Tag Archives: massage classes

Nail It!

We massage therapists pride ourselves on our abilities in touch – and that’s why I am so surprised when clients give me an earful about fingernails!

This is a touchy issue for massage therapists – we figure we’re doing things like avoiding perfumes and warming our oils so we can facilitate relaxation in our clients. And then they complain about fingernails?

Yup.

Actual Client Complaint Case #1: This guy must have been doing construction on the side or something. His fingernails were cracked and broken and his hands were covered with calluses. It was like being sanded!

Case #2: My massage started with a scrape-y hangnail across my feet. For the next hour, every time the masseuse did a stroke, I was dreading a re-appearance of The Claw!

Case #3: I’m slipping under the sheets and I hear the therapist out in the hallway clipping her nails. She comes in and jams these sharp edges in every time she works a knot. I expected to see little red half-moons all over my skin!

Case #4: Is it possible to do a massage with acrylic nails? These things were long – and she was more concerned with breaking one than doing a good job. It was the lightest massage of my life. I can put oil on myself, thank you.

Well, I am sure it was not these folks intention to make their fingernails the central memory of their massages. Most massage therapists know to keep nails trimmed, clean and gently filed and beveled to a soft edge. It perhaps slipped their minds those days…

…So I am off to check my manicure!

Treat Your Own Kinks…

While we massage therapists are busy rubbing away knots, an industry has been developing of how-to guides to assist clients between office visits.

The publications start with “Treat Your Own…” and I have always been a fan of the guru self-treatment book, Robin McKenzie’s “Treat Your Own Neck.”

When I worked in a busy office, I finally put McKenzie’s book on a chain by my desk because it would somehow disappear, especially when we all got busy and crabby.

I am also a fan of Jim Johnson’s “Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis” a great guide to the basics of home therapy.

Clients recently diagnosed with stenosis understandably have a massive freak-out, especially if they read on-line medical websites about paralysis and loss of continence. Johnson takes the fear out and breaks it down to simple, regular stretching and strengthening.

Before I recommend any of these books to a client, I buy them, read them, and do them. I might just learn something new, and as long as the book advice appears sound, I’ll recommend it to clients. These publications are written by very experienced doctors, physical therapists or massage therapists, but I’ve seen a couple of pubs, and especially videos, I would call off-beat.

A check of the web turned up troves of “Treat Your Own….’’ books for shoulders, knees, carpal, shoulders, backs, etc.

It gives people with these conditions a step-up to consistent therapy. Human nature being what it is, few of us will do “knees to chest” six times, six times a day in Johnson’s stenosis book.

But a massage therapist or client who does draw knees to chest at least once a day will feel better than those who never do it. My personal favorites are those who stretch only during nine supervised physical therapy visits. A go-to book comes in handy!

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Predictions on Massage Therapy

I love the rag-mags when they have a page of psychic predictions, from the end of the world to when some celebrity will be married. But do we in massage therapy really need psychics to make spot-on predictions?

I’ve been working up my own list of the future of massage therapy – wink, wink. Here’s my crystal ball:

10. Studies will continue to show that massage is good for people’s health and wellness.

9. Massage is just as good whether done on a table, chair or porch swing.

8. No matter how sophisticated a machine is, it will not replace hands-on massage.

7. The more people use computers, the more work for massage therapists.

6. People will continue to train as massage therapists even though they don’t like people. It’s a learning experience.

5. The Industry will continue to lobby for short vocational training and minimal certification to keep labor costs down for storefront franchises.

4. Professional organizations will continue to press for making massage therapy a college degree, even though most therapists don’t want that.

3. Medical organizations will incorporate massage therapy as soon as they can bill insurance for it without hiring trained staff.

2. Someday we will use massage sheet s that are completely organic and will not stain.

And the Number ONE prediction:

Massage therapists who listen and care will always have work, joy and satisfaction, no matter where or how they practice.

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Negative Pressure Massage

Massage therapists learn many ways to push on trigger points and stuck areas. I’ve often wanted to see if pulling on these spots would help open them up.

Yet, of course, we are taught that pulling is bad body mechanics. Massage therapists who pull rather than push don’t last long on the job. They develop carpal-like syndromes and spinal issues very quickly. Pulling also draws energy from the client toward the therapist, a big no-no.

In thinking about these issues, I have been looking at two techniques that allow a massage therapist to “pull” without fear of injury. One method is quite old. It is called “furling,” and allows gathering skin, often with adipose and fascia, between the fingers to release adhesions and increase blood flow.

Ida Rolf added some lift to furling, calling the technique skin rolling and introducing a way to loosen sections of abnormal tightness, adhesions and scarring.

The way I have seen these techniques used is to furl or roll away from the therapist, often over a large area of muscular dysfunction such as the lats, or over the shoulder or hip rotators.

But the true act of pull has eluded us therapists, until the introduction of massage cupping. Once sort of exotic, cupping classes have brought the method to more therapists. In this technique, the therapist uses soft silicone cups and massage oil. The cups are compressed slightly to create a light vacuum along lubricated skin.

The vacuum area moves with the therapist’s hands, following muscle, fascia or lymphatic pathways. I have found the cups to be intensely relieving to a large number of conditions such as sluggish lymph, scarring, scarring with adhesions, etc. The simple act of gently lifting the skin activates lymph movement.

Lots of “stuck” tissues found in fibromyalgia, repetitive over-use and traumatic injury seem to respond well.

As my long-distance-runner client said: “Boy, this treatment really sucks.”

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Best Intentions? Massage and Permission

Is it OK to stretch a client’s adductors? What if the client is female, the therapist male, and the wind is whistling through openings in the drape?

Oh my, the topics that come up for question in a massage clinic. One of my friends had a complaint from the husband of a couple whom had simultaneous massages. The female client had a massage from a male therapist, and during the massage he stretched her adductors.

The client complained to her husband that there was something wrong about it. The therapist stretched her, said nothing before, during and after the stretch. She could feel an air gap between her draping and her crotch. First, it is unusual for people to complain about such tactics in a massage. Often the response is simply to never use that clinic or spa again.

My friend noted that she received the complaint because the husband was a long-time client and they had a good professional relationship. When my therapist friend talked to the male therapist about the massage, he just said that he felt her adductors needed stretching and did not consider it a big deal. The client said nothing, and the massage continued as usual. It can happen that we may have the best of intentions in a massage, but our efforts are interpreted differently. It is also quite possible that someone doing a massage is not being honest about intentions.

The therapist may be using the massage as an opportunity to play games, such as intimidation games, sexual games, etc. Those games – and the appearance of games – have no place on a massage table under any circumstances. A good way to make sure your intentions are clear is to ask permission of the client first. Explain what you want to do, why, and emphasize the person’s draping will not be revealing. Then wait for an audible answer and accept the answer. No means no.

My friend decided not to call in the male therapist, a contractor, again to her clinic. His answers about the massage were not satisfying, and she told him that. Hopefully he was not playing games and learned something from the experience. It cost him an opportunity to work.

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Massage and the Past Perfect

The Adventures of Ana Log, Massage Therapist

My alter ego in my massage therapist career has been “Ana Log.” She is a heroine of old school practices that simplify life instead of clouding it.

Contrary to trends out there in e-land, Ana Log has her own schedule book, written in pencil, to give her the flexibility a good therapist needs. She doesn’t want to do 10 hours of massage in one day, then two the next. Her antique paper day planner keeps all of her appointments, client names and phone numbers and daily/weekly/monthly trends in check. To look something up, she turns a page. She even takes lunch a few times a week.

Ana Log also keeps her muse, a clock with a second hand, in her therapy room. Ana can count stretches, trigger point treatments and coordinate breath-work without being too obvious about it. The clock makes just enough noise to be able to tune into the seconds count when turned away from it.

Ana’s brother, whose alter ego is “Mr. IT Excel,” loves to point out that all of these things can be programmed in to a good scheduling software and “make life easier.” All of Ana’s preferences can be handled by her automated device of choice, “making her life easier.”

“P-shaw” says Ana, with the vigor of a 19^th century ink-stained author. That would involve learning how those programs work and then applying it. And what happens if the cloud is clouded? Or the device is dropped? Or the charger is at home? And what about sunspots?

Mr. IT Excel, whose life involves countless hours of making things easier by adding things to programs, and then even more hours of making those changes actually work as promised, then extracting viruses that try to wreck those programs and then changing the “shaky” platforms those devices dislike (etc., etc., etc.) insists that devices do “make life easier.”

Says Ana Log: “Remember when Dad said if he wanted to talk to someone he didn’t need a computer to do it? He would just pick up a phone or go see the guy?”

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Massage Therapists Do the Math

Perhaps you have seen the ads in the massage therapist trade publications: What would happen if you could see four clients in an hour?

Folks in the massage biz are not often associated with great math skills. Four clients in a single hour? As a private practice therapist, heck, I figure could make a lot more money. The bottom line is a tough talk for most massage therapists. We work hard, yet few of us make the mythical “six figures.” It’s the same elusive goal of others in hard-working, hands-on, self-businesses such as hair stylists, estheticians and realtors.

Most of us make our bills OK, but few achieve the income that we feel we deserve based on our combination of effort, hours worked, and costs of training and licensing. The three times the money carrot sure made me look further into the pitch. Aha, this ad is for acupuncture school.

That’s enticing. Learn a very similar technique that requires a lot less sweat. More clients, more income, and yes, in most states you get to call yourself a doctor. Hmmmm. Then there is the tuition, the time spent and the apprentice time and licensing tests and costs. Could it work? How many acupuncturists have to take three months off for carpal?

That’s way too much math for me. I cut to the chase. I asked the acupuncturist I share space with. He has been in practice for more than 30 years.

My officemate looked at me in horror. After graduation, he had no idea how to book a client, let alone manage a practice. For years he worked as a contractor for other acupuncturists – at about half of the $50 session fee. It didn’t seem very fair then, of course now that he knows about office rent, insurance, ads, etc. he has a different perspective.

So he saw about 30 patients a week for others, and tried to see at least 20 people a week in his own practice. That’s 50 plus treatments a week, about double what I can do. “I hit the wall,” he said. “I burned myself out. It took a long time to be able to come back and feel good about doing treatments again.”

Well, fudgesticks.

We talked a bit about burnout and why. I have to admit I really didn’t see it at first. He explained that it takes a lot out of an acupuncturist to perform treatments that address specific complaints. “It’s the energy,” he said. “It’s all about the energy.”

You know, I totally get that math.

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Practice Punts

Massage therapists are not all alike when it comes to their understanding of how to build a practice. I have heard lots of explanations as to why bookings stay low, very few explanations of why they are full.

How to develop a practice is an art just as much as massage. It requires some close self-observation and sometimes an outside hand to help therapists along. Often when I catch an episode of some show like Salon Take-over or Bar Rescue or Hotel Impossible, I am reminded very quickly of what it takes to have a consistent practice.

If you catch one of these shows the clichés are numerous. The owner wants help to make their business pay, but they don’t want to hear anything critical of their skills. The help is interested in making money, but stymied and discouraged by unsolved problems. Often there is a sacred cow: a lazy staffer or manager whom the owner wants to avoid confronting – or an unworkable idea that the manager/owner won’t drop. The bottom line is that the bank wants its money, not excuses.

I enjoy these shows as a kind of self-therapy even though the environments are very different. Most massage therapists work alone. They are the owner, staff, manager and investor. The outlay to start a massage practice tends to be small, and there are very few therapists who make anywhere near “six-figures” when it comes to gross income.

In common, though, are some basic universal truths. The formula for success is not a secret requiring an expensive marketing class or a practice coach. It is, just like the roaches in the kitchen of a failing restaurant, right in front of a person with eyes to see.

Yes, darn it, arrive on time. Be clean. Do not wear jeans. Listen to the client. If it is a return client, go over your notes before they arrive. No notes? Where are they? Why be paid professionally if you don’t practice like a professional? Do you report your cash? And yes, a warm room and a clean heart.

No shortcuts.

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Dizzy Chair Massage

A client stopped in last week a bit worried about her neck. She had been on vacation, feeling very tight in the neck and shoulders and stopped for a chair massage.
Eager to get rid of the tension, she asked for a 30-minute massage. Toward the end of the massage, she started to feel faint and had an overall feeling of serious un-wellness.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “I felt terrible. It took several minutes of just sitting to feel like I was getting better.”
She wanted to know if I had any idea why she felt so bad.
Oh boy. Great. Just ask me. I have never seen anyone get sick from a chair massage. During classes the instructors have mentioned that rarely a few folks might experience a low blood sugar after a chair massage. But that’s really it.
And my client had eaten about a half-hour before her massage.
I suggested that if the massage was the cause of her spell, perhaps the headrest was in a tilted back or too far forward position, compressing her suboccipitals.
But the client said the position of the face cradle felt fine.
Another problem might have been if the therapist was using pressure directly into the neck, rather than at an oblique angle, and pressed on the vertebral artery. Stepping off the massage chair and sitting down in a chair for a few minutes would dissipate the feelings.
But heck, I really have no idea because I wasn’t there. Her experience was odd.
Her therapist, she said, was very attentive and very surprised that she didn’t feel well. She sat with her, gave her some water, and offered to call an ambulance. My client said no, she would be fine. And in a few minutes she was. But what happened?
I would like to know if any therapists have ever seen this sort of reaction from a chair massage. Or is it possible it was not related to the massage?
Here’s my very speculative guess as to what happened, barring other causes. This particular client has a very prominent bilateral knot at C2-C3, a souvenir of an old car accident. If pressure was placed directly into the neck from a standing position, it is possible the vertebral artery was compressed. Vaso-compression can cause a myriad of sickly feelings.
My only experience with this was with another therapist when I worked at a spa. Her client came out of her session and had to sit in the hallway for about 20 minutes to recover. She also had a knotty laminal groove near C-3.
After we both helped the client recover and she left, the other therapist and I went over the work done on the neck. My therapist co-worker had stood over the table and with her arms straight down had pressed directly down into the knot in an effort to release it, a method she used on other knots in the back and legs.
This stance is not only bad for the client; it also loads tension on the therapist at about C-6-C-7. Done often enough, it can create numb arms and hands in the therapist as well as unpleasant symptoms in the client.
My co-worker, of course, had just adapted a way of treating knots in one area to another and wasn’t very studied on neck release techniques. I showed her how to treat the neck with oblique angles, anywhere from 35 to 55 degrees to the prone client. This technique, of course, requires the therapist to bend knees and unlock joints in the arms and back.
The oblique approach is healthy body mechanics for the therapist and client as well, and it applies to chair or table treatments. Oblique pressure rises from the feet pushing on the floor, with the joints relaxed rather than locked. Basic? Yes.

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