Category Archives: Rambling

Is Your Massage Practice Sending the Wrong Message?

Here’s an important article about a negative experience that a client had while on the table: https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/dealing-with-a-fat-shaming-massage-therapist/

In a previous rant, I said that massage therapists causing pain—and making their clients think it was necessary—was one of the only massage-related phenomena that truly made me angry. Well, this counts as causing pain. If someone comes to me with a unique human body, anything that I say or do to stigmatize that person for their shape, or size, or sounds, or smell, is causing harm. They’ll leave that experience thinking, “I was wrong for putting myself in that vulnerable position.” In other words, they trusted us with their body, and we breached that trust.

Maybe you would never think of commenting directly on someone’s weight, which is great! With that as a given, I’d like to direct your attention to something that we’ve learned from psychological and medical studies: The power of words, and the power of symbols in general. How we speak, and even the signs and pictures in our offices, can communicate a powerful message of brokenness or wholeness to our clients. ... continue reading.

Dealing With Your Massage-Related Injuries

You may have heard me make the claim that I’m injury-free. “I’ve been using my weird body mechanics and low tables for a decade, and I don’t have any pain to show for it.” How could that be possible? How can a massage therapist avoid all injury?

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It… may have been an exaggeration. What I mean to say is that, while I’m CONSTANTLY injuring myself in new and interesting ways, I don’t have any chronic pain to show for it. It’s a matter of giving each new ache or pain the reverence they deserve, actually treating the injuries instead of ignoring them, and adapting to allow those parts to recover.

Let’s look at the last two months. I got a twinge in my thumb while doing some weird little swirling flourish thing during petrissage (I have no memory of commanding my hands to do this), and I started having pain in my wrist after allowing it to extend to an extreme angle during a high-pressure move. ... continue reading.