One of my gripes about the massage profession and the process of professional massage licensing is the fact that the National Certification Board of Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) requires that massage students take classes in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and understand how the meridians work in the body. Just a few years ago there was only one test and that required knowing the meridians.
While I am all for TCM and go to acupuncturists myself for many various ailments - can you really learn enough about the meridians in a weekend workshop to be able to know what to do to work with them? Is it really necessary for massage therapists to know about meridians to have a successful massage practice?
To me TCM is a lifestyle and lifelong learning process. It takes a few years to be proficient in something like this. I personally do not anyone working on my meridians after taking a weekend workshop.
While the NCBTMB also has another exam where they don’t require having to know meridians they call the other exam - the National Certification in Therapeutic Massage. You don’t have to know about meridians but you do have to know about posture and alignment. That to me is what a bodyworker knows since most of my extensive training (about 6 years of my 20 years in the massage profession) were spent learning structural integration. I became a bodyworker after that. The test that requires knowing the meridians is called the National Certification in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. So apparently just because you know the meridians you can call your self a bodyworker.
The whole thing is very confusing because the profession has no clear definition of what the terms massage or bodywork even mean.
Now here is the thing - If you want to study meridians and TCM please so so and study it with all of your heart. But don’t make me learn it or have anything to do with it. I have no interest in it or have the time (1 year or more) to put into learning something like that. It is not needed to practice massage successfully.
Yes it can help you if you are interested in it but making it a requirement is beyond ridiculous. If you are a TCM practitioner I am not saying your work is not valid or important so please don’t take this personally.
The whole problem lies in the not knowing what is really needed to be a successful massage therapist. From what I understand the NCBTMB does do surveys on what classes people have taken and they ask if people have studied meridians. Of course they have studied it because they made it be a requirement! Is it necessary? NO.
Basic massage skills do not require knowing the meridians or anything about them or any branch of traditional Chinese medicine.
One of the challenges of creating an effective website is writing quality content for your website. In order for people to really understand what it is that you do and what massage really does, it is necessary to inform them through writing content and providing that information through your website. What people are looking for is a solution to their problem. Their problem is usually some type of pain or stress.
I just had a new client call yesterday with an IT band problem. The thing he asked me was ‘Do you know about IT band issues? Yes I reassured him and went on to tell him more about IT bands and my experience in doing massage. That will be one of my next articles for my website - IT bands and their influence on posture etc.
If you aren’t a writer you don’t really have to worry about that. Just write the way you talk to people. Your writing will develop as you do it. There are so many resources online that you can use to write your content too. I have been updating the pathology section and medical massage guides to link to the many articles and research on various topics. Just read some of the articles and start putting together your thoughts on various diseases and conditions and how touch and massage influence the body and the mind and you will soon have a few hundred articles.
This is what I have been doing with my clinic website www.massageseattle.net. They aren’t any lengthy articles although I will be doing some longer ones and selling them to people just like Paul Ingram of www.vancouvermassage.ca has done. He is to the point that he can’t even take any new clients.
And what if your area of the country is still behind the times a bit and you think that many people don’t have internet access, do some research using the searchit tool ( it takes a bit of playing around with at first to figure out how to use -just follow the help sections) to see just how many people are searching for massage in your area. You may be surprised. Even if there aren’t thousands like there are here in the Seattle area - there are some and people will come to you from farther away if they think that you are the one they will feel safest with and trust the most. Your site needs to be on the top results of Google AND have what people are looking for. Just getting tot the top of Google is the first part. Getting people to click on your listing AND make the phone call is what creating content will help you achieve.
So as I continue to build pages and write new short articles each week which takes me maybe a half an hour at most, my practice continues to get about 5 new clients a week. I can’t even take many more for this month but I will continue to do this so I don’t have any slow times anymore like I used to. When I am busy it is hard to keep doing the marketing I need to do because I am well -busy!
Here are some topics to write about and the places on my website where you can find the resouces:
What this does is it helps set you above all of the other massage therapists out there with websites that are just a simple calling card. It also helps attract search engines as well as readers. When you start getting enough traffic you can also make money from these articles either by referring people to books, other affiliate programs or even using adsense as you not everyone will become your client. People will be finding your site from other areas etc and may have different needs but it is important to be able to have additional streams of income for your massage practice. To learn more about how writing content helps you to build your business see this section on Site Build it! about creating content.
That should be enough to get you started. You can post some of your articles here to get feedback on them or provide a link to your site to get feedback on them. It will also help to read others examples and share your own with others for inspiration.
What other profession hires employees and pays them minimum wage when they don’t have a (massage) client?
I was just thinking about that as I was writing my Ebook “Finding a Job in Massage” and talking to my massage therapist who works at a spa.
People who want jobs in massage just want to do massage and don’t want to be involved in marketing or running the business but there isn’t any way around it really. The massage they give and the service they provide as a massage employee can make or break the business. They are an essential part of the business yet they are only paid minimum wage or slightly higher when they aren’t giving a massage.
What other professions do that? Lawyers? Plumbers? Nurses? Physical Therapists? The closest comparison as far as job description would probably be Physical Therapists. But they can work on a few people an hour.
Massage is unique in that you can only see one person at a time? What is that worth?
Why do massage therapists put up with allowing an employer to pay them two different rates of pay? The only other profession I could think of was for hair salons or nail salons maybe.
The massage employer is thinking that they have to pay the massage employee less because they don’t have the money coming in without a client there - so that is the bottom line - who should bear the financial responsibility for that massage therapist not having a client? The massage therapist or the massage employee?
I personally think it should be the massage employers responsibility. If they can’t afford to pay the massage therapist the same rate of pay for down time they just need to make sure that there isn’t any down time. But why do massage therapists bear the responsibility? Does it increase the massage therapists interest in getting and keeping clients because they can make more if they have clients obviously? While I am sure everyone responds differently -do people who take jobs in massage really want to be doing those client building projects? I really doubt it unless they are just working until they can set up their own business.
And yes it does cost money to have an employee and get them clients which needs to be reflected in the price of the massage. How do you put value on what a massage therapist really does since they are physically limited in the number of massages that they can do in one week/month/year?
No wonder it is hard for massage therapists to get respect from the public and other healthcare providers!
As Dr Phil says “We teach people how to treat us”.
When you learn about self care in massage school or read current articles on self care for massage professionals they teach proper body mechanics, proper posture, eat right, exercise, meditate or do some type of movement and of course getting regular massage to help stay grounded. While these things can help, they are really just the tip of the iceberg - the external components of self care. But knowing what things to do for self care and doing them are usually two different things. What leads you to take action or not take action is the underlying unconscious beliefs about whether you are worthy or need self care.
The best thing you can do to take care of yourself is to become more conscious of your unmet needs and repressed/suppressed feelings so that you can be more present in your massage sessions for your clients. That is what they pay you for really. Your unmet needs and old emotions are what get projected onto others and onto clients in the form of counter-transference. I have written about countertransference before here.
Your unmet needs and old emotions are projected into your practice, your money issues and your personal relationships. Self care that addresses these issues and helps you to become more aware of these issues can often reduce the physical stress of doing massage. The more you take care of yourself in that way, the more confident you become in asking for what you need and creating boundaries to take care of yourself in the client/massage therapist relationship.
Being financially responsible is one such method of self care which usually is not mentioned in self care classes/articles. Having the money that you need to live and run your business is the highest form of self care possible. The other way to take care of yourself is taking care of your personal needs for appreciation, love and nurturing. When you combine the two things you won’t have to worry about body mechanics or how hard you work on clients or working more than the agreed upon time.
Helping has a way of bringing up our unmet needs. It shows up in counter-transference. The reasons why massage therapists want to help others is usually filled with unconscious unmet needs and old feelings. Countertransference influences the client interactions and the healing process sometimes hindering it. When you are in a state of countertransference , projecting your old issues and feelings onto a client it can cause you to lose the objectivity you need to see the client clearly and hear the client clearly.
In simple terms, projection happens when you are not aware of your feelings or needs so you ‘project’ them onto someone else. Projections can cause reactions such as always giving advice to a client. To become more present means to be able to feel the feeling that is causing the projection (are you following this? It is hard to understand since it is unconscious.)
Remember - this is an unconscious process. Everyone is unconscious most of the time. Since it is unconscious you are not aware of what you are really doing. Becoming more conscious is a very complex process. We live our lives with many blind spots. Some people won’t even believe they are doing something unconsciously because it seems so real. It is real.
The way to track your thoughts and beliefs is through your feelings and becoming more aware of them.
Supervision is one such way of interaction that helps you to become more self aware. Supervision is not someone telling you what to do in the regular definition of supervision in the workplace. Supervision is the process of working with a more experienced massage therapist in order to understand your practice issues more and help you become more aware of yourself. You can learn more about the process of supervision on the website.
Working with a skilled psychologist can also take you deeper into your old patterns of behaving onto can do wonders for your massage practice and personal life. Since all relationships start in transference and the therapeutic relationship has a way of intensifying that transference it is important to find out more about your unmet needs. For the most part all we can do is grieve the loss of never having had them met as it is too late to get them met. Then it is a matter of taking personal responsibility for yourself and actions. The more you take care of yourself, your unmet needs and deal with the emotions, the more present you are able to be in your sessions and be there for clients. The more you take care of your internal self the easier it is to do those external self care things like setting boundaries around your time and financial needs.
Transference is one of the most important concepts to understand for a massage therapist but the least understood and talked about. It is usually covered in a few hour workshop in massage school. Transference is a very complex phenomenon that comes from the psychology profession. The reason that it is so important to understand is the fact that the process of transference is actually what can lead a person to becoming more aware of their thoughts and issues. Transference is what heals.
Ben Benjamin author of the book “The Ethics of Touch” defines transference as this:
Clients defer to the practitioner’s judgment because they desire to be helped by an authority figure that possesses greater knowledge, healing ability and, therefore, power.
Since a power differential exists in any health care relationship, the client may be inclined to respond to the practitioner as he or she would other authority figures, and in doing so, may recreate elements of similar past relationships. This situation is known as transference, a normal, unconscious phenomenon that appears during a therapeutic process. Professional helping relationships usually have a strong transference element in which the parent-child relationship is unconsciously re-established. In transference, unresolved needs, feelings and issues from childhood are transferred onto the helper.
Elliott Greene author of the book “The Psychology of the Body” writes this:
Transference is the displacement or transfer of feeling, thoughts, and behaviors originally related to a significant person, such as a parent, onto someone else, such as the massage therapist. It is a common reaction of clients to their therapists. A bit of transference happens in most relationships in which there is feeling present. Usually, transference-related feelings were formed in the past, so it could be said that these feelings transfer from the past to the present. In transference then, the client relates to the therapist and present moment as if the therapist were the significant person. In this sense, transference is a projection of the internal drama of the client, and the therapist is assigned a particularly important role and script.”
Nina McIntosh in her book “The Educated Heart” says this about Transference.
“Transference may sound complex and unusual, but it’s actually part of our everyday life even outside of our offices. It’s normal for any of us to bring the past into our present relationship. In fact it happens all the time. They are magnified ina manual therapy session because of the intimacy of the setting, the clients altered state and the way that the practitioner/client roles mimic those of the parent/child.”"Transference isn’t a rational process.
Terrie Yardly-Nohr in her book “Ethics for Massage Therapists” says this:
“The very nature of the therapeutic relationship allows transference to happen easily. Bodywork can trigger a variety of emotions from clients such as anger, frustration, sadness, fear, or joy. These feelings are generally the result of some emotion the client felt in the past towards another person.”
Cidalia Paiva in her book “Keeping the Professional Promise” says this:
“Transference refers to those situations where the patient projects onto the therapist old feelings or attitudes they had about significant people in their past, often parental figures. Transference is often referred to as ‘the unreal relationship in therapy’. The roots of transference are most often found in early childhood, and it constitutes a repetition of past conflicts with significant people in our lives.
So what is transference then?
Simply put, transference happens when there is difference in authority that resembles the parent-child relationship. The client who comes to a massage therapist receives the nurturing that they never received as a child and puts the massage therapist on a pedestal. The nurturing touch brings out the old feelings and emotions that were repressed or suppressed in early childhood. The client unconsciously begins to see the massage therapist as the nurturing parent and it can bring up feelings of attachment that were not resolved growing up. It is when the client unconsciously thinks that the massage therapist is their mother or father or other significant caretaker. Note the word - UNCONSCIOUS.
Attachment is what happens between a mother and child that allows the child to grow and build self esteem. The infant knows learns about themselves through touch. There are various stages of attachment that occur in child development where the infant feels like they are one with the mother. (And of course they once were in eutero.) As a child grows they learn that they are separate from the mother. This is where things often go astray. If a secure attachment is not formed in their early part of life, they will have life long challenges that result from that.
Massage and nurturing touch re-enacts the process of development. I actually think this is also why spa treatments are so popular with the use of healing waters and body wraps. Getting regular massage and developing a relationship with a massage therapist in which the client feels nurtured and cared for as if they were receiving it from their mothers can help heal the grief of not ever getting those early childhood needs met.
Transference is really important yet difficult to understand. The best way to understand it is to experience it. You may or may not have had some of these feelings arise when you were getting a massage from someone:
Feeling like you don’t want the massage to ever end
Not wanting to leave the office
Seeing the massage therapist outside of the office and wanting to follow them where ever they go.
Or from the other aspect seeing it in your clients:
bringing you flowers or special gifts
hearing about people’s personal problems
being asked to make exceptions in scheduling and payment options.
inviting you out socially as a friend
asking you out on a date or making other advances on you.
Or if you ever worked with a psychologist or mental health professional in therapy, you can come to learn more about transference from seeing your own. Becoming aware of your projections in a therapy setting can be a painful experience. It is a matter of getting a look at your unconscious thoughts through relationship. It can be a very eye-opening process and really lasts a lifetime.
While some of these things may just seem like normal things, it is difficult to know the difference. You probably won’t know the difference.
What you can do is create a code of ethics and a set of policies and procedures for your practice that will help you make proper decisions in any situation. It is having boundaries that teach people when they are in transference that you are separate from them is what will allow the person to heal and build self esteem.
The other thing about transference is that it not only occurs in these helping types of relationships but almost all relationships. Friendships, significant others, family members and the person who checks you out at the grocery store who seems to ‘look just like your mother”.
Reading and learning everything you can about transference can also help. These are some of my favorite books:
