Working with psychologists can be another targeted market for promoting your massage business. Massage is very helpful in working with the conditions of anxiety and depression. A meta-analysis done a few years ago shows that massage is actually very effective in working with depression and anxiety.
You can use that as the beginning of your marketing campaign to start networking with psychologists to build your massage business. There is also a lot that you need to know when working with people in general about emotions and massage. People don’t have to be seeing a psychologist to have emotions come up on the massage table. In massage school in my first deep tissue massage class I learned first hand what deep tissue work can do and later in my training in structural integration. It isn’t only deep work that can bring up emotions but just about any type of massage. It all depends really on how you handle the emotional response.
Some of the things I learned from my training in structural integration (Zentherapy) were:
- Just stop and don’t say anything. Hold the clients wrist and place one hand on their solar plexus which can be sooting.
- Ask if they want you to stop the session or continue on.
- Don’t say anything or ask anything. If you tell someone that the sky is green and the grass is blue when they are in the middle of an emotional release they might believe you.
- Just stay there being present.
- You don’t have to comfort them.
- Let them know it is OK to have emotions come up and that there is nothing wrong with it.
- Refer them to a psychologist if they aren’t already seeing one.
- Just because emotions do come up and people do have to go to a psychologist doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad thing. It is just part of the process of healing
There are many trainings that you can take to be more at ease in dealing with emotions. The first thing really is to be more comfortable in your own feelings and emotions. You yourself may need therapy to help you with your own emotions that get triggered when others are in pain or having feelings.
The key is in knowing your role as a massage therapist and not try to be a psychologist or even try to help people with their emotions. Your focus and scope of practice are the body which of course is the source of feelings.
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