Every so often in massage you see someone who you think might be having visceral rather than muscular pain. Since my X-ray vision is on the blink, and my psychic abilities have never worked when picking next week’s lottery numbers, I tell folks who have a symptom that might be something else to go see … Continue reading Is It a Muscle or?
Working at a spa is one of the most rewarding and challenging environments for a massage therapist – the pressures of running on time, keeping within guidelines and getting along with a bunch of other therapists – and their egos – all while trying to learn protocols and make a living. I’ve always found spas … Continue reading Spa Olympics
Once, on the morning of my first day of work as a massage therapist at a large day spa, I woke up with a cold. Should I go into work sick? Breathing on clients, close contact, hands all over people? I did not want to get people sick. But I couldn’t “flake” out my first … Continue reading Sick for the Holidays
There’s nothing like a Sunday morning continuing education class, and this was no exception. Massage therapists who do these classes are the true blues, the ones who take it seriously, the ones who figure they might learn something even though they went to school and have been doing massage for a few years. This was … Continue reading What’s in a CEU?
While practicing our brains out in massage school, my classmates and I enjoyed designing new day spas in our notebooks and trying to frame our concept of the ultimate massage experience. Neophytes to massage and business, we were quite earnest, quite naïve and quite unintentionally amusing. One afternoon I very thoughtfully drew a spa layout … Continue reading Inspiration Spa & Massage & Rub Emporium
Every week at the chiropractic clinic where I work, we have a clinic-wide meeting. And at one of these recent meetings, an interesting topic came up: What kind of plan did we have for snow days? Would the LMPs be willing to come in? Which ones? Would it be worth it even if many of … Continue reading Snow and Irony
We have minutes, centimeters, inches and cups and all kinds of ways of measuring things, but we massage therapists don’t have a great way to measure tension. How tense is someone during final exams? What about IRS audits? Or a divorce? It seems that if we can measure everything in life we should have some … Continue reading Four In-Laws, Two Parents and One Wedding
It is surely obvious to most therapists in the massage world for more than five minutes that two subjects are never discussed or commented on during one’s precious break – and one of them is politics. And I admit to being one of those massage therapists who manages to say “Mmmmm” if someone comes in … Continue reading Word about Politics.. and Massage
Clients often ask me how many times they should be doing an exercise to build strength. Often they are coming from a more-is-better place – the gym – and they are confused. I don’t always feel comfortable answering that question, either. How many repetitions of an exercise are fine may well depend on what the … Continue reading How Many Repetitions Are Enough?
Being my alter ego as I often am, Superwoman, I hate to admit I went “Wii!” — and Wii!-ed myself right into a lot of pain. Yes, there are lots of warnings on the box, and yes, I am not 16 anymore. But it was so much fun hitting fake homeruns and beating the girls … Continue reading Cheeky Little Ligament!