Educating Clients
One of the best ways to market your massage practice or other service
business is to Educate your clients. Educating them is more than just
telling them what you think they should do. Education is a process of
"drawing out" someone, exposing them to different ideas and concepts,
inspiring them to look further inside and out side themselves and allowing them
to make their own decision based on that information.
We often think that educating is just a matter of hammering information into
someone - repeating concepts until they see your point of view. What we
experienced in formal schooling is not education. It is more of a process
of just sharing what information we thought was true at the time. Most
schooling requires that we give up ourselves to comply with the rules and
regulations
Definitions in Webster's Dictionary:
Educate: to bring up or guide the powers of, as a child; to develop and cultivate, whether physically, mentally or morally, but more commonly limited to the mental activities or senses.
Education: properly a drawing forth, implies not so much the communication of knowledge as the discipline of the intellect, the establishment of the principles, and the regulation of the heart. |
Most information and knowledge is really inaccurate and often not the
truth. It is just our opinion and belief about the way things are.
We feel that we just need information to feel secure. The more
information, the better we feel.
Educating clients to me is more of a process of sharing our stories and what
we think we know without being attached to the outcome. The best education
happens when a person is allowed to take information in and make it their
own. They "draw forth" an experience or idea that is their very
own.
How can we draw the client out and allow them to feel and know what it is
that they need to heal?
Just look at some of the things we thought we knew from our history...
working with cancer patients was contraindicated 10 year ago, shamans work the
body from the core out to the extremities - the exact opposite of swedish
massage, working on the pectoral muscles in women was contraindicated when I
first started 17 years ago. Most of the things that I initially learned in
massage school were thrown out when I learned Zentherapy. One type of
massage says one way of doing things while another says the
opposite.
Who is right? They all are.
How can we create a profession of massage therapists based on wisdom rather
than knowledge?
How can we step out of the box and take the profession beyond to the next
realm of healing through becoming authentic?
How can we "educate" or draw out massage therapists to really focus
on each individual massage student (and current therapist) to become the best
they can be, bringing out their unique talents and experiences rather than
forcing Swedish massage down their throats?
I don't really have an answer, but I know that what we do have in place is
inadequate.
