogue, Het Parool and Volkskrant praise the fact that cellulites, stretch marks, wrinkles and weight are reduced by this Bodyfix’ massage. Be that as it may, Kadula passionately explains that the skin of women with burns and scars recovers tremendously after a set of visits as well, accentuating the promising medical side of her job.
“Everyone who visits Bodyfix thinks it came into existence like this, but it was really just a very long road” says Kadula, who experienced rough times to be where she is now.
As a young girl, Kadula would eagerly turn the pages of the health encyclopedia and examine the illustrations thoroughly. Kadula’s love for massaging did not exactly come out of the blue: Her dad was the owner of a health resort with the best physiotherapists and masseurs for the top athletes of Poland. Even her grandfather was busy with cupping massages, which makes Kadula conclude that the art of massaging is really in the family’s blood. Her parents, however, did not envisage their daughter to continue this family tradition; they rather expected her to study at university and become successful in the business world. And so, she did. In her hometown Szczecin, where her brother studied at the technical university to become an engineer, she studied economics and management. “I hated it. My time at university was fantastic, but I strongly disliked the idea that I had to work in this world – It was not my world.”
At the age of twenty-five, she fell in love with Abdullah Saçin from Amsterdam, who had just opened a factory in Łódź. Four years later, Saçin moved back to Amsterdam with Kadula by his side. “Look, if I hadn’t fallen in love with my man, I wouldn’t live here, but I would have lived a life to please my parents”. It was the birth of her only son Baris in 2001 that made Kadula quit her job as a sales manager – her dad was furious. “But I said, I don’t want someone else raise my kid”.
During a sunny day in in the Vondelpark when Baris was two, Kadula had a life changing epiphany. “I suddenly got butterflies. I thought, I’m going to do what I’ve always wanted to do”. Kadula started studying at the Academy of Movement and Massage in Dutch, a language she learnt herself by cracking the books in the library on the Prinsengracht. She would only discover years later that she was actually sick due to an under-active thyroid.
It all started on her friend’s kitchen table, upon which Kadula would massage her when Baris was at school a few years before the official opening. Through word-of-mouth, Kadula’s techniques got spread in and around Amsterdam. Finally, Bodyfix opened in 2008, yet the future seemed uncertain at first. “I had difficulties paying my own staff” says Kadula.
One day, Kadula made a crucial move: She sent editors of lifestyle magazines a gift voucher for a try-out – with success. Today, many of these editors are her best friends. Besides that, her diagnosis three years ago improved her physical state thoroughly, which on its turn, influenced the parlor’s success. Bodyfix has been fully booked over the past two years and the waiting list for an intake is six weeks.
Kaska Kryt, who grew up in Szczecin too, started working at Bodyfix a year after the opening. “Agnieszka is a very funny person with great sense of humor. She walks around the parlor in her Birkenstocks, even during winter.” Kryt, just like Kadula, emphasizes that working at Bodyfix is hard. “Just imagine you’re at the gym twelve hours per day”.
Photo of Baris Saçin at Bodyfix on the 6th of November
With her arms crossed, Kadula says that “You can’t be the perfect mother, entrepreneur, wife and housewife at the same time”. But her son Baris disagrees – he is extremely proud of her. He spends his Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Bodyfix reception, besides studying business management, to take some weight off his mother’s shoulders.
“My mom is the most hardworking person I know,” says Baris, sitting behind the little desk and occasionally glancing at the full schedule of Bodyfix on the computer screen. “She fell off her bike a couple of times here around the corner, ending up with a bruised knee, but she always came to work after and did what she had to do”.
The parlor itself is very small, it contains just a few rooms. Two white and pink Ikea chairs, a dreamcatcher attached to a white floor lamp and a slightly wilting plant on a white platform decorate the narrow waiting room with an old grey laminate flooring. On an A4 paper the massage prices are written down with a pen, clamped into the left corner of the mirror next to the desk. The thin walls combined with Kadula’s loud voice make the phone conversation of Kadula in one of the massage rooms almost completely audible. She is talking about a possible second settlement. “This location is just – it’s a mess” says Kadula after the call. “But I can’t leave this place”, because before even entering the place eleven years ago, Kadula fell in love and bought it. The parlor will therefore be renovated, plus a Bodyfix Academy will be opened next year and perhaps a second settlement too. Are her parents proud now? Kadula laughs. “Yes, now they are”.
Rochelle Villani 