Becoming a Massage Therapist

I got this idea for a story about becoming a massage therapist after reading Sean Sloviks story “Is Becoming a Massage Therapist like Becoming a Merchant Marine?” that is posted on www.massagetherapycareers.com

When you first start out in massage school, you will be studying for a year or so, learning all sorts of things you never imagined - anatomy, physiology, pathology, massage techniques - all of which are preparing you to be the best massage therapist in the world. By the time you get out you have massaged many people in the student clinic and all of your friends and family call you all the time for a massage. You are ready to take your State Board Exam or if you are in one of those last states that don’t have any exam, you are jumping right into a practice or job in massage therapy.

You of course pass the exam in flying colors because you spent all of that time studying, memorizing and learning.

You are now on to working at your first job or building your massage practice. You are quite nervous - the changes you have been through are quite amazing. You have grand visions for a job in a fancy spa that pays you $60-$100 an hour (isn’t that what they said in massage school that massage therapists make?) You tell yourself, this isn’t about the money. You just want to help others. You can live cheaply. You don’t really need much. You cherish your freedom and flexible hours.
You show up to your first job or office, and of course, you are a bit nervous. You take a deep breath and look back at your schooling and say to yourself, “well gosh, I shouldn’t be too nervous. I know where all those muscles are and all of the things to watch for not to do. You console yourself that you actually know a lot, maybe even feeling you know everything.

After a year at working at a Spa that hardly pays you much or struggling to start your practice and not getting very many clients, you start to wonder what the heck did you do by choosing this career? You find that working at the spa wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. You are working more hours than you agreed to because they can’t find anyone to work. You don’t have any benefits or vacation pay, and are starting to feel resentful that you are working for such low pay. If you have your own practice, your ideas of changing the world don’t seem so grand - you can’t pay the bills. Do you go back to work doing some menial job that you know you will hate?
But you stay with it and start learning about marketing, sales, customer service, finances, the therapeutic relationship. You take a part time job to help pay the bills. You join or start your own peer supervision group and find solace in knowing that there are others in the same boat. You start reading and learning. You keep learning new techniques. You keep working with as many clients as you can. You are learning so much about yourself as you go.
You can begin to see that everything that is happening to you is really a reflection of your own beliefs about yourself, but at the same time you think it is all about everyone else- your teachers’ didn’t show you enough, you don’t feel like you know enough, clients are getting more difficult health issues, money is slow to come in. You see clients who have physical health issues and are at a loss to help everyone. What you thought would be fun in helping others, now seems like a drain. You keep giving free massages away and start at a really low rate thinking that it will get you more clients. When someone doesn’t show up, you are disappointed and just think you are out the money- you don’t bother to charge them just thinking that you are doing them a favor because after all- they had a last minute appointment that was much more important.
“well, I thought I knew it all back when I was in massage school, but now I realize there’s actually a few things I don’t know.” You somehow thought clients would just show up at your door begging to get a massage. You just want to be doing the massage part- you don’t know anything about marketing, sales or running a business.

You begin to wonder if you made the right choice in becoming a massage therapist. You now are in about year 3-5. You can’t live like this much longer, yet you hate the thought of giving up what you love doing. You stick with it all and move up the ladder at the spa, getting better hours, more pay, maybe a managers position. Your practice is beginning to finally have ends meet. You are beginning to think about hiring other massage therapists. Your training and experience now brings in even more difficult clients. You begin to understand that healing is really not about the techniques that you have learned. They don’t really work on everyone or as quickly on some people as they do on others. You have worked on many clients with serious health challenges- cancer, mastectomies, serious car accidents. sports injuries. You have watched people with constant headaches for a year, suddenly get rid of them when they quit their job. You see people with chronic pain patterns resolve themselves when they start cleaning up their diet. You see people grieving who have lost their parents or other loved ones. You have seen people with post traumatic stress syndrome from accidents, war and trauma. You stand in awe of what the body, mind, heart and soul can do when they finally truly connect to each other. You learn that healing doesn’t necessarily mean that a person is paid free or disease free. You see that death is an inevitable part of life and can’t be avoided no matter how healthy we keep ourselves. You see that health is really about connecting to our wholeness- something that we always had inside of us but we just didn’t know it. You understand that saving the world is about saving yourself. You understand that healing others is about taking care of and healing yourself.

Your once ‘massage can fix’ all vision is quietly put in it’s place but a new vision has arisen. Knowing your place in the world allows you to be present for others to experience their healing and wholeness - still touching one person at a time - but you know that you don’t even have to touch them physically. Your presence is enough - but the massage is the icing on the cake. You see that the more you think you know about the human body, mind, spirit and healing the less you really know…

But there is a new employee at the spa or you are looking to hire other massage therapists. You wonder if you will continue to be successful because you don’t really know a thing anymore…but that brand new massage graduate must know everything so you don’t have to worry.

(How does this story end for you? )

Posted in Licensing and Legislation, Massage Therapy Jobs, Money issues | No Comments »

The People Pleasing Massage Therapist

I have a theory I am

working on for a book that I call “The Code of the Caretaker”. The theory is that people who are massage therapists and others in the helping professions are driven by the need to please others at the cost of giving up part of themselves.

For massage therapists it shows up in the struggles of building a successful practice in things like:
- Not setting clear cancellation policies: Letting others get away with not paying for their missed appointment at the cost of losing money for the business
-Giving free massages : thinking that is the only way you can get clients in the door
-Giving more of your time in sessions than the alloted time: thinking that you have to take more time to get that knot out or to relieve that pain for the client instead of having lunch
-Thinking doing massage is all about ‘fixing’ others pain. It isn’t. It is about taking care of yourself enough so that you can remain present for another to witness their healing.

These are just a few of the things for starters. What all of these are related to are the ways you sacrifice yourself to please others. It is also called co-dependence.

What we do for others - caretaking, giving up our time and money for others, sacrificing our selves so that others may get massage - often is a ‘code’ of behavior. We are doing for others what we wish someone would do for us.

This deep need to please others comes from wanting to be accepted and appreciated by others. It comes from those wounded places in ourselves that think that we are not good enough just as we are. It often has it’s roots in our family histories where we were taught that having feelings was wrong and that having needs was also wrong. Not having our needs met at an early time in life leads us to think we are not worthy of having those needs met.

So the drama that we create in our lives is an attempt to get those early needs met. So we keep trying to get our needs for attachment, love and acceptance met but sacrificing ourselves thinking it will get us what we need. In truth, as David Rico says in his book “How to be an Adult”

Our problem is not that as children our needs were unmet, but as adults they are still unmourned! The hurt, bereft, betrayed child is still inside of us wanting to cry for what he missed and wanting thereby to let go of the pain and the stressful present neediness he feels in relationships. In fact, neediness itself tells us nothing about how much we need from others; it tells us how much we need to grieve the irrevocably barren past and evoke our inner resources of nurturance

We can only truly “help” (be of service to) others when we have first been helped ourself and have accepted ourselves as the people that we are - with all of our pain and hurts and joy.

As a people pleaser we are also a rescuer - trying to save others from the pain that we ourselves have not yet dealt with. We focus on taking care of others so we don’t have to take a look at this in ourselves. To stop being a rescuer (people pleaser) the only way to do this is to start taking more responsibility for ourselves and doing our own healing. It often is hard for rescuers to see how much they actually need help. When they start to feel their own feelings, it is often easier just to cover them up again and find someone else to take care of. When you are trying to ‘caretake’ others what you are actually saying is that “you are not whole”. “I know more than you do”. “I don’t trust that you can handle this yourself”.
When you are constantly rescuing, you are not taking care of yourself. You fear that if you don’t take care of others that you will be left alone.

Ironically, the thing we often try to give to others is the thing that we ourselves need the most. When you can start to give yourself this first, you will soon win the love and support you need without all of the drama - just by being yourself.

The best way to help others is to be doing what you really want to be doing…Do you want to be working late or taking that last minute client when you were wanting to go home to your family? Do you keep asking for less money than you need from clients as payment? Do you forgive ‘no shows’ or late arrivals by saying “It’s ok and making excuses for others rather than asking for what you need - a no show payment and just giving a late arrival the amount of time left in their alloted time?

This is probably more about what happened to you. No one trusted you or saw you as whole and taught you that being needy and having feelings was wrong.
We act out. We are hurt by others words and actions when they actually have nothing to do with us. Getting to a place of feeling and knowing your own wholeness is a process of learning to become aware of what your emotions are telling you. When you are feeling sadness, anger, frustration or any of the negative emotions, you are feeling those because you are believing the old stories and beliefs. When you are attempting to please everyone, you are actually attempting to control others. You are actually giving your power away.

Gary Zukav speaks of it his book “The Heart of the Soul”

An individual who needs to please is constantly trying to see how others are feeling so that she will know how to be with them. She cannot take their requests and communications at face value. She tries to guess what they are really saying or requesting. That is because she herself, does not communicate what she is feeling, thinking or requesting….If another person is unhappy, she tries to determine how to make that person happy so that she will be more safe….An individual who needs to please, is always tense….
She ignores herself. Because she does not take care of herself, she waits for others to take care of her. She does not feel worthy to ask for what she needs. When she does not get it, she feels resentful. She feels that her devotion-compulsion-to care for others is not reciprocated,…The pain of rejection you seek to avoid goes unexplored, and continues to create the need to please…The goal of pleasing is to avoid experiencing emotions that are too painful or shameful to confront..

The chapter goes on…

But how does that actually apply to building a business and being a massage therapist?
How do you know when you are ‘people pleasing’ or when are you just doing things that you think you need to do to build your practice (like giving free massages)?
If you are giving away your time and you don’t really have it to give. If you are giving away sessions, when you don’t have the money to live….

The difference may not always be clear. Your feelings will tell you. Does your giving make you feel more alive or does it leave you feeling drained?

The thing is that you will probably never really get rid of this but becoming more aware of it you can begin to change. When stressful situations arise, so will your people pleaser most likely.
How do you tell the difference? How do you deal with your “people Pleaser”?

Posted in Building Your Practice, Ethics, Recommended Reading, Starting Your Practice, The Code of the Caretaker, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | 2 Comments »

The Ideal Massage Therapy Job

The Ideal Massage Therapy Job is one that pays you what you need to make to take care of yourself and your family. The Ideal Massage Therapy Job should look something like this…

” 1. $25.00 per hour as a full employee.
2. $25-$45 per hour if you are a sub-contractor as you have to pay your own taxes.
3. 25 hours maximum of actual hands on massage or less.
4. 15 minute increments between appointments
5. Consistent hours.
6. Consistent days off.
7. light phone duty, filing duty or other minor cleaning duties if no clients.
8. Health insurance completely paid for and option to add family members for a fee.
9. Incentives for booking repeat customers
10. Vacation pay no less than 2 weeks a year preferably 4 weeks per year (1 per quarter) to help avoid burnout and injuries.
11. Retirement funding of some sort.

From www.thebodyworker.com

For the most part massage therapy jobs are low paying and do not offer many benefits, but it is possible to find jobs that do pay well. The employers show their respect for massage therapists when they pay them a decent wage and provide benefits.

The other part of this is that massage therapists take those low paying jobs because there aren’t many other choices. This is what is really teaching massage employers how to treat us so they don’t do anything better. People stay in these jobs thinking they don’t have a choice- they do but it may be the most difficult choice they have ever made.

How can we as a profession work to create better paying jobs or teach massage therapists how to start their own business where they can charge more and make more and even hire other therapists to work for them?

Can you imagine a massage therapy job that pays $100,000 a year? or even a massage practice that makes that much? The whole thing is that it is possible but the profession needs to change it’s mindset about this. Schools for one usually tell students not to quit their day job when they are just starting out. Just think about what that is telling massage students - you won’t be able to do well, it will take a long time before you are successful - they are as afraid of the massage profession asking for what they want and are promoting the belief that you won’t be able to make it.

As I have been reading the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” it finally dawned on me how the massage profession is really creating their own reality. Napoleon Hill says if you don’t put yourself into your career full force, you won’t have a chance to be successful. He uses the example of teaching his hearing impaired kid to hear by fully believing in the possibility of it. He also uses the example of sending a troop into war on a ship and dropping them off and burning the ships so there is no way home - they don’t have any other choice but to be successful.

What does your ideal massage job look like? Do you have an ideal massage job? Share your stories either way.

Posted in Massage Therapy Jobs, The Code of the Caretaker, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | 1 Comment »

Defining Deep Tissue Massage

In my last post I touched on how defining massage affects the profession and how we are perceived by the general public. Learning to communicate what we do is the core of creating a successful practice and creating a image for the massage profession.

The way deep tissue massage is defined and experienced by others is one of the best examples.

A few months ago I called to make an appointment at a local spa for a relaxation massage. They asked what kind of massage I wanted and I said I just wanted a really firm relaxation massage. I didn’t want any painful deep tissue techniques. The receptionist said what I was looking for was their special signature massage which included some kind of warm eye mask being applied. I said that sounded fine. When I got there for the massage, the therapists touch was so light I could hardly feel her touch on my skin and she wasn’t engaging the tissue in anyway to create the relaxation I needed. I asked her if she could apply more pressure. She said that would be the deep tissue technique - but she wouldn’t have time to do the eye mask part. I said that was fine. She then proceeded to just do the same thing. She never asked -”Is this enough pressure? Is this what you were looking for?” To make things worse I was so disappointed when I left and when I went to pay for the session, no one asked how my massage was. By that time I was so frustrated I just left thinking I would never go back to that place. But I got home and was still thinking about it and I thought that they just don’t know how to communicate what they are offering or what their therapists are trying to do. I emailed them and I ended up getting a free massage and went in with another therapist and had a great deep relaxation massage - what they think and call deep tissue massage on their menu of services even.

My definition of deep tissue massage comes from 8 years or so in structural integration training with the Zentherapy Institute and going through Rolfing and Hellerwork sessions. Now that in my mind is deep tissue. The deeper muscles of the body are accessed sometimes with a fair amount of pain.

So how we define what we do affects every client and potential client. What do they think they will be getting? What do they want as far as a massage? What has their previous massage experiences been? What do they have in their experience to compare to the session I am giving them? I always ask people what types of massage they have had and try to get an idea of what the pressure feels like to them. Even then we are faced with them being unable to verbalize just what it is that they want for whatever reason - their not wanting to hurt our feelings, their thinking that we know best what ‘they’ should be getting, their lack of experience in getting massage to be able to compare it to other sessions so they know just what they want.

All of these things come into play when trying to build a massage practice and most do not even know how what they do and how they communicate what they do will affect everyone - not just their session with their current client.

I have an exercise I like to tell massage therapists to do who I am working with in peer supervision - go out and search out a new massage therapist online or from the phone book or from getting a referral and actually go and get a massage -even a few massages. This is a great exercise for keeping you in touch with just what it is that you do and learning to provide the service that clients need.

And then there is the what if you don’t do deep tissue or don’t do the deep tissue that hurts and someone is asking you to do that? This is where screening people on the phone and providing enough information on your website comes in handy. If someone gets as far as your table thinking that they want a really deep tissue session and you just don’t do that for whatever reason ( not enough training, don’t define deep tissue as painful, not enough strength or size to work on a larger body) you are faced with having to say “I am sorry. I am not able to do that” and let them leave your table without paying or without doing any work which is a waste of your appointment times. Learning how to describe what you do so that a potential client can figure out if your service will be a match for what you need is also the basis for creating a ‘website that works’ and is all laid out in the free Site Build It! Action Guide.and also in the free Service Sellers Masters Course from SBI!

Posted in Massage Schools/Students, Massage Therapy Jobs, News | No Comments »