Who does the healing-the massage therapist or the client?

One of the most challenging parts of becoming a massage therapist is the way we think about doing massage or being a massage therapist. People come in to us with a pain, stress or injury and want our attention - want us to fix it. We are often taught in massage school to do just that with the techniques that we learn and the knowledge we acquire. All of this learning and knowing can go to a massage therapists head and make them start thinking that they are the ones’ that are doing the healing for the client. It is really confusing to figure out - Who does the healing?

I believe that our bodies are really just a messenger of something deeper that is needing attention. Figuring out what needs attending to is really the challenge. After receiving 4 years of Integrative Manual Therapy which addresses the internal workings of the body, I learned that there is much more to healing. My IMT practitioner would treat my internal organs such as my liver, spleen, intestines and it would relieve the pain in my neck and back. But even with that - who is doing the healing?

Our bodies really are a reflection of our thoughts and beliefs. Healing and changing on a deeper internal level is something only you can do for yourself - not any client.

The book “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitale takes it to the extremes. It is a book about a psychologist who healed a whole mental ward at a hospital by working on himself - a method called Ho’oponopono meaning ‘to make right’ or to ‘rectify’ that is practiced by ancient Hawaiians. He calls it cleaning - cleaning out all of those old thoughts and beliefs that keep you from living a connected inspired life. The memories we hold- conscious and more importantly the unconscious ones are just old programs that aren’t working any more. You can sometimes tell when you are running an old program by the way you feel. If you are feeling anything but love and joy- it is an old program. But it is also not a sure way of knowing as our feelings can come from other places too.

‘Zero Limits’ is the place where we are free of these old programs - “No memories. No Identity. Nothing but the Divine” he says in the book. Part of the problem is that we don’t ever really know if something is coming from our mind and past or the Divine.

Our intentions can also be confusing. We have the intention of building a massage practice but we struggle. When you are intending to do something you keep fighting what actually is which takes you out of the present moment. It blocks inspiration which is the true connection with our ‘zero limits’.

Most of what happens in our life is only a projection of our programs.

When we are faced with clients who are in pain he says the question to ask is “What’s going on inside of me that shows up as this person’s back pain?”

Thinking about this possibility makes my head hurt it is so mind boggling. I have thought about this in the past. If people are coming to us in pain are we really doing a service for them by ‘taking it away’ or trying to take it away with our massage techniques? It is taking total responsibility for everything in your life. These people are in your life to show you just that.

“You are acting from either memory or inspiration. Memory is thinking; inspiration is allowing. Most of us by far are living out of memories. We are unconscious to them because we are basically unconscious period.

The divine sends a message to you and if your memories are playing you won’t hear it.

From Divinity, you will receive inspiration. An inspiration is from the Divine, but a memory is a program in the collective unconscious of humankind. A program is like a belief, a programming that we share with others when we notice it in others. Our challenge is to clear all the programs so we are back to zero state, where inspiration can come.’

Basically all this guy (Dr Hew Len) did was say “I am sorry and I love you” to heal himself.

Our thinking that we can heal others with what we do is really the ego attempts to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. While there isn’t anything wrong with that for the most part because our egos are also showing us what parts of us need the most healing, there is much more to healing or being a healer. I actually dislike it when people call themselves a healer. I won’t go to anyone who thinks or says that about themselves.

Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More (Hardcover)
by Joe Vitale

The Science of Being Well - How our thoughts create everything in our life including our physical symptoms and health or lack of health.

Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling by Wayne W. Dyer-Inspiration, Dyer writes, is the opposite of motivation and goal-oriented thinking, the latter, “grabbing an idea and carrying it through to an acceptable conclusion.” Inspiration, on the other hand, is when “an idea has taken hold of us from the invisible reality of Spirit.” To Dyer, getting rid of ego in all its manifestations is the first step to connecting with the power of inspiration.

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

Your Ideal Massage Client

So many massage therapists seem to be going about getting clients in the wrong way - by advertising and trying to ‘find’ clients who want them. This is like searching for a needle in the haystack.

Figuring out who your ideal client is will help you narrow down your focus and start attracting clients that you want.

Ken Evoy in his Ebook “Service Seller’s Masters Course” talks about how to do this more effectively.

“People are searching for information and solutions so success begins with quality, relevant content. Start where your visitors are and then everything falls into place. The process boils down to these essential steps: 1. Consider your service business from your client’s point of view. What niche do you occupy? What problems do you solve?:….Download the Ebook to get the rest if you are interested

You can create a general profile including things like: age, location, athletes, pregnant women, corporate chair massage, events, gender or include other demographics and narrow down a niche.

Just saying that you want to work on everyone, while it may seem like it gives you more opportunities, it also makes it harder to find someone because it is a much wider pool of people to try to market to.

Get inside your potential clients shoes (and head)?

How do people find a massage therapist? Actually go out and try this yourself! It is a great way to get in touch with what your clients have to go through to find someone who is good and that they can trust. First they may ask their friends or family for a referral. They may ask their doctor or other health care provider for a reference. They might look in the phone book, but I would surmise that most look online. People search for ‘massage, your city’ or search blindly ‘find a massage therapist’. People who are looking for you are the best and easiest clients to get.

Trying blindly to find people by sending out mailings or doing other advertising may work but if people don’t need a massage - they won’t really care. Find people who need the massage and the other part of this which I read in a book by Lynn Grodzki called “Build Your Ideal Private Practice” (which is written for psychotherapists) takes it even a step further.

Identify your Ideal Client (exercise). Create a profile of your ideal client and share it conversationally with new clients. It will help them understand your approach and your expectations, and show them how to “get their money’s worth” or increase the value they receive from their time in therapy. This one step can help you think in a more focused way about the direction of your practice. Fill in these sentence stems:

My Ideal Client appreciates

My Ideal Client Values

My ideal client understands

My ideal client agrees to

Creating a vision of your ideal client will help you to focus your marketing and will also help you find people who are nourishing to work on. That way you have a better chance of being successful as well as having a rewarding practice that will last as long as you need it to.

Sometimes just starting out, you don’t know who you really want to work on as far as what group of people. You learn by trying different things and working on different people and noticing how you feel when you work on each one. Notice the contrast in how you feel. Do you feel drained working on that client who all they do is complain about their boss or all they do is complain about their spouse? How do you feel after working on someone in chronic pain who has tried every doctor with no results? Your feelings will tell you if you are working on a client who will help further your career or will working on them take too much of your energy away and leave you feeling drained.

While it isn’t always as easily done as it it said, it is a process of learning to listen to your internal guidance system - your feelings. If you ignore your feelings they will get repressed and will usually turn into emotions that usually are negative or destructive.

This is exactly what building a website using Site Build it! (SBI!)will do for you- By clarifying who your ideal client is, you can convey it in a website and show clients your expertise in massage. People will understand who you are and will be able to make a more informed decision about their healthcare. The SBI! process will take you step by step through the process of identifying your ideal client and will also help you learn about what clients are wanting by what keywords they are finding you through. When you create a SBI! site you are using the law of attraction and helping people who are looking for massage in your area to find someone who can help resolve their problem- pain, stress, injury or whatever. And that person will just happen to be you. When people find a website by searching for the one online by whatever keywords they use and they find your site, they are already impressed and think they have found you and don’t have to worry about people giving a sales pitch. The come in feeling good about themselves by finding you. You then can use the website to create enough content and information that will let them know that you are an expert in what you do. You can set up an email newsletter and blog to keep potential readers interested by giving them more information. You can write some free informational reports on using massage with various diseases and conditions and collect the email address of those who are interested so you can contact them with more information and keep educating them. Since they found you online they must have some interest in health and massage. You have a greater chance of getting this reader to become a regular client - one who comes once or twice a week for years (figure out what that is really worth!)
You won’t have to sell anyone on your massage. They will be calling you and wanting only you. And when you can put this all together into a website, it will also be come clearer in all of your communications with clients. If you are doing yellow pages ads, newspaper ads, brochures, teaching workshops, speaking to special populations, talking with other health care providers - all of these methods of advertising/marketing will be so much more effective when you can follow up with these people and get them to go to your website. Any advertising/marketing done without a website is wasted money!

Got it? or what are your questions still?

Posted in Building Your Practice, Peer Supervision, Recommended Reading, Starting Your Practice, Websites for Massage therapists | No Comments »

Think and Grow Rich for Massage Therapists

“Think and Grow Rich” is the timeless classic by Napoleon Hill written in 1937. I hadn’t read it until a few weeks ago and now am writing the “Think and Grow Rich for massage therapists” based on this book. As I was reading and researching I did come across some interesting findings one of which is that there are various versions of the original classic. I found this out from reading the first part of a new book by Ester and Jerry Hicks called “The Astonishing Power of Emotions”. They mentioned that they were being interviewed for the movie “The Secret” and somehow or another got cut out in the end. They think they got cut out because they focus on the concept of vibrations and how your thoughts and feelings carry different vibrations. They talked about how “Think and Grow Rich” original version got the word vibration taken out of it too. The movie “The Secret” doesn’t tell you what the secret is just like the edited versions of “Think and Grow Rich” didn’t focus on the actual ’secret’.

The Secret is the vibration of the feelings and emotions that you have that tell you what you are thinking. I’ll get into that in another post.

One of the first things that “Think and Grow Rich” talks about is having a passionate determination. In the first chapter he says:

Thoughts are things and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches, or other material objects.”

He talks about how having this ‘burning desire’ and a definite purpose will drive you to success. He gave a few examples such as a ship taking soldiers into battle and dropping them off somewhere and the ships being burned so they couldn’t leave, leading the men to be more determined to succeed.

After reading about being determined and having a purpose, I realized that the massage profession itself is keeping massage therapists from believing that they can be successful in this business. Most massage schools will tell students to not quit your day job when just starting out. This is telling people that they won’t be successful!!!!
I am sure they rationalize it by saying you have to be realistic - but what is that really. Nothing more than their own beliefs. So massage schools don’t even believe in what they are doing to prepare a student enough that they can jump right into creating a full time practice. Sure it takes time to build a practice, but you have to be prepared to go the distance. You have to be willing to do what it takes. You have to believe in yourself enough to not go back and take the giant leap.

That’s the way I did it 18 years ago. I actually quit my job before I even graduated from massage school as I couldn’t stand it anymore. (Actually I was so miserable they laid me off so I could collect unemployment!) I finished massage school and went right to work setting up my practice in a health club with a friend of mine right out of massage school. I never looked back. It was sink or swim…and since I am such a good swimmer - I dove head first into it all not knowing what I was really getting into - but I knew I loved the whole concept of being healthy and working with people.

So the massage profession itself is showing how it doesn’t believe in itself. How else does the profession actually hurt us and hold us back? By not standing up to the plate and defining the profession? By not setting standards of education? More blog posts to come!

Posted in Building Your Practice, Massage Schools/Students, Recommended Reading, Starting Your Practice, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | 1 Comment »

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 | 6 Comments »

Four Hour Work week for massage therapists

Everyone has been raving about this new book called the “Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris. I finally got it and read most of it and while there were a few good things in it, it really isn’t anything new.

The thing that struck me though is that it still sounds like he thinks of his work as work where I for one have never felt like doing massage or now writing ever felt like work. Some of the tricks he talks about to get out of doing something seem just that- like tricks - not quite deceitful but almost. Like he said he won the championship for kickboxing by finding two loopholes in the rules which allowed him to use dehydrating techniques to weigh in at a lower weight class and then rehydrate before the match and weigh almost 30 pounds more than his opponents. He also pushed his opponents off of the platform because there was a rule that said if someone went off 3x the other person would win. The bulk of the book is about tactics like that to get ahead in business.

Some of the things that he did point out that were quite interesting is the idea that who ever created the 8 hour day and how is it that ALL jobs - no matter what the type - require 8 hours a day to complete????

His idea that we all should be striving for happiness or ‘following your bliss’ or as he says excitement is what Site Build It! is all about but I would take it even a step farther and say -follow what makes you feel the most alive!

We get stuck in dead end jobs and just put up with it thinking that is the way it is all supposed to be. We keep trying to rationalize staying in abusive jobs that add to the feeling of deadness and boredom in our lives.

I already knew about not watching the news as he suggests and stop checking email 20x an hour and using automated responses to email to take care of some or most of your business details. That is what SBI! is all about.

The one big question he suggests that you ask yourself often during the day is “Am I being productive or just active?”

He also suggests focusing on the 20% of your clients who make you the most money and also weed out any problem clients who take up most of your time.

All of his suggestions are coming from a big corporation perspective- whether you work for one or run a business yourself. Applying them to a massage business may seem like you are causing more problems by turning clients away but I have found that the clearer I get about the kind of client that I want to work with, the busier my practice gets and the more I make which allows me to help others more.

He does make mention of a service business (of which massage therapy is included in that) and says that you should think about “converting your expertise into a shippable hard good to escape the limits of a per hour based model”. I would take that even farther and add that it doesn’t even have to be a hard good. Google Adsense is here which will allow you to write about a topic that you love and are an expert in and just get paid regularly for that.

He does have a few other good ideas for streamlining a business and taking a look at your dreams - but Site Build It! takes it way above and beyond some of his ideas and helps you brainstorm a business concept and takes you step by step -building an online empire that you can operate from anywhere in the world!

Posted in Building Your Practice, Massage Marketing, Recommended Reading, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | No Comments »