www.thebodyworker.com

I don’t know if it is just me or if it’s my writing or my sites, but I can’t tell you the number of struggling massage therapists who contact me telling me how much they are struggling to build a massage practice. I know I struggled for most of my career until I started writing and creating websites and making money from doing that.

With so much information out there like all of the books and programs and articles and resources - how couls anyone really be struggling? What is it that makes the difference between someone who struggles along day to day as a massage therapist and one who is highly successful? And then I hear so many massage therapist saying this unbelieveable statement

It isn’t about the money

So why are you then driving yourself around and around in circles, beating yourself up because you don’t have enough clients to make ends meet? If money isn’t important why are you working two jobs in addition to trying to build a practice and working for free or working low paying jobs in massage therapy just to pay the rent? If money wasn’t so important why are you charging for your massages at all?

And then there are those massage therapists complaining about things like “our school didn’t have an externship - that would have guaranteed me a job in massage’ or ‘the insurance industry isn’t paying me what I was told they would’ or my employer just takes advantage of me and only pays me $15 an hour when I deserve so much more. Then there are the “I told them everything I knew about massage and they still wouldn’t get a massage or I gave them all the exercises to do and they didn’t want to do them.”

The reason why so many massage therapist fail to build a successful business has more to do with their beliefs and the ego. Your ego is the unconscious part of you - it is all of your beliefs that are really running the show and creating the struggle for you. Your ego is telling you that you aren’t worthy of charging what you are worth. It is the one who keeps complaining of all of the things outside of yourself- it’s the school’s fault, it’s the economy’s fault - it isn’t your fault! Actually it isn’t really your fault. It is a result of your early childhood upbringing where your beliefs about yourself were created. While it isn’t about blaming parents and caregivers - it is about becoming more conscious of these beliefs that were created at such an early age. The way to get in touch with your beliefs is about getting in touch with what you are feeling. What are you actually feeling the second before you complain about something else as the cause of your struggling? That is where the heart of getting out of the struggling lies! In feeling the pain, grief, saddness. Those are the feelings of the ego. Whenever you are feeling anything but love, joy and happiness you can know it is the work of the ego.

So how does one release the hold the ego has on you ? Just acknowledging the fact that you know it is your ego is the first part. But sometimes it takes time to realize that. It may be a few days later and you can say “oh there is was the other day when I was complaining that I didn’t have any clients”. The more you can become aware of the fact and practice becoming aware then one day you will be about to complain or try to give someone advice and you’ll notice that it is the ego trying to cover up a feeling and you may even be able to just feel the feeling first without having to act on it.

If we are complaining that our businesses are slow because of the economy or because we think that people just don’t want to take responsibility for themselves we can know it is the ego sending us a message. We can begin to challenge our beliefs about ourselves and learn that what we see in others or complain about is really a reflection of a part of ourselves. Somewhere inside what you see in others is really what is going on inside of you. Is it true? is what Byron Katie asks in her book “Loving What is: Four Questions that can change your life”. Is it true that it is the economy to blame for your slow business? 100% true beyond a doubt, beyond anything else and is your business slow totally 100% because of the economy? (or could it be because you didn’t market your business or do the things you need to do?)

For more resources:

Why we fail?

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The Dali Lama was just in town for the weekend promoting what he calls seeds of compassion. There were about 5 days of talks to mainly kids of all ages on compassion and how to be more compassionate toward others. I didn’t get to go to any of the events but heard him speak on TV and through his webcasts which you can find at seedsofcompassion.org.

One of the most interesting things he said was that more women should be leaders because compassion comes easier for them than it does for men because men are so caught up in their aggressive tendencies and egos! He also talked about how nothing can come of war and that talking is needed to end the differences between people. He said something about that the leaders of the world should come together and spend a few weeks on vacations together with their families so that they could see that we are all humans.

Compassion is such an interesting and complex subject. A few years ago I studied and read all that I came across on compassion - books and articles online.

What does it mean to be compassionate? Compassion is the feeling of wanting to relieve the pain and suffering and others. It goes a step beyond empathy which is feeling the feelings of another and acknowledging them in another. With compassion we move to make the other feel differently. Compassion requires that we move outside of ourselves and forget about ourselves. That requires that we be strong enough inside of ourselves to do that. If we do that and sacrifice our needs being met over another when we aren’t strong enough inside, it can end up in compassion fatigue (burnout.)

The first thing in being kind to another lies in learning to be kind to ourselves. In learning to serve others, we will often be confronted by our own suffering. It provides for many opportunities for growth and understanding. Helping others will reveal where we ourselves need helping and can lead to the path of healing.

When we first start to act compassionately, it usually is to fill some of our own needs for attention, recognition and approval. We seek what we didn’t get early in life and it is usually unconsciously. We believed those stories we were told and that we told ourself about how we were not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough until we didn’t know the difference between the truth and what is real. We developed our egos to make us feel better about ourselves when our insides were suffering and wanting the world and our lives to be different. The stories we tell ourselves are revealed when we move to help others compassionately. We feel that we can never do enough or do the right thing. We are led into our own suffering to show us the place inside us that need healing. Taking the path can lead us to authentic compassion or egoless compassion where we can come to a place of just giving to receive and to the place where all giving is receiving.

In Oprah’s recent new show “The Big Give” one of the things that keeps coming up is that when the contestants go to give away all the money they often fail to find out what the family or organization is really needing and they give what they think would be fun or nice to give. They are giving what makes them feel best rather than what others really need. Like one guy gave a party to a family that cost $500 when the family could hardly pay the rent. It lasted for an afternoon, but the $500 would have paid the bills to help reduce the stress of the family. Some of the most memorable gifts were just gifts of time and small gifts of appreciation.

When we can keep our own needs to give in check and find out what people truly need by listening to them and their stories we find authentic compassion. As we learn to open ourselves to our own suffering and feel our own pain we open ourselves more to be present with others in their suffering thereby witnessing the pain which makes it go away. I know it seems contradictory. I have been trying to fix clients for the better part of 20 years of being in practice as a massage therapist.  Once I was able to go beyond my own needs for fixing which were appreciation and a need for connection, I could see that all the scientific solutions for all of the techniques I have learned and applied suddenly laced any real importance other than just being able to have something to do with the clients.  When I could see beneath the surface and acknowledge my own feelings that were underneath the need to help and fix, I could be still enough to see that clients really had their own power to heal and if given the chance to feel their own feelings and make contact with their true essence a deeper healing could occur.  The techniques became just a way to help people feel.  The techniques became the path for uncovering the seed of compassion that were the real key to health and healing.

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As a massage therapist, creating a solid framework for you business is like creating a solid foundation for a building. The clearer and deeper you go, the taller and larger the building you can build.

So many massage therapists avoid creating policies like cancellation policies, late fees, no show policies and when they do they have a difficult time enforcing them.

By creating these policies it will let your client become more informed about who you are and what you do. They can then decide if you are a good match for them to work with. It also gives you the opportunity to choose who you want to work with and create your ideal massage practice. I struggled with these things too for years as a massage therapist thinking it was what I needed to do to get and keep clients. I thought that by not charging for missed appointments or working longer on people when they are late for an appointment that I was making an extra effort for them to like me and keep coming as a client. I thought I needed to take everyone as a client regardless of whether or not they fit in with my ideal client. In doing that for more than 15 years, I can now see that it was part of the causes for my burnout in the mid 90’s. Giving away your time, money and energy is just downright draining. Period. You may think it is doing the client a favor and helping them more.

I wrote about this previously and mentioned a readers poll done by Massage Magazine last year about their cancellation policies and the ways they enforce their cancellation policies. There is of course such a wide variety of ways and answers.

The thing is to find out what works best for you in supporting you as a business owner and as a person. On one hand you need to make money to pay the bills. Since the number of clients that you can see in one day is limited and having just one client not show up or cancel at the last minute can effect your income significantly. Enforcing the policy sometimes and not on others can be confusing to the clients. As Dr Phil says - “We teach people how to treat us.

While things do happen to people - getting stuck in traffic, sick kids, sick themselves, issues at work - who is responsible for the clients actions? Them or you?

Setting strict cancellation policies may end the relationship. The question is do you really want someone as a client who does not respect you or your time?

Creating well thought out policies can help you create a stronger massage practice.

-What is your policy for when someone cancels with less than 24 or even 48 hours?

- What is your policy for working on someone who arrives late to their appointment? Do you work longer if you have the time? Or do you stay to the alloted time frame?

-What do you do when someone just does not show up period. They just forgot for whatever reason. Then when you call them, they are not apologetic but blame you for not calling to remind them or say they don’t want to pay for something that they aren’t receiving?

- Do you have a cancellation policy that is clearly written and placed on your website and intake form? Do you verbally state your cancellation policy?

There are a variety of ways to handle these situations:

• Charge a minimum fee like $35 or half your session fee for a no show.
• Charge your whole session fee for a missed appointment.
• Choose to work on someone who is late for the full appointment time if you have the time.
• Give people one session to forget and then remind them of the policy and charge them for any further missed appointments.
• Don’t charge anything or say anything and you just eat the cost for the lost time and energy.  (How does that one feel?!)
• Allow for extra-ordinary circumstances such as sickness, deaths in the family, real emergencies.

I also just did a quick search for ‘massage cancellation policies and found a variety of ways that people are communicating their policies some of which are very interesting with one person even apologizing for having to enforce the policy.

Here are some examples that I just copied off some websites ( I know- don’t get upset.)

Everyone’s time is valuable, that’s why we have to follow a few simple rules.

In today’s hectic world unplanned issues come up for all of us. We recognize this fact, but we respectfully request that you cancel your scheduled appointment by phone or e-mail a minimum of 24 hours in advance. That way the open slot can be filled with someone needing an appointment.

Failing two scheduled appointments in a row or three appointments within six months will result in a scheduling hold for Massage Appointments being placed on your account. This means you will not be able to schedule appointments with the Massage Therapy department.

You can also just do a search yourself and use some of the examples you find to create your own policy.  The most important thing to think about is what you need to create a solid massage business.
I guess I am always amazed when people think they won’t have to pay for a missed appointment or have any obligation what so ever for their commitment (which just happened to me only for the second time in 20 years which is why I am writing about this again!) I think that people do feel bad for missing appointments but it may just be too hard to admit that they do. The feeling will overwhelm them and move them into a defense mode - blaming you, blaming traffic, blaming their boss rather than accepting responsibility. Most doctors have cancellation policies. If you book a flight and miss the flight you have to pay a large fee usually. If you get tickets to a symphony and miss it or are late, you don’t get reimbursed.

While creating these polices will be a very personal thing and enforcing them another just keep in mind that what you do is also affecting the massage profession as a whole.  Letting people get away with no shows, late cancellations and late arrivals is teaching people how to treat us (massage therapists) as a whole.  What policy do you need in place to create a successful and rewarding massage practice and profession?

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Since many have not been exposed much to peer supervision or peer supervision groups, I am going to be writing as much as I can about them. There are many forms of peer supervision. You can work one on one with an experienced therapist who is trained in peer supervision or you can work in a group setting with the peer supervisor as the facilitator. This type of sessions that meet with a individual peer supervisor includes a fee for service.
Once you understand the concepts of peer supervision and how to work in a peer supervision group, you can start your own group by inviting your fellow massage therapists in your neighborhood or just others that you know. You don’t have to pay for this kind of regular meeting unless there is a fee for the meeting room. You can hire a peer supervisor to come in for specific things like learning to bill for insurance or to look more deeply at your helping issues or whatever is needed by the group.

The basic things to understand are things like this isn’t therapy. It isn’t one person telling another what to do. It is learning to listen and provide empathy in order for others to grow on their own in a supportive group. It is basically what happens on your massage table with clients when you remain present with them and learn to become aware of when you are fixing others on a grander scale. I have written a few pages on my website www.massagepracticebuilder.com, about how to set up and participate in a peer supervision group that you can read yourself, but to really learn how to work in a peer group it is necessary to work with an experienced massage peer supervisor who has at least 5 years experience in doing massage and preferably the same amount of time participating in peer supervision themselves.

One of my basic rules which I have actually adopted from Parker Palmer’s groups which he calls ‘circles of trust’ is “No fixing, no saving, no setting each other straight.” When I inform a new group member of this they often are left wondering what they are going to say or do in a peer supervision group.

A peer supervision group topics is really determined by the participants and their needs. The first few minutes of the group are spent checking in with each person to see how much time they would like to have to speak in that session. While there may not be enough time for everyone to speak, the others often learn just as much if not more from the person sharing their issue or story. ( an in person peer group size is usually from 3-8 people.)

After starting and running my own unofficial and free of charge online peer supervision group (massage_practice_builder at Yahoo Groups ) in the form of an online discussion group (which I started in about 2000 and used for sending out my newsletter and now is open discussions ), I have realized that there are so many lurkers and the group is dominated by a few people who like to speak out that so many are missing out that I have decided to start a private online peer supervision group where participation will be mandatory (well to a certain extent.) The other thing I am seeing from getting regular requests for email consultations is that there are many massage therapists out there who are in rural areas and don’t have a network of support so again the online peer supervision group will fill that need. Having a smaller group will allow participants to get to know each other better and be able to talk about the deeper issues that surround their practice. I will be facilitating the group and also writing a regular newsletter to stimulate conversation. I will be charging a small fee for my time and 20 years experience as a massage therapist and 5 years in peer supervision. To find out more and apply to join please see my website www.massagepracticebuilder.com .

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Peer Supervision is really a confusing term to understand. For the longest time I fought using the words and tried to call it everything but peer supervision - mastermind groups, mentoring, support groups.

The thing is that the best way to really understand what peer supervision is about is to experience it first hand. Once I participated and understood then I said - yes it is peer supervision.

Of course in my opinion every massage therapist needs to participate in peer supervision groups and I have been thinking about what needs to be done to get it included in legal requirements of becoming a massage therapist - it is that important.

A massage therapist needs peer supervision if they want to become the best massage therapist that they can be. I wrote up some information on my website about who needs peer supervision.

While I think that people who have survived the 5 years in business mark as a massage therapist are drawn to peer supervision more, it can be really helpful for a massage therapist who is still in school or just starting out to get the assistance that they need in setting up and learning to run a massage business. Most people starting out are too focused on things like money and getting clients and think that they don’t need peer supervision. They also don’t really understand articles like “In the Service of Life” or books like “how can I help by Ram Dass. I know I didn’t when I was first starting out and there was no way that anyone could tell me that that was me in the article and book. It isn’t until one has struggled long enough or starts to feel burned out that the seek out peer supervision when it is the exact thing that can help prevent it and help a massage practice flourish.

So I am starting an online peer supervision group that you can read more about at my website - www.massagepracticebuilder.com. It won’t be quite the same as meeting in person because you get so much from hearing people’s voices and seeing people’s physical reaction, but it will be a way that we can start learning and sharing from each other in a much deeper way to help protect the future of the massage profession.

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