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Be Impeccable with your word is one of the principles of Don Miguel Ruiz in his series of books -the first one being “The Four Agreements” (amazon.com link). When I first started studying this principle I missed the most important point and that is the agreements we make with ourselves. When we make statements or even have implied agreements (unspoken) agreements with ourselves and we don’t keep them, we hurt ourselves each time we break them with ourself. What does it say that you don’t do what you are going to do what you say you are going to do?

While part of it has to do with the agreement or statement you make, the other part has to do with how much you value yourself.

Learning to set reasonable and obtainable goals is the first step. How many new clients do you want for this week? 20? is that reasonable? What number would be reasonable? 1 or 2 is reasonable. It also depends on how much marketing you are doing for yourself.

So if you set a reasonable goal of getting 1-2 clients a week, what gets in the way of getting yourself out there and making it happen is usually a belief you have about yourself. When you value yourself, you will keep your agreement with yourself to get new clients.

The biggest and most obvious agreement is how we deal with time…. Are you on time for your appointments with clients? Do you call clients back within an hour or two?

What agreements do you have with yourself that are unreasonable and unreachable?

What does it mean when you are unable to do what you say you intend to do…like build a practice?

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I seem to get this question all of the time…

Men wanting to become massage therapists fear that they won’t be able to compete with the females and be successful.

My thoughts on this are that you can be as successful as you want no matter who you are. Being a male will have it’s challenges because some women won’t want to be worked on by a male or some men don’t want to be worked on by a male - It is all how you really handle the situation.

If you work in a clinic with other females - how is the phone answered? Asking the question do you want a male or female therapist sets up the idea that you may not want a male. If you start with saying when do you want to get in and our next available appointment is with Mark at xxxx then they have the choice.

I know there are some women who don’t feel safe with men. Working with a nurturing male can help in dealing with these issues. But you of course can’t force your opinion on them saying something like - it sounds like you have issues with men that could be worked out by working with a male…

What do you think guys???

How do you handle being male in a female profession?

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AMTA in their recent press release states that they are not making any plans to define Medical Massage.
Is AMTA Defining Medical Massage?

They go on to state that all massage is medical massage which I totally agree with. The problem is if we don’t define Medical Massage for ourselves, the insurance companies will and ARE already defining Medical massage.

American Whole Health Networks is in the process of creating a Clinical Massage Credentialing Process. It is not clear at this time what it entails, but they are setting up educational requirements and other criteria in order to become credentialed as a provider with them.

This is directly from their application form:

“Valid State or local license as Massage Therapist/Practitioner
q Entry level certification by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, or
equivalent State Exam *
q Attestation to at least 60 hours of documented continuing education course work in massage in past 4 years
q Copy of certificate of completion of at least one advanced massage training program of 25 contact hours or
more
q Documentation of at least two calendar years in active clinical practice
q Two Professional Reference Evaluations from health professionals attesting to personal and clinical practice
characteristics, at least one of which must be from a referring or supervising MD, DO, DC, PT, RN or from
an AWHN credentialed clinical massage practitioner who has supervised your practice.
PLUS
q Certification by a recognized national advanced clinical massage certification exam
OR
q Documentation of supervised contact hours** performing clinical massage
500 contact hours required for applicants with only a basic 500-hour massage education
OR
250 contact hours required for applicants with 1000 hour basic massage education that includes clinical assessment,
clinical pathology, and clinical charting,
OR
Postgraduate clinical training equivalent to 250 contact hours after their basic 500-hour education
With submission of verification documents for any postgraduate course, fellowship, preceptorship, or
clinically supervised practice
Please submit the following materials (obtain the forms at www.wholehealthpro.com):
q Completed AWHN network covered benefit and discount contract with signed agreement to business and financial
contract terms. If you are employed by an institution or group, your employer must contract for you as an associate.
q Completed AWHN credentialing or recredentialing application for clinical massage, this includes your online profile
listing for the AWHN web directories***
q Applicable credentialing fee
q Copy of your Published Fee Schedule
q Copy of your current professional liability (malpractice) policy face sheet
(At least $200/500,000 limits are required, GHC contracted practitioners must have 1Million/3Million)
q Copy of your current unrestricted state license and/or NCBTMB certificate
q Copy of the AWHN Attestation for Specialty Training and Experience form with supporting documents
q Send the Professional Reference Evaluation forms to your professional references to submit directly to AWHN, note
the names of the professional references on your credentialing application ”

So you see it may be too late already as someone else is defining our profession for us…

What do you think about the new clinical massage credentialing being set up by Whole Health Networks?

How should we as a profession define Medical or Clinical Massage?

Should any categories or modalities be restricted from doing medical massage? This one I feel should be a definite no - There should not be any restrictions on who is allowed to do medical massage. It would be like shooting ourselves in the foot. Who are we to determine what or what will not add to a persons healing process or health?

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I have really been doing some investigating of how our beliefs systems create what we have in our lives. It is really fascinating.

Our feelings are created by thoughts that we have that are created by our underlying and often unconscious beliefs and values.

While we need to be able to experience and have our feelings, we also need to be able to recognize when they are having us!

A feeling is having us when we are over reacting to something. Usually a feeling is just there to inform of us of our need. When we over react and create drama around that feeling we are usually projecting some deeper feeling from when we were and earlier age (2-5). The early unmet needs create false ego beliefs - beliefs such as

“I am not good enough”

“There must be something wrong with me”

“I am worthless”

“I am Unlovable”

“People will leave me if I have my feelings or if I am different from them”

These are all beliefs that were created at an early age to protect ourselves from being vulnerable.

As an adult, these beliefs still drive our feelings. Feelings inform us of the places inside of us that are wounded. We project them onto our partners, clients, friends and family. It provides us an opportunity to learn about them, feel them and heal.

The early unmet primal needs are now “driving the car” so to speak. Our neediness reflects how much we need to grieve the past and awaken our own inner nurturing.

David Ricco in his book “How to be an Adult” says “Our problem is not that as children our needs were unmet, but that as adults they are still unmourned”.

If you don’t know what your beliefs are, just look at what you have in your life! Your life reflects what you believe…

What beliefs do you have?

What feelings do you have that are created by false beliefs about yourself?

How do your beliefs keep you from being successful or hold you back?

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