Color by Touch

7 SUCCESS SECRETS OF THERAPIST WELLNESS

A. AWARENESS

If you were to describe yourself, I am reasonable sure you would not describe your physical self but your compassion and desire to help others. It was those qualities, not your physical looks that brought you to this field. When helping others, we tend to lose awareness of ourselves and can face burnout or repetitive use injury in a very short time; and find ourselves leaving the career we love. Therefore the first discipline we must make peace with is self-awareness. You can only give to someone else what you have in excess.

In therapy, when your hands and mind are focused on your client, you are amazing. Your training, gifts, and compassion are directed to one simple goal … to help your client. For this type of focus, you pay a price of energy and physical strength. In order to be able to replicate this focus, time after time, without burnout or repetitive injury, you need to have the discipline of awareness.

Healing awareness usually disengages when you finish with a client and doesn’t reengage until hands touch the next client. Self-awareness takes a back seat during the treatment. Even before your hands leave the client, you need to awaken your self-awareness as you disengage your healing touch. This is where discipline begins. You are the only one who can take care of yourself. Your body tries to accommodate the mind’s directives, so if the focus never returns to your body, your body suffers.

Your final, finishing touches are opportunities to refocus or reground your separateness and remove your energy from your client’s while leaving the client with your intent for peace and wellness. This brings you both out of the healing state into every day life and your awareness of your client is now caring awareness rather than healing awareness because, even though you have physically and energetically removed yourself from the client, you still have the final tasks to conclude:
• gentle conversation to make sure they feel wonderful and pleased with their session

• water for them to drink with encouragement to drink enough to help their muscles stay relaxed

• payment for your wonderful services

• rescheduling for the next time

• gentle goodbye

To fully activate your self-awareness, while you are waiting for them to dress and leave the treatment room, focus on
• How do you feel? Give separate consideration to your hands, arms, shoulders, etc.

• Do you need food, water, bathroom break?

• Do you need to stretch to loosen your muscles?

• Do you need a quiet time to recharge the healing energy?

When you have totally finished and the client has gone, EVEN IF ANOTHER CLIENT IS SETTING AND WAITING THEIR SESSION, take a few minutes for yourself. (You should have scheduled at least 15 minutes between clients, so you can still stay on schedule).
• Pay attention to what is “in the moment”. What is Right Now? Do not be thinking of what you should be doing, could
be doing, will be so far behind in you aren’t doing. Pay attention to RIGHT NOW.

• While you are changing the linens, stretch and move your body. Shrug those shoulders, rotate the head, and massage
the hands.

• While the next client is changing, drink water, go to the bathroom and move gently while you are doing it. Don’t rush and
dash around. Treat yourself gently and with the same courtesy you extend to your clients.

If you intend to continue your massage career for the rest of your life, pay attention to the above. You will find that your clients will return again and again to a well-balanced, healthy, caring therapist. I still see, on a regular weekly basis, clients that started with me in 1991.

Treat yourself as seriously as you do your desire to help others.

B. NUTRITION
Nutrition is the intake of nutrients and their subsequent absorption and assimilation. The first thought response to the word nutrition is FOOD and indeed food is important, however nutrition comes to us through all of our senses. The body is fed food. The mind is fed information. The spirit is fed tranquility. All work together in harmony to maintain the balance of a healthy three-part body. When the PSE (physical, sensory or emotional) environment is fed, it either absorbs or eliminates what is not necessary or required and each part is of equal importance.

The PSE (physical, sensory and emotional) environment is continuously responding to the stimulation provided second-by-second through breathing in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide through exhalation; processing food into nourishment and eliminating the unusable; or through the skin which both absorbs and eliminates everything from air to physical contact. This continuous bombardment by stimulation (sounds, sights, smells, tastes, sensations) is filtered through our experiences as well as the body systems to determine what is necessary or interesting enough to be retained and incorporated while the remainder is released and eliminated.

When the PSE (physical, sensory or emotion) environment is overwhelmed by unnatural or unwholesome substances, it severely overtaxes the complete system, creating opportunity for discomfort, disease or total breakdowns.

Everything we assimilate into ourselves affects our day-to-day energy. This includes the hurried meal, the quick soda or coffee instead of water, the angry motorist, the late client.

Only you can ensure that the nutrition you eat, read, dream restores rather than depletes your balance. Remember you often have to CHANGE habits and thought patterns to establish balance. While change can be an ugly thought, remember that your own healing ability must first be directed to yourself before it can be utilized to help others. Change is worth the reward.

In order to maintain our inner healing force, the right input is needed for the body to function at its fullest potential.
Some guidelines:
• Stay within 10 pounds of your best weight at any given age.
• Eat a high percentage of fresh foods.
• Consume adequate roughage.
• Drink water (not soda, beer, coffee or tea) in sufficient quantities for you.
• Take a day off every week and sleep without the alarm.
• Read articles or books that stimulated your mind.
• Help the lymphatic system through exercise and deep breathing.
• Get regular massages.
• Remember you are a 3-part person and need to nourish all 3 parts.

How can you let go of old patterns and find a kinder way to treat yourself? Two books I have found particularly helpful in changing my eating habits are “Dr. Abravanel’s Body Type Diet and Lifetime Nutrition Plan” by Elliot D. Abravanel, M.D. and Elizabeth A. King and “Eat Right 4 Your Type” by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo. Both books gave me a better understanding of my inner body needs and has made a direct impact on my energy levels. I was also surprised to find it easier to change thoughts and attitudes when my body was receiving what it needed. It is well worth the effort.

C. BODYWORK
Most of us became a massage therapist because we have a need to help others and because we believe in the healing power of touch.
In our desire to be the very best, our time is spent trying to improve our techniques, our business, and our facility. We often over look the need to maintain the homeostasis of our bodies.

During your training period, your body becomes accustomed to having the benefits of regular massages or bodywork. Once you finish school and get involved with the business of growing your business, it is very easy to neglect getting massages or bodywork for yourself. If fact, how long has it been since you last received a totally relaxing massage? Or do you spend your hour trying to understand the wonderful technique the therapist is using that your mind never rests and your body really doesn’t relax? Believe me, it happens far too often.

Think about the technique you learned and practiced when you first started out. Just as your bodywork techniques have evolved, so has your body adapted itself to your method of massage and the repetitive movements you do every day? In fact, your body probably could perform an adequate massage with out any interaction from your mind. This type of “unthinking” massage is what we want to avoid and getting regular bodywork is the best way to prevent “unthinking” methods sneaking into our work.

Each client deserves our focus and full ability each and every time we do a massage. In order to ensure that, you have to guarantee that your body is able to provide what you will require of it.

As therapists, we can become like our worst client … so busy “doing” that they have forgotten how to relax. This imbalance will eventually lead to burnout and total fatigue.

This is a very scary place for a therapist who wants to continue doing massages or bodywork until they die. So, how to prevent this? Just getting a regular massage sounds too easy. There must be something else, some enlightenment, some dragon to slay, something difficult. No. Regular weekly or monthly bodywork is all it takes. (Didn’t you just finish telling your last client that?)

Remember that keeping yourself healthy is keeping your business healthy. And it is a wonderful experience!

D. REST
I can hear you yelling at me already. “When do I have time to rest?” That can become a theme song of therapists. It seems like there is seldom enough time to get half the important things done, let alone spend any of our precious time resting.

I have discovered that resting doesn’t actually have to be sleeping. With resting, you have a number of options.
• Stretching can be restful. Especially if you have been doing a number of massages back to back. Stretching between
appointments is an easy way to relax those tight muscles and the exercises you find helpful can be passed on to clients
who experience tight, painful muscles.

• Massage sore pressure points with an essential oil blend* that is designed to help relax or calm the body. Your use
of Aromatherapy will also enable you to speak confidently to your clients of what you have experienced.

*Try 20 drops of Bergamot Orange (relaxing and uplifting) and 20 drops of Sandalwood (relaxing and calming) in 2 ounces of carrier oil. (I like Grapeseed or Fractionated Coconut Oil.

• Lay down on your massage table. It feels just as good as your clients have told you. Just lay there for 5 minutes,
taking deep breaths. You will be surprised how much better you feel.

• Meditation is one of the nicest ways of resting for a short period. Allow your awareness to rest in quiet. Allow your busy
mind to gradually desist from bothering you and rest, even for a few minutes. This can be done with open eyes, looking
at a picture that pleases you or with closed eyes. I find I drop into meditation quicker by looking at my favorite ocean
picture and let the beauty of the picture capture my mind and still it.

• Deep breathing. Slowing down an automatic movement is an easy and excellent way to center and relax your body. As
you slow your breathing, you can alter the way you are feeling or thinking and discover a new sense of stability and calm.
To breathe freely, your belly should be relaxed; you’re back straight and your shoulders down with a relaxed diaphragm.
With conscious effort, take a deep breath, hold it for the count of three then slowly release. Do this at least six times.

• Open your mouth wide and let the jaw relax. Keep your head still, moving your lower jaw around into as many shapes
and positions as you can without strain will reduce the tension that is carried there. It is amazing how this helps the neck
and shoulders.

• Getting adequate sleep. This may be the hardest one to actually do. At least three nights a week try to get adequate
sleep. Since “adequate” is different for each of us, if you are really rested after four hours, then four hours is what you need.
Most of us however, require closer to eight or more. Whatever you need, get. It really does make a giant difference in
your massages and your health.

As you noticed, most of these don’t take but a few minutes to do. It is the remembering to do them that is hard. Rest well.

E. LEARNING
When is enough learning enough? There is so very much to learn you can never know it all. So what should you be learning?

1. Good habits
Having good habits is almost as easy as having bad ones. To ensure continuity with your clients, script each experience your client has during your time with them. Then revise this script until everything is just perfect. Then practice your script. Good habits give grace automatically and save us from errors that hurt our pocket book. Ask yourself:
• How do I greet my client? Do I focus on them or is my attention on other things?
• How do I take histories and other information? Do I listen and ask questions? Do I understand what they have written?
If there are contraindications, how do I proceed?
• How do I offer instructions and ask the questions that encourage the client to relax and be comfortable? Is my tone
caring or demanding? Are my instructions brief, brisk and time dependent or consistent and through each time?
• How do I perform the massage or bodywork? Am I focused on the client or am I thinking of food or other things?
• How do I finish the massage or bodywork? Do I end the massage with a gentle ending or am I just happy to be finished?
• How do I receive payment? When the money is handed to me what do I do with it and what is my expression? Am
I uncomfortable accepting money or is the money a pleasant ending to an enjoyable and enjoyed massage?
• How do you secure a reschedule? Do I ask when they want to come back or do I assume they will call?
• How do you bid goodbye? Do I indicate in some way that I am happy to have been with them and look forward to the
next opportunity to serve them or am I already focusing on the next client?

2. Good work ethics
By establishing good habits, you will strengthen your work ethic. When you follow a script (a step-by-step way of doing things) you eliminate the common pitfalls that can damage your image and prevent loss of clients. Be consistent. Be on schedule. Be great. That’s your job and you are good at it!

3. New massage techniques
Stress is the most frequent, serious health and beauty robbing complaint that clients bring to their practitioner. Any technique that helps reduce stress is an instant winner.
Out of the thousands of flyers you get for continuing education, find classes that blend well with what you already do or something that has a great interest for you.

4. New marketing techniques
• Try expanding your target market. Perhaps men and/or children. Men are an untapped segment of the massage market
and are becoming comfortable using the benefits of massage for stress, pain and relaxation.
• Children of all ages can benefit from massage. Have a class to show mothers how to do gentle massage for their children,
or a class to show older (8 – 10 years) how to massage feet. Mothers will love you.

5. New tools and equipment
• Learn the basics of Feng Shui to add balance and harmony to your facility and room. It really, really works!
• Clients love new things. Try to add a new something every six months. It keeps things fresh and exciting.

6. How to choose revenue add-ons
• Home care products. If you already use something your clients love (music, oils, lotions, etc.) have a few of each available
for purchase. It is an impulse buy and you will be surprised how quickly these sales add up.
• Create a signature therapy that is uniquely yours and turn your concept into a brand name and image.
• Consider new trends using stones and energy. The newest trends are usually much advertised and the public
consciousness raised so adding a trend can have $$ benefits if it blends with your current modalities.
• Learn the basics of Reflexology. It is a great way to enhance your business with very little expense or equipment. You
can add a small bit to each massage and offer a full Reflexology treatment as part of your service menu.

F. MARKETING
Marketing is an attitude. It requires work and it must be done almost daily. Every thing you do, say, and think when you are with a client is marketing … for your benefit or for your deterrent.

Although marketing may seem mysterious, marketing can be summed up in one word – communication.

1. Be able to express clearly and concisely what you and your business do. Write it down and practice. It should be about
30 words or less. You are a verbal billboard. Take advantage of it.

2. Make your business cards and brochures communicate your business. The first impression potential referrals may receive
is often your business card or brochure. Use quality paper and colors that connect throughout your business. Business
cards and brochures becomes a visual billboard.

3. Your brochure expands on the information on your business card and provides an opportunity to detail your strengths in
a visual way. It can serve as reference material, but it should also show the way to the solution to a problem you can solve.
By offering benefits rather than features you answer the unspoken question of potential clients, “What do I gain by using
this therapist?” This gets them to you. Your ability and skill keep them.

4. Perception is everything. Your clients’ perception is not necessarily your reality. However you do have to understand how
your clients perceive your business. Keep your ears open for comments or clues about their perceptions. Read between
the lines of what the client is saying to you. Or you can ask what they like best about your work and what would be of
benefit to them. Or use a written survey, which I like because it gives a level of separation for honesty on their part. I
have gotten my feelings hurt a couple of times, but on the whole, surveys’ have worked very well. Creating the quality
perception is in your hands.

5. Know how you want your business to be perceived and effect any necessary changes to reconcile those differences.
The things outside are easy to change. What needs to be changed inside requires greater effort.

G. FUN
The previous six sessions have encouraged you to become aware of opportunities for better health and wellness for yourself. Most probably reminded you of what you already knew but were not doing. Choosing to follow these sessions will help keep you happy, healthy and a long-term therapist, which the world really needs, especially now. Session number seven sounds the easiest but is usually the hardest one of them all.

Schedule time each month for you. You treat your clients with much greater courtesy than you treat yourself. Get into the habit of scheduling time to have fun. This sounds so simple and easy and it is one of the most difficult things to actually do. With all the thousands of things that must to be done to keep your business moving forward, how can you set aside time for you? I know it sounds strange, but if you don’t take time to relax and have fun, your career suffers.

It is stressed in most business classes that “Time is your most valuable commodity”. We are taught to manage, allot, schedule and utilize our time as if time were the only important ingredient in our career. Time is important. You are more important. If there is no you, there is no career.

Keeping yourself healthy and happy sets the tone for everything else you do, including your business. Enjoy your freedom. Having your own business gives you the opportunity and freedom to work where and when you want. I agree that bills and prior commitments kept me on the fast track when I first started out. I would wake up at night with new ideas for marketing or a better way for me to do a massage move. I drove myself crazy. I never had “time” to do anything fun. I was terrified a client might need to schedule an appointment and I wouldn’t be available. I was terrible to myself.

It is true that you only get paid if you are physically present to perform the session. However, I have found that clients like to receive massages from someone who looks tan and healthy. They enjoy conversing with someone who has seen at least one of the current movies or read one of the books on the best seller’s list. Taking care of yourself is part of your business. In fact, it is one of the most important things you do for your business. No one can replace you. If you are unable for any reason to work, it is irrelevant how many people you have scheduled or how much time you have available.

You need to treat yourself with kindness and awareness (see Lesson #1). Since we are a three-part being (spirit, soul, and body), we need to take care of all three parts. Simple adjustments to your day can create small pockets of time you can use to have fun. I recently had 10 spare minutes before I had to leave for work, so I took my new bubble blower (it has a neat little friction motor) out on the patio and made a trillion tiny bubbles. I went to work with a smile on my face because it felt like such a childish thing to do. But it was really fun! My smile came through to my clients and our whole day was brighter because of 10 minutes of fun. That is a very good return for 10 spare minutes.

Fun means different things to different temperaments, so what makes me happy may not work for you. But half the fun for me is planning something special for each month. It not only gives me something to look forward too, but it is a nice way to receive information and input from your clients. I truly believe there is not one single type of work that my clients don’t represent. They are interesting people, going to interesting places and are very happy to share information and memories. Some of my most fun places have been suggestions from my clients.
Examples:
• The Lamb’s Rest Inn (www.bbhost.com/lambsrestbb) in New Braunfels, Texas
• The Fainting Goats of Fredricksburg, Texas (not open to public)
• The San Luis Resort in Galveston, Texas during Marti Gras
• The Little Gasperilla Island off Englewood, Florida

The first 3 are weekend retreats while the island is my extra special 9-day treat every other year.

Your scheduled time doesn’t have to be a full weekend, but can be any amount of time that is just for you. I know that when you first start out, you have more than enough “spare” time, but time that your schedule for yourself should be different. Plan to do something that you normally don’t take the time to do.
For example:
• Read a good book out by the pool.
• Sleep late & have breakfast at your favorite restaurant.
• Go to a movie, play or concert.
• Go to a workshop for painting, cooking or anything else that you always wanted to do.
• Get a massage or other bodywork.
• Have fun!

M. Johanna Powell, NCTMB, LMT, CCP, MTI