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? )
Leave a Reply