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Dating massage clients has in the past been seen as acceptable and almost a way of life when I went to massage school 20 years ago. Teachers dated students. Students dated each other. So it wasn’t anything to think that dating a client would not be acceptable.

As massage becomes more accepted as a profession it is important to start understanding the issues that come up around dating clients. Massage schools are starting to mention it in their classes and some states like here in WA are starting to make it illegal to date clients. In 2006 it was made into a law that massage therapists can not date a client within 2 years of seeing that client. The specifics are outlined in the WAC 246-16-100

The thing is that there are still so many massage therapists out there that don’t think it is a problem to date a client. What happens is that clients come to us for help. That act of seeking help often creates a reenactment of our early relationships with caregivers. They think that they will be taken care of like their parent (s) did or should have. Clients come to us in a vulnerable state and the act of getting a massage which requires that massage clients take their clothes off and let a stranger touch them also creates more vulnerability. To put it simply, clients can easily think and act like we are their parents and they want to recreate that early merging and bonding energy  that occurs that makes them feel safe. It happens in other personal relationships in fact all most all relationships. I can’t actually think of an instance where it doesn’t happen.
What happens is that the early feelings are also ‘remembered’ through the touch that is given in a massage which complicates the matter even more. Touch elicits the bodies feelings.

The therapeutic relationship is created where the client can come in and project their early feelings onto the massage therapist. Some of the ways that it is shown is when clients bring you gifts, offer to do things for you, or think that YOU are the cause of their healing. These are what is called signs of transference.

See also Handling Projection

The Massage Therapeutic Relationship

Transference for massage therapists on www.thebodyworker.com

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One of the most common things for massage therapists to put on their brochures or websites are a list of the many benefits of massage. I also wrote about the benefits of massage on my website www.thebodyworker.com

Personally, I am tired of hearing about the benefits of massage and would like to see massage therapists take this topic to the next level. What do you think that a potential client thinks when they read lists of all of these things? Try putting yourself in your clients shoes -knowing nothing about the body, health or how your muscles work. Massage school has a way of making us forget what it is like to not know anything about muscles or the body. It is the curse of knowledge that is talked about in a book called “Made to SticK“. “We start to forget what it is like to not know what we know.” Like the other day when I got my massage from a local massage therapist who doesn’t know I am a massage therapist started talking about some obscure muscles and calling them by name. A regular person would not know what he is talking about.

What are clients looking for when they are looking for a massage therapist? Someone who can tell them what the benefits of massage are? What someone is usually looking for is a solution to their problem which is usually back pain or some other pain, disease or condition. They don’t really care if massage increases their circulation or relaxes their muscles. Most do not understand the connection between the body and the mind.

The thing is that in order to really educate a client about the benefits of massage, you have to provide much more information than just a list of the benefits of massage. One of the best on the web is Paul Ingram of Vancouver WA and his website saveyourself.ca
His website has over 150 articles that point to research on how massage does help pain or various conditions.

I also just started a page on my other site www.massagetherapycareers.com to collect users experiences of what they think the benefits of massage are or to share their pages on their website about the benefits of massage.

So how do you write or communicate to potential clients what the benefits of massage really are. Following the outline in the book Made to Stick mentioned above:

* Simplicity: the idea must be stripped to its core, and the most important concepts should jump out.
What would you tell someone about massage or what you do if you only had 20 seconds to do so ( or some people call this their elevator speech and give themselves 90 seconds.)

* Unexpectedness: the idea must destroy preconceived notions about something. This forces people to stop, think, and remember.
What are people’s preconceived notions about massage? That it is a luxury. That it is for ‘happy endings’. That it is to expensive. That they don’t need it to take care of themselves.
They are also tired of hearing about the benefits of massage. Do something really different to make your practice stand out. Break a pattern that is seen in the massage profession to be different.
* Concreteness: avoid statistics, use real-world analogies to help people understand complex ideas. Something that is concrete can be examined with your senses.
You can still use statistics but make them understandable.

* Credibility: if people don’t trust you, they’ll ignore you. In some cases, they will be openly hostile, which means they’ll actively try to dispute your message!

* Emotional: information makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Appeal to emotional needs, sometimes even way up on Maslow’s hierarchy.

* Stories: telling a story [gets] people into paying closer attention, and feeling more connected. Remember the Jared Subway commercials?

So how can we make massage more appealing and educate consumers about massage and met them where they are at?
What are the real benefits of massage?

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Massage and chiropractic care is a great example of complementary medicine. Chiropractors work with the alignment of the bones which influence the position of the muscles which influence the tension of the muscles. Massage therapists work with the muscles which when tight, over or under developed create stress and misalignment of the spine.

Many Chiropractors will hire massage therapists to work in their clinics either as employees, subcontractors or sub-leasers of their office space. The relationship between the two can really work together towards a patients healing process.

Working for a chiropractor often brings up many challenges with issues over pay scales, the massage therapists role or skills and other issues.

Chiropractors also seem to have a negative image of being more of a salesman and only out to get money. They are able to see a patient and treat them in a few minutes and they charge high fees for those few minutes. When they hire a massage therapist they are often able to charge high fees to the insurance companies and get paid that amount and seem to be notorious for taking most of that fee and not giving it to the massage therapist. Massage therapists often end up feeling resentful especially when it was not clear that this was the arrangement from the beginning.

If you are a massage therapist who is looking for work in a chiropractic clinic there are many things to look for in finding a respectful chiropractor that you can build a working relationship with. The most obvious thing is to become a client first to see if you agree with their philosophy and methods of healing. So many massage therapist are tempted to just take a job with a chiropractor without first doing their research and determining what they want most. The financial pressures add to this with massage therapists taking jobs that turn out to be not what they were looking for. It is important to take a good look at your values and what you want before looking for a job with a chiropractor or any massage job for that matter. Your values will tell you what action to take. When you start taking actions like working for a chiropractor that does not pay you what you need to make, you start becoming unhappy and start blaming the chiropractor for your less than ideal choices.

The way to approach a chiropractor about a job in massage is to become more like a researcher and collect information first about whether or not you want to work for this person/place. Interview a handful of chiropractors and get adjustment sessions from them. Do you like the way they work? How often do they ask people to come in for sessions? What is your perspective on how often someone who is injured should come in? Is the chiropractor just trying to increase the bill or does the patient really need that treatment? Are their clients getting better? Do they keep coming back? Do they do anything to change their lifestyle and their beliefs about health and healing? or are they still smoking and not exercising and not taking care of themselves?

The other thing that is a common issue is whether or not the massage therapist is considered to be an employee or a subcontractor. This is a legal issue to be determined by an lawyer but in general be concerned if you are told you will be a percentage of the fee which may be considered a kickback. If you are also told what hours you need to work that is usually more of what an employee would need to do.
There isn’t much legal help for the massage profession in learning to figure out if you are supposed to be paid as an employee or are you being confused to be a subcontractor. Business owners tend to look at the massage therapist as a subcontractor so they don’t have to pay for employee benefits and pay taxes for that employee.

1. Make sure you are getting paid what you are worth
2. Be clear about what you are responsible for
3. Get clear on what you want and be prepared to ask for what you want
4. Join or form a support group for you to be able to talk about your issues

See also: subcontractor vs employee

Massage Business

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There are not any clear statistics of how long a massage therapist lasts in this profession and there aren’t any studies on the reasons why people leave the massage profession, but burnout is definitely one of them.

Burnout can show up in many different ways. You may feel drained after working with clients. You may feel stressed when you don’t have enough clients to make ends meet. You feel fatigued and may develop physical injuries or other conditions that prohibit you from practicing massage. You think that your work is not valuable and you don’t charge enough so you end up feeling resentful. You never seem to get enough clients to make ends meet. You never quite get the hang of marketing your practice and asking for what you want - clients.

No matter what the cause or the issues around burnout - isn’t it ironic that massage therapists whose role is usually to assist in helping others to avoid burnout in their own profession are plagued by it themselves?

So many massage therapists come into the massage profession thinking that it will make them happier to be ‘helping’ others. They think that in doing so they will feel better about themselves and have more meaningful work. While massage can do that in some ways, it is more about the massage therapists perspective on their work and how the massage therapist takes care of themselves so that they can work with others.

The thing is why don’t massage therapists do what they need to do for themselves? Most massage therapists are taught to get massage themselves and to eat right and to exercise. They are taught to tell clients that and to support clients on their path to being healthy. The problem really lies in the basic core beliefs of the person. ( It is really not just about massage therapists but anyone who is not getting what they want in their lives.)

Your actions (or lack of actions in this case) reflect your basic beliefs about yourself that were created in your early childhood and infancy in your family of origins. When you know you should be taking care of yourself but are not there is usually something more going on there. Most massage therapists know what they need to be doing - eating right, exercising, getting regular massage, getting your needs met outside your practice, taking vacations, etc.

Are you rebelling and trying to control at least one thing in your life? Are you wanting someone else to do it for you (on a conscious or unconscious level)? Are you eating the wrong foods and not exercising because you are seeking comfort and not wanting to do things that are difficult?

Whatever the reason for not taking care of yourself, you can begin to become aware of the way you take care of yourself by participating in peer supervision groups and sharing your stories and histories to learn more about the shadow side of helping.

www.thebodyworker.com

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New Year’s is the time of change and opportunity. We keep trying to make New Year’s resolutions to make changes in our lives - to lose weight, make more money, get out of debt, be in more loving relationships. All of these things that we try to change outside of ourselves keeps us actually repeating the same habits, the same cycles.

Until you take a look at your belief system and what is going on inside - what beliefs you have that keep the cycles going - history will keep repeating itself.

Your beliefs are what cause you to think and feel in certain ways. Your beliefs are created from the earliest moments of life when our basic needs are ignored or confusing to our parents or caregiver. From the first time our earliest needs are not met by our parents, we begin to create mechanisms to protect ourselves. Our personalities start developing. We stop crying or cry louder. As infants we are totally dependent on parents for everything. When our needs are not met we start thinking that we are not good enough or deserving enough to have this needs met. We begin to think that we are not competent to get the love we need. We learn that others are unreliable and untrustworthy. We learn that others are not accessible and willing to respond. We then will put ourselves in similar situations trying to prove that we are not worthy. We are not able to see any other aspect of difficult or challenging situations. We develop beliefs about ourself all through our life. Our lives become mostly lived in an unconscious way from these old beliefs that keep getting reinforced by our choices. We live our lives trying to get our unconscious needs met through our work, relationships and what we do. Our neediness really shows up in many different ways. As adults they tell us little of what we really need but more about how much we need to grieve not ever having gotten those needs met.

The thing is that these beliefs we develop - I am not good enough, smart enough or not worthy of love and nurturing are not true - but still we go on living like they were true. We don’t know any other way. And they feel so real we just take them for granted.

Your beliefs become values that are important to you and the way you live your life. They are based on our unconscious (and often untrue) beliefs. When your values are challenged or questioned they usually result in an emotional response. We react to protect our beliefs even as unconscious as they might be. Our egos spring into action to preserve our painful places from being hurt again. We stop thinking about others and only are thinking about our own needs. Our deep needs for being right take over and we fear being vulnerable.

Because so much of what we believe is really unconscious the only way we have of knowing that we are working from a false belief is the way we feel. Your feelings will tell you what you are thinking (consciously and unconsciously). If you are feeling love, joy, happiness you are on the right track. If you are feeling anger, frustration, depression you are reacting from a false belief.
Since you can’t really change how you feel by saying something like - I just want to feel happy when you are not happy, the best way to change how you feel is to change your thoughts.

So we have our feelings that are telling us what we are thinking and believing. Our feelings are also what propel us into action. If you are acting from a thought that just isn’t true, your actions are out of integrity with your being. Life becomes a struggle or life is hard.

So instead of making a new years resolution this year - think about making a new years action - what action are you going to take to get you where you want to be? Where do you want to be? 15 pounds lighter, thousands of dollars richer or experiencing a loving relationship - all of these things that we want so badly are all a result of our thoughts. So if you don’t have what you want in your life -start challenging your thoughts. Start paying attention to your feelings so they can start to tell you what you are thinking.

The actions don’t have to be moving the world in one day. What one thing can you do to get more massage clients today? Are you thinking about working with a special population? Make a note to contact someone in that sector - you don’t even have to contact them today- you can do that tomorrow. Just take it one step at a time and do what you can do.
There are many books and websites out there on things to do to promote your practice. The thing that is really missing from these programs is the support in doing so. So many massage therapists are out there thinking they have to do it all alone and they ‘forget’ to ask for help or use the ‘I don’t have the money’ excuse not to get the help they need.

So many new years resolutions fail because of not taking the necessary steps.