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I’ve been having intense conversations about brand, curriculum development, marketing and creating funnels to onboard students into my programs and offerings. I’d hit a new plateau and then out of the blue having a conversation with a friend I realized I don’t Really do 50% of what I know how just out of societal convention.

Everyone needs a box. A safe comfortable way things are done. I mainly at this stage teach massage therapists but as I grow you’ll hear murmurs about, “this isn’t massage.” I take these casually asking usually, “what is massage” in response but answering questions with questions is what got Socrates put to death. #corruptingtheyouth

I realized Very clearly that my situation used to be different. I had a home studio where I taught yoga classes and students came in and I asked where they were having issues. Upper back and neck?

Ok grab a foam roller a few blankets and let’s get to work. I essentially could recreate this at any yoga studio in Austin. There’s no Real vinyasa. It’s not Working out. It’s just taking care of our bodies breathing and creating space for our souls to permeate our flesh suits. Every student loved this. They always told me it was So Different than any yoga class they’d taken before and honestly because there was no pressure to perform this way or that and make it more mainstream I just did my thing.

In a space of freedom I was free.

Recently a yoga teacher and studio owner I know was looking for a teacher and I wrote her just to chat and feel out the situation. Though I offered what I do it was pretty clear that though I could take a job, I wouldn’t obey rules I couldn’t be confined and in a sea of vinyasa I’d just improvise curriculum live based on student needs.

I was politely turned away. 🙂

Now, given that I can do something akin to yoga therapy on steroids. The fact that I think we could easily charge $60-$100 for a 90 minute “class” with me for up to say 10 students, who wants to offer these in Austin? Contact me.

There needs to be more weird in this city. #rulebreakers shall inherit the earth <3

I’ve been having this stuggle for a few years now. After Intro Thai, Table Thai, Phase 1 & 2 I knew that I’d only given students a basic template to go through material I was teaching them. Since we’d accomplished that I decided to start the subscription.

We have a private facebook group for subscribers and I put out 600+ hours of video instruction on top of the 700 pages of sequence manuals and 9 dvds of template, sequential content.

Now what?

When I did a webinar years ago it nearly shut down because all the students wanted suspension. They literally ignored everything else I was teaching and wanted to skip steps. I was deflated. I continued adding to the vault getting materials ready for release and we do so on 1/3/2021 with a masterclass course in addition.

4 camera angles, filtered audio and anatomy on screen. I’ll work with those students until the end of April then go back to 6 hour CE classes on various topics.

I’ve continued sharing and teaching and have what to my knowledge is the most documented bodywork practice in history. We release new footage each week and as things grow I’ll work with students, supplement, organize and do a host of other ventures to help students along.

Still I’ve been horribly frustrated.

I’d have conversations about how students don’t get it. They’re not growing as fast or as far as I’d like etc. It’d been so persistent for so long I was getting personally annoyed that I’m banging my head against a wall trying to get things that frankly aren’t really reasonable.

I kept repeating, “I can turn on my cameras in 30 minutes and teach a global audience live.” Crickets….

I can share info with you for 75% less daily, I mean, Every Day. Crickets…

You see. I’ve fundamentally broken massage education. I know no one sees it yet but I’m tired of dragging massage therapists along who tell me, “but..we can’t learn online.”

That is to me the complete doldrums. I spent years setting up my current studio and learning software to do what I’m doing only to blaze a trail so far so fast that I’m told what I do isn’t massage and furthermore that the students can’t learn online anyway.

I believe that’s wrong. I will continue working with Lmt and deprogramming them slowly but there’s no need to argue. I knew deep in my gut that something had to give.

The Thai massage jam® ran for 8 solid years and only shut down due to covid. It’s odd because it never made $, in fact it cost me more to run than it made, but it’s the thing I’m oddly the most proud of. I started considering why and it’s just that I showed up, mats were put down and we all got to work.

The public showed up never asked about certification never asked about licensure and were eager to learn and work on each other. Lmt made up a small amount of our group but most were from the Austin acro community. In all the years that we worked it was well attended and just grew or the facility that we were in grew tired of us and kicked us out. We were misfits. We didn’t really belong anywhere.

So why did that make me happy?

It’s not $. I thought a lot about this and yeah I need money and it helps me do other things in the business but why did I get a buzz off of the jam? The answer at its core was that the attendees were excited.

I’m regularly getting murmurs of, “the Austin massage community hates you.” I always ponder that if it’s true and why then realize that the Austin massage community and money from classes I taught it what helped build the business. I mean sure some do but many just don’t like the constant video production and made an assumption based on something else someone said. In other words, low level fame.

With all this swirling around I kept feeling frustrated. Massage therapists on the whole aren’t really interested in what I teach. I’m told too often it’s not massage and frankly they’re not really interested in change. The change I represent is so fundamental that I can sorta understand my regulators, school owners and other educators or Lmt dislike me. It’s challenging to be challenged by someone saying something so contradictory to the foundations we were taught in massage school.

I used the internet to go direct to consumer. I bypassed rules regulations and geographical hurdles to sell most of what I do for $7 a month. There’s no credit for that though. It’s not even recognized as a legitimate way of teaching. It’s worked but not enough for my taste.

Head meet wall.

For 2 years I’d been pondering this then recently it hit me like a flash. I’ll continue serving the Lmt community and teaching. I’ve considered teaching other groups like pilates instructors, yoga teachers or personal trainers but those audiences will have additional questions. Can I do this legally? I don’t know get a lawyer is always my answer to a bunch of very unsatisfied students.

The answer after having gone direct to consumer is just to find new consumers.

I want to teach the public directly.

They’ll likely not argue that they can’t learn online. They’re not interested in licensure or regulation. They just want help. Couples massage on steroids coming up.

In addition I can work with individuals using my camera setup to help them work on themselves and build new audiences to reach out to.

This seems simple but after dragging Lmt for years I feel free again. I don’t want to be frustrated and I particularly don’t want to fight therapists. Working with new audiences feels fun and it’s a new challenge with different issues that I feel more inclined to deal with.

Most of what I’ve done going direct to consumer can now just be applied to a new audience. 🙂 I’m very happy to shift focus and work with new groups of students.

The artform I work within is unknown misunderstood and frankly exists as a statistical anomaly. I was watching Searching for Bobby Fischer and often wonder about various art forms and the people who push it to new heights and limits.

In music I think of Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Sun Ra and John Coltrane. In painting it’s Picasso, Van Gogh and Matisse and a host of others. In various arts people stand out. Cooking and the culinary arts have their heros and within our lifetime due to mass distribution we know of various chefs pushing the edges not just of fame but molecular gastronomy.

What about bodywork?

I mentioned this to a colleague during a podcast. If you’re Really into food you’re a foodie. There’s no comparable term for someone who geeks out about massage and bodywork.

Even the line between massage and bodywork is a massive blur. I tend to shy away from using the word massage unless I’m looking for youtube SEO. I don’t like it. I don’t think it adequately represents the art I teach and frankly if I must label what I do and make a box I will make one to my own specifications. If I live in limitations I prefer they be self imposed.

As I look back over the artists I’ve seen in my industry one thing stands out. Those that I’ve noticed aren’t just good at bodywork. They’re good at connecting with people which builds sales. Most of them have this uncanny knack something they can’t really teach and find difficult to explain to others.

In my own experience my first teacher did this. She tried and did well to explain some things but I got the bodywork the first time. I understood it and had to practice but I got the basics. Marketing? Eh, not so much. That I had to learn on my own by trial and error.

If I’d not gone into bodywork I likely would have gone into culinary arts. As a long time cook I was mostly self taught and relied on Good Eats with Alton Brown and a host of other food network stars to extract enough chemistry to get to work and start improvising. I think I was good at it just because I worked so hard at it and practiced.

Bodywork? It’s really the only thing I’ve ever been good at other than public speaking. Most would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy but I loved it since I was in my teens. I could command an audience verbally. Oration is a long lost art form. Not gone but well things have changed with the advent of tiktok. 🙂

Why did I become so good at this particular art? Pain. I don’t really think I’m gifted. I don’t feel like some anomalous autodidact who just could do the stuff. I remember family members saying, “remember when you were a kid and would rub my neck?” It was as if they knew what I was going to do from their vantage point.

Pain pulled me so deeply into my nervous system I just had to process it all. I had to stretch lengthen strengthen move things around develop balance coordination and do whatever I could to get the pain to go away. In that came the gift. I graduated massage school in 2002 and next year I realize it’ll be 20 years in my industry. I’m 43 horribly young and likely in some of the best shape of my life or at least pain free.

Focus and practice. That’s what made me a good bodyworker. That and a desire to set people free.

I’ve seen it in clients. They just can’t believe someone could spend time with them and focus on them for 3 hours. Quiet? Sometimes. Chatty? Sometimes. Present? Sure and I meet up with my psychic stuff and meet up with the clients as well. I don’t think I’m special. I teach because I believe anyone can learn if they truly wish to.

Touch is so basic it’s overlooked. In a #metoo era where we find out how people are abusing power over others I see touch and a remedy. You learn boundaries barriers consent pressure and more when it’s part of your culture growing up. Much like sex education though we can’t quite figure out who should be doing the teaching. Family? or via school and government programs?

I’m direct to consumer in my approach. I’ve seen the prison Thai massage jam® the one at the school and the after Sunday service praise Jesus Mahalia Jackson playing version as well. The vision is there. It just takes time to build.

You change a culture one person at a time and I started with myself.

So what makes a great bodyworker? Mostly I feel it’s a desire to help people that’s crafted and honed through ongoing repeated education.

Many seem to think of a massage as a I learned it in school and I’m done affair like an oil change. Cars haven’t changed that much over the years so once you know you know. Bodywork and bodies though are so variable it’s hard to explain improvisation to students who are just trying to learn to use their legs and feet on a mat.

Communication and connection are two of the biggest factors. I relish the chance to connect with someone deeply across gender race creed and class lines to our basic humanity. Nothing seems more human than pain. Even when I do a verbal consult with a client and ask them about their pain I can see it in their face.

They lower their head, look away and have a harder time making eye contact. In a world with no cure for pain (morphine is temporary and yes I love the band) we’re not really encouraged to discuss it as since there’s no cure it’s hard to others to listen.

I often read into these verbal intakes just to see how the client is relating to their own body. The communication and bodywork you see starts long before we step onto the mat.

I think a good bodyworker does have some basics of anatomy but of the things that comes to mind currently I think compassion, a desire to help ease suffering in addition to communication and connection are key. Only when you mix those in the right percentages do you get the bodywork our communities desperately need.

I notice themes after 43 years.

I was hit by a drunk driver and did what I had to to survive and get out of pain. Then I passed that information onto an entire of industry of massage therapists who fight struggle strain get carpal tunnel syndrome and declare me unprofessional.

A colleague at a local massage school told an educator they were working with me and the teacher said, “oh yeah Robert, we’ve heard good things about his work but he’s….controversial.”

I don’t act right. I don’t speak right. I don’t tow party line or kowtow to tradition. Your traditions nearly killed me and led me down a path towards oxycontin and heroin addiction.

I’m pain free. After being hit by a drunk driver at 22. I never Really wanted to be a massage therapist. I wanted to be free of pain. I wanted to share what I’d learned about being pain free. For that? I’m likely one of the most hated educators in our industry.

It’s ok though. I’m in good company. Socrates was put to death for corrupting the youth. A rabbi I know of was crucified because he helped people healed people and didn’t instill a tradition but broke them down.

What else do you expect from me? I don’t break any laws but I do resist your rules. Rules laid down by a very sick culture.

I teach what I do for nearly free. I mentor for $7/month. I do interactive livestreams to raving fans who are helping people and receiving top notch education while I’m told it’s impossible to learn online.

It is possible. I will show you the way. Now let me and my fans go have fun.