Ian and students pose for a picture

New Massage Sloth CE Workshops!

Continuing Education,

I’m back to teaching! I’m offering my 16 credit hour course for massage therapists called “Myofascial Swedish” twice in the coming months: In Pensacola, FL on August 5-6, and in Huntsville, AL on September 9-10. You can find out more (and sign up right online) by going here: https://massagesloth.com/ce/ This course is NCBTMB, Florida, and New York approved.

What is Myofascial Swedish? It’s a way for Swedish practitioners to slow down and add some fascial drag to their techniques. It’s a way for myofascial practitioners to get their flow back and bring some feel-good Swedish spirit to their routine. No matter your approach, we’ll practice using gravity to drive our techniques, and we’ll focus on bringing the body together instead of dividing it apart. When you leave you’ll have useful new routines for working with pain conditions in the back, shoulder, jaw, and hips (and everything you need to make your own routines). I’d love to answer questions about it below, so hit me up in the comments! ... continue reading.

Guided Meditation for Sleep (with soothing massage voice)

Let me know what you think! More like this? Stick to massage, for Heaven’s sake? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Video: Self-massage for Singers

I’ve spent the last year going slightly mad, and also watching lots of vocal coaching on YouTube. Over that time I’ve been using self-massage to keep my throat happy and healthy, which I talk about here:

Mostly this is an excuse to get back into gear with an easy video, but I’d love feedback from singers! For massage therapists: If you’ve got singers, public speakers, Twitch streamers, or other professionals who give their vocal cords frequent high-intensity workouts, just realize that you don’t need to target any muscles specifically, and that work in the area doesn’t need to be a direct confrontation. By engaging the superficial fascia on and around the anterior neck and putting it into traction, you’re sending powerful stretch signals to the spinal cord, both from the fascia, and from the embedded muscles. Just by dragging skin up along the track of the SCMs, you’re putting the extrinsic laryngeal muscles under traction. By going slowly here, you can send a signal that these muscles can reduce their tone — and in doing so, you can give your clients a better internal feel for these muscles. They might even use that awareness to prevent strain in the future! ... continue reading.

Dealing with Self-Doubt as a Massage Therapist

Do you deal with self-doubt as a massage therapist? When you work with a new client, do you spend the whole time convinced that it’s the worst massage ever? Then this video is for you:

This is an edited version of a previous livestream, now with 75% fewer tangents and pauses. There’s also a nice guided meditation at the end, now with soothing music 🙂

I give tips on getting out of negative head loops in this video, but there’s something that I don’t really address: “What if my massage actually sucks? Like, what if I’m a legitimately bad massage therapist?” You know why I don’t address that? Because it’s not true. In fact, it’s damn near impossible.

Massage can be exceptional for a lot of reasons, many of them having to do with experience and intuition. But for a massage to just be “really good,” all you need are a few simple ingredients: ... continue reading.

Video: Abdominal self-massage (and self-acceptance)

This is ostensibly about abdominal self-massage (it even includes 5 different techniques!), but it’s really about getting back into the therapeutic headspace.

As you might imagine, I made this one for myself. I haven’t started back yet thanks to some resurgence here in the South, but every time I get back to the planning phase I think, “do I even know how to do massage any more? Where would I start?” In my head I try to play back a whole massage all at once, along with all the techniques and draping and communication that requires, and it feels overwhelming.

But then I remember this: It all starts with one touch. If I can do that, then the rest follows. Trying to game out every moment, or imagine everything that could go wrong, those are barriers that we put up to flow. The essence of massage is self-sustaining and self-guiding, with the interplay of hand and body showing you the way. If we simply make that first contact and then get out of the way, the rest can easily follow. ... continue reading.