Lessons from Local Leaders:

Megan McGlynn

Seek the Light: How Megan McGlynn Built Valo Into Ashburn’s Most Soulful Wellness Space

It started with a sister in a recliner, a moment of quiet care, and a ten-out-of-ten. What came after was a practice that might be unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

Megan McGlynn describes her origin story as “tragic and really beautiful at the same time.” She’s right on both counts.

In the spring of 2023, her sister-in-law — the woman she calls her big sister — was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Megan happened to be in a career transition at the time, and that timing, as hard as everything else was, gave her something rare: the ability to actually show up. She traveled to be with her sister for weeks during chemotherapy. She watched what it meant to be a caregiver during a fight like that. She paid attention.

One afternoon after a rough round of chemo, her sister was resting in a recliner and Megan knelt beside her and began massaging her legs — her sister had developed neuropathy from the lymphoma, a painful condition where the nerves begin to die. Her sister looked up.

“Hey Meg — ten out of ten. Have you ever thought about being a massage therapist?”

Megan had thought about it, once, twenty years earlier. The idea had come and gone. But in that moment, it felt like a whisper she was finally ready to hear.

She called a friend in massage therapy school that same afternoon. The following week, she registered. A month later, she started. And she never looked back.

From That Afternoon to Costa Rica

What followed was a focused, driven sprint through a field Megan fell in love with immediately. She aced her classes. She passed her certification exam on the first attempt — something she points out isn’t as common as people assume, because the test is genuinely hard. Then she flew to Costa Rica to study oncology massage and lymphatic drainage, drawn there by the experience of watching her sister navigate treatment and wanting to understand exactly how to help people in that position.

She came home knowing what she wanted to build: a practice centered on the whole person. Not just the body in isolation, but the mind, the energy, the spirit — all of it together.

That practice became Valo.

What’s in a Name

If you’ve encountered the word Valo and wondered what it means, you’re not alone. Megan hears the question constantly. Is it an acronym? A founder’s initials?

It’s a Finnish word for light.

When Megan was sixteen, she spent a summer as an exchange student in Finland. She lived with a wonderful family and experienced something she never forgot: in the Nordic countries during summer, the sun never fully sets. It touches the horizon and then begins to rise again, the light never quite leaving.

“That’s really the metaphor of massage therapy and energy work,” she says. “When our energy is dimming — from disease, from stress, from life — our vibration starts to lower. Things like massage and bodywork and energy work help lift that vibration again.”

Valo. Light. It was the only name that made sense.

Wellness as the Presence of Peace

Walk into most massage practices and you know what you’re getting. Megan’s practice is something different — intentionally so.

“Wellness isn’t just the absence of disease,” she says. “It’s also the presence of peace. How can we marry those two together to create a really beautiful, holistic experience?”

A session at Valo might begin with sound bowl therapy and guided deep breathing before the bodywork starts — a deliberate choice to calm the nervous system first, so that when hands-on work begins, the body is already open to receiving it. Clients notice the difference immediately.

“They go, ‘I don’t feel bruised, you didn’t just go in with an elbow,'” Megan says, laughing. “That’s not how I work. We calm the nervous system first.”

Her most popular offering is the 90-minute massage and reiki session — a combination she has developed into its own fluid, layered experience. The massage comes first, then a guided meditation leads into the energy work. By the time a client is on the table for the reiki portion, they are deeply relaxed and, Megan says, noticeably more receptive.

“They feel the shift in their energy. They come in looking tired, their energy down — and they leave with this bright, refreshed feeling. You can see the shift as they walk out the door. For me, that’s the best part of what I do every day.”

The Intuitive Layer

There is another dimension to Megan’s work that she introduces carefully, always with permission, always with clarity about what she is and isn’t claiming.

She is intuitive. That gift has developed slowly over fifteen years, and it now shapes how she reads and holds space for the people on her table. Sometimes a session is simply what it appears to be — skilled, attentive bodywork. Other times, something else comes through.

She tells a story about a longtime massage client — someone she’d seen many times, someone who came in to talk about philosophy and books and art. One day, messages began arriving. In a different language. One she doesn’t speak. She found herself channeling words she couldn’t understand — but her client could. They were from his grandmother.

“That’s how I know it’s really real,” she says quietly. “Because he could understand everything I was saying. And I didn’t.”

She’s clear that she always asks before introducing this aspect of her work, and that not every session goes there. But for clients who are open to it, the experience can be profound in ways that outlast the physical relief.

The Loneliness Epidemic Nobody Is Talking About

One of the most striking things Megan says in conversation is something most wellness providers don’t name directly: a lot of people who come to Valo are touch-starved. Not because they lack relationships, but because meaningful, safe, non-medical physical connection has quietly become rare in modern life.

“There are a lot of people who don’t receive any touch except the touch I provide through massage therapy and reiki,” she says. “We spend so much time on our phones thinking we’re connected to everyone. But there’s a great sense of needing real connection again.”

Valo was built, in part, as a response to that. The Gathering Room — an intimate community space inside the studio — hosts yoga classes limited to six mats, monthly tarot evenings, sound baths and guided meditation events, a forthcoming book club exploring spiritual feminine history, and a women’s retreat to Sedona planned for early next year. Everything in that space is intentionally small. Ten people. Six mats. A room where you can actually see the faces of the people around you and have a real conversation.

“People feel more comfortable in a small, intimate space,” Megan says. “Where you can actually have conversations with one another.”

Lymphatic Drainage: What the Internet Gets Half Right

Lymphatic drainage has become one of the most talked-about wellness trends on social media, and Megan has a lot of thoughts about that — most of them good, with some important caveats.

The awareness is welcome. The lymphatic system is profoundly important and chronically underappreciated. It is, among other things, essential to cardiovascular function — the cardiovascular system cannot work without it. But the way lymphatic drainage is being demonstrated online often misses critical elements of how it actually works.

“They come in and they do their little pulses,” Megan says. “I say, that’s a great start. Now let me show you how to do it in a more clinical way so it’s actually more effective.”

Megan has 45 hours of training in lymphatic drainage massage using the Vodder Method — the original, clinically developed protocol. The work is rhythmic, precise, and structured around opening the channels in a specific order, because the lymphatic system is connected to the cardiovascular system and needs to be treated accordingly. Doing it out of sequence, or too aggressively, can actually cause more harm than good.

“You don’t want to back up the channels. You want things flowing properly.”

What clients notice most is how quickly results appear. Megan will work one leg and ask the client to compare it to the other. They always feel the difference. The word they use, over and over, is the same: lighter. They came in feeling heavy. They leave feeling lighter.

She sends them home with education on how to continue the work themselves. Every first session tends to run long because she won’t let someone leave without understanding what was done and why.

The ASMR Experience: Coming Soon

One of Megan’s most distinctive upcoming offerings is an in-studio ASMR experience — something she is preparing to launch and believes may be the first of its kind in the area.

ASMR — Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response — is the tingling, deeply calming sensation triggered by certain soft sounds or gentle touch. Tens of millions of people watch ASMR content on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram every day. Megan wants to bring that experience into a real, physical space.

“Think about your mother brushing your hair when you were a little girl,” she says. “Think about how calming that was. That’s what this is.”

The session will incorporate hair brushing, gentle touch, soft sounds — all designed to stimulate the vagus nerve and signal the nervous system that it is safe to fully relax. There is nothing clinical or medical about it, and Megan is careful to frame it clearly: this is about coming home to your body, letting the guard down, and simply breathing.

“We just don’t do that enough anymore,” she says. “And I think the younger generation — who grew up watching ASMR — is going to especially love experiencing it in person.”

The Happy Place

Near the center of everything Megan does is a client she describes simply as her oncology client — someone navigating cancer treatment who told her that Valo is her happy place.

Megan tears up a little when she talks about it.

“To create a space where people going through really difficult times can come in, take a deep breath, and say — this is the only place I feel like I can be me again — that’s the backbone of the practice. It’s what influenced the creation of Valo.”

She thinks about her sister-in-law. About that afternoon in the recliner. About what it meant to kneel beside someone who was suffering and offer something that made her say ten out of ten.

The whole practice, in a sense, began and continues in that spirit: you deserve to feel peace. You deserve to take up space and breathe and be cared for. Whatever you’re carrying, you can put it down for an hour.

That’s what Valo is for.

Megan McGlynn is a licensed massage therapist, Reiki master, and the founder of Valo, a holistic wellness center in Ashburn, Virginia. Follow along and book sessions at seekvalo.com or on Instagram and Facebook at @seekvalo.

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