Massage School Promises

Massage School Promises

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Massage school and how things run in the massage industry are interesting. You have to have a license and to get that license you have to go to an official accredited school, if in the U.S., mostly regulated state to state. Going across state lines or online are nearly non-existent and if you try to cross state lines you’re going to wind up in an odd bit of mess as each state has their own rules and credentialing process that may not agree with the neighboring state.

Texas has a 500 hour curriculum and let me be clear that I don’t fault schools for what they’re teaching. They have to torque and load anatomy physiology health and hygiene into students who often just got out of high school. I’m no huge fan of public education to begin with but they aren’t given much of a starting point. With only 500 hours what can they cover?

Just the bare basics.

What I teach is considered “advanced.” I mash on people for a living and move them around. There’s more art to it than that but at its basics I can teach anyone worldwide for Free for their first month and for $7/month after that.

My work is completely mat based clothes on and can done publicly. To be completely honest I’m told regularly that it’s, “not massage.” When I ask if then I can teach and share with anyone since it’s not massage I hear a deafening echo.


Live in Kenya? Great. Want to help your village friends? Awesome. Do you have internet access and $7/month? I fill in the gaps you won’t get in massage school. I tell it like it is because no one owns me. I speak my truth and tell it like it is. You can see 424+ hours of it on my subscription. That’s raw curse laden truth flowing out in unedited raw footage that anyone can learn from.

Will I stop? No. Will I continue growing and developing? Yes. Will it change and evolve? Absolutely. I refine it as I keep sharing.

The reason what I teach is different is because I’m not teaching therapists how to survive. I’m teaching them how to thrive. I’m teaching them what the massage schools don’t have the time energy or incentive to teach and I do it for $7/month.

The massage industry won’t look the same when I’m done with it.

As our industry has grown it’s being strangled by regulation and intruded upon on a million fronts because massage therapists won’t evolve and change our industry from inside. People do after all what they’re trained to do. My job is to retrain you. I have to clean out the cobwebs in therapists brains and ask why we started wanting to do “massage” to begin with.

Why did you go to school?

Why did you pay 10k or more in student loans to learn to massage people?

My goal isn’t to have clients come back. My goal is to have clients better so they don’t need me anymore.

Most schools out of necessity teach the basics and then send you onto large corporate massage change facility. What did Pink Floyd say, “we don’t need no education we don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom hey! Teacher…leave those kids alone.”


Do I think massage education is bad? No absolutely not. Do I think core curriculum could be improved? Sure but even massage school owners believe and are working on that.

I decided to do it myself. Out of my garage. Less authoritarian. More autonomy. More freedom and certainly more capacity to help people in ways our industry currently thinks unimaginable.

Are you an excellent student? Are you the iconoclast? Do you want to push beyond massage? Do you want to help me tear down the wall?

Otherwise you’re getting prepped for the sausage grinder.

Innovation and Early Adopters

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People think that they love change. They don’t.

They fight resist and block it with every attempt including legislation because frankly impermanence is scary and it’s easier if things would just stop changing so fast.

Years ago I adopted a different stance. That stance was that since all things are impermanent why not just float around? Build dreams follow your bliss but why resist? Resistance is in fact futile and in business resistance is garbage. I’ve no desire to play defense. Offense is where it’s at.

I posted this and expected I’d get some flack. I’ve an uncanny knack at bumping into people’s sore spots physically and psychically. When I posted it I expected the response I got which was, “hey, why are you hating on swedish?”

I’m not. Swedish and deep tissue as massage styles aren’t going away. They exist on nearly every street corner of America. Why would I want to offer what everyone else is offering? It doesn’t make sense in business to offer what in essence is the same service everyone else offers.

In addition as someone with chronic pain if you apply lubricant on my skin I’m going to start getting angry. I know what’s coming. I know what you were taught in school. I completely and vehemently disagree.

I don’t want a massage. I want you to help my pain.

If I ask a therapist to work on me as I work on others I’ll get nowhere. Sliding over my skin is akin to having an itch asking you to scratch my back and then you scratch near where I want you to. I’m writhing and squirming hoping you’ll get to where I need attention. I feel that but worse when you give me swedish. It feels as if you’re gliding over my painful areas refusing to slow down hang out and traction skin where the real relief seems to come from.

I’ve had it from extremely deep compressions like the ones I deliver using suspension.

I’ve also felt it from extremely gentle skin traction like cranialsacral therapy. I can only go with what I have personally felt.

Repeatedly clients ask me, “why isn’t what you do available everywhere? This is amazing work for pain. I’ve never seen or felt anything like it.” I then have to hang my head low and announce that the community of people I’ve been trying to give it to don’t believe it to be “massage.”

Regulation is a huge thorn in my side. Stretch facilities are opening up and with each new clinic and every yoga teacher I see doing it I wonder why the yoga community hasn’t listened either. I’ve seen spa owners and directors clench their teeth as I teach students work that’s easier on their bodies helps them rebook clients effortlessly and reduces chronic pain to rubble. Do they see innovation and see $$$? Nah, they see problems since it’s not “massage.”

Does the yoga community see what I’m doing and say, “hey Robert can you train our staff and get us doing this?” Usually no because if the word massage is used they realize a law and legal issues are looming. It doesn’t matter that I can give their studio another revenue stream and innovate their industry since they don’t want the burden of facility licenses and hiring massage therapists.

At this stage in my career when I teach massage therapists I’m fully aware that I have to deprogram them. Leaders in our industry have been far too concerned with maintaining status quo and not rocking the boat. I will say that the more you block me the more you resist the more barriers you put in my way, I become more crafty.

I can deliver education worldwide bottom to top and bring you on my journey and teach you what I do for $7/month. People keep saying, “you work out of your garage?” I smile and say many small businesses started out of garages. My winning strategy is you don’t see me coming and don’t think it’s possible.

We’re still looking for those early adopters. We’re still putting out information seeing who will actually respond to wanting to help people quickly effectively without surgeries or medications. We don’t diagnose or treat any condition but as I tell my clients all the time, “what if your symptoms go away?”

The massage industries future is unknown to me. I see differentiation but with massage regulation that means virtually nothing I’m unsure who I can teach who will legally use the work or how I will continue to help people without your assistance.

Many therapists are content to have full practices. I started teaching because I saw so much suffering in my own industry and the untold horrors of the public’s pain forced me to continue going forward as rapidly as possible.

I will not stop. When I finally collapse and perish it will likely be in the middle of working on my next project trying to help people.

With each new stretch facility that opens I see massage regulation and more and more meaningless. If you can change the name it’s now legal? Time to rebrand and move on with life. We lost the Reboot™ trademark and I’m in the midst of what may be a legal debacle. I’ll have to go to a lawyer and go, “hey you know all that massage regulation we were concerned about? Stretch facilities have apparently figured out the loophole for us.”

How Do We Improve Yoga or Thai Massage?

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I’ve been dealing with these concepts for years and I can speak on it extemporaneously for hours. I fell into two traditions. Traditions of which I mostly hold no direct lineage.

I love Iyengar and his yoga but I’ve only ever taken one specific class though many of the classes I’ve taken and teachers I’ve studied with have more knowledge of his alignment.

Thai massage has a lineage and my teacher studied with some teachers in Thailand but she never made a big deal out of it nor have I. Pichest Boonthumme is represented as is Chaiyuth Priyasith but I’ve never set foot in their country of origin.

To be able to study overseas you need lots of disposable income and the capacity to travel the bulk of which I’ve not been able to afford. I continue to study as I can with whoever comes near and ask questions the frazzle everyone’s brain.

Recently Jason Crandell came to Austin and I was fortunate enough to take a single class of vinyasa with him. In him I found what I’d been hoping his instagram posts would show me.

I’ve no wish to speak for him, which is why I link him here, but he said what I’ve been saying for years to students who actually listened. Yes we honor the foundation of the practice. We do that by updating it making it safer exploring it’s depth and giving it a modern twist that is uniquely our own.

You’d be surprised how controversial that idea is.

Jason ran me through vinyasa. It was hard to keep up. I mention in this video briefly how he tried to kill me. 🙂

I’ve gotten softer having a less fiery practice but in the middle of all that breathing moving sweating and trying to keep up I heard what I admire. He’s just trying to give his students his questions. He’s helping them move along and encouraging exploration. He’s actually asking questions about anatomy safety physiology and pain science.

In other words it’s a near mirror example of my path over the years except I approach it a bit more from a massage therapist’s perspective.

It’s hard to express what it felt like to have some weight taken off as usually I’m nearly alone in a community that doesn’t understand the larger discussion I’m having. Having some focus on Jason for a few hours while I could sweat and breathe and slowly feel like I was going to expire was actually psychically relieving.

His message isn’t revolutionary to me but with two distinct asian traditions people often associate with religion people get very testy very quickly if you try to remove the cultural background and figure out how to use those tools to help people in the west. I’ve done this myself on two fronts. Both communities the yoga community and the massage communities have left me a near pariah for 17 years.

I don’t fit anywhere.

I was glad that at least for a few hours I could still my mind and listen to another teacher that I respected. Jason if you read this I’d love to do an interview or podcast with you. I’d love to talk Thai massage and yoga and the connections between the two. I suspect we’ve come to very similar ideas from different paths and angles.

Ask A Massage Therapist

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I recently did a facebook live called Ask a Massage Therapist and decided that this in its own simple way was the answer to many of the issues massage therapists have in their industry. I’ve decided to see if we can build a movement of therapists who use facebook live to educate. I’d like you to join in.

1: Do a facebook live on Monday called: Ask a Massage Therapist.

Make it 10 minutes or so and just ask your fans and followers to ask any questions they have about our work and respond. You can make posts in advance to let people know that you’re going live to build some buzz.

I hope it builds into a large movement.

2: After the fact you can share your video and results in the Massage Entrepreneurs group on facebook.

Iyengar is Still My Teacher

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For someone who’s never formally taken Iyengar yoga classes BKS still runs through my mind regularly. Mostly what I get from his teaching is awareness, feeling and continued ongoing work. The art of bodywork and of yoga is never finished. It’s an evolving art and continues til the last breath.

When I gave a talk about Reboot™ and what I’m creating at the Lauterstein Conway Massage School recently students who are 2 months away from finishing their massage schooling were puzzled by the talk I gave. As I mentioned fusing yoga and massage together in a new package they expressed surprise when I told them that yoga is massage. Why would they think otherwise?

In the west massage and yoga are seen as separate disciplines. Having done both for 15 or so years I see them as two sides of the same coin. One requires a license. The other has none. Massage therapists have confusion about what I’m teaching and I suppose that’s just par for the course. The yoga community doesn’t understand the bodywork and the massage community doesn’t understand the yoga.

I’ll continue working on myself using blocks, straps, a suspension system, breathing and allow everyone else to wonder what’s going on. I can smile internally and know that Iyengar approves of my continued exploration and that anything I can do to relieve suffering, my own and that of my students and clients, is just fine. Every time I breathe and press into my own tissues I wonder what the research and science actually says and how long it will take for the massage industry to catch up.

Massage is passive. Yoga is active. I use both. Reboot™

Why Get a Massage When You Can Reboot™

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Potential clients are sometimes confused about what it is that I offer. As a massage therapist in the trenches of the massage industry even my colleagues are confused by what I’m doing and offering. There’s an opiate epidemic in our country that few massage therapists are discussing. Reboot™, in my 15 year clinical experience, is better at helping people in chronic pain.

What does it help? Carpal tunnel syndrome. chronic arm and shoulder pain, chronic back pain, sciatica, mysterious pain of unknown etiology, severe menstrual cramps, adbominal pain, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic headaches and a host of other maladies.

Sessions are 3 hours long. You’re clothed on a mat not naked on a table. I will apply little if any lotion or cream. Confused? So are the bulk of the massage therapists around me. Come get a session and see for yourself.

How to Find Good Massage on a Budget

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I don’t think anyone wants a cheap massage so much as they want an inexpensive high quality session. As a massage therapist who has worked in various facilities in my fifteen years I’m going to give you insider information on how to get the most for your massage dollar.

 

 

  • If you have insurance you need to check with your insurance company and see if they cover massage as part of a wellness plan with a chiropractors office. If your insurance does this is absolutely the cheapest way to get regular work.

  • Find a local massage school and go to their student clinic.

     

     

    Most schools like Lauterstein Conway Massage School here in Austin have a student clinic where current students are practicing towards getting their license. Currently they charge $40 for an hour and that’s some of the least expensive in town. When you go you’re free to ask for a student who may be near the end of their clinical hours. That means that they have the skills just no license as of yet.

    Pick the therapist whose work you really like and give them a business card with your name and contact info on it. Tell them to contact you as soon as they get their license because you’d like to hire them for regular sessions.

    Most therapists who are starting out would die for a few regular clients to pad their practice and it’s a great way to pitch to the therapist that you’d like regular work at such and such a rate however regularly you prefer. This is the sweet spot because a seasoned professional is usually busy enough that they’re less inclined to give discounts.


    If you check your local schools you can find classes that are usually for massage therapists. In many cases you can take these classes and receive some work while you learn.     If you’re open to taking classes with your partner it’s inexpensive to find a used table on craigslist and practice on each other. In fact, if you find a therapist who’s willing you can get someone to visit and teach you to work on each other.


     

  • I personally run an event in Austin called Thai massage jam® where I teach people how to work on each other for nearly free. You can get information on those events as they come up. Join us on Meetup and on Facebook.



  • Beyond that I’m amazed at how few people use youtube as a resource. Youtube videos go all over the map in their audio and video quality but there are many therapists like myself who put out quality videos showing you how to work on a table or off a table.

As in all professions, you do get “what you pay for”. If you want an expert with years of experience or with a specific advanced training, you will no doubt be paying $75 or more per hour – and many advanced practitioners are certainly worth it.

I hope you find the massage you’re looking for. Ask around. Talk to people and keep searching. Your therapist will be happy you did.

Sciatica Pain?

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Sciatica is something I see in clinical practice regularly. Clients have this pain that runs down the posterior of their leg and nine times out of ten their piriformis has clamped down on their sciatic nerve. They don’t have a clinical case of sciatica or nerve degeneration they just has a case of what I jokingly tell students is, “tight ass.”

Use this simple video and see if it helps. If it reduces your symptoms and pain imagine what I can do with fourteen years of clinical experience in a session with you. It’s not uncommon to remedy the bulk of the issue in a single session.

Sciatica is like many other issues I see with client where soft tissue is somehow stimulating nerves and causing pain in this cascade that won’t shut down. It’s so simple to reduce symptoms just try the video above. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Tense muscles that won’t go back to neutral seem to cause a huge range of pain issues I see in clients. I just find the tense areas, help release them and clients feel like it’s magic. I’m still learning about the science behind how it works but it’s the same techniques I’ve used to work no myself and my own chronic issues over the years. See you in session soon.

Is Massage Healthcare?

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As my practice develops I continue to challenge myself to improve my craft. I couldn’t perform the highest quality bodywork in settings under someone else even medical ones. Every work environment I encountered had practices that prevented clients from receiving  the best bodywork for their issues. Insurance will only allow an hour etc.

To allow customers to receive the best work I had to create Reboot ™. My own challenges with my health led me to blending elements of yoga, yoga therapy, Thai massage, myofascial release, MacKenzie rehab exercises, pranayama, trigger point therapy and self care into a cohesive whole. It’s amazingly effective for pain management but it never gelled until I was in solo private practice. Your insurance company will not pay for what I do. To be frank, doctors, physical therapists and other healthcare providers did nothing for me and based on what I see in practice they’re often doing very little for you. The treatments I see are often we have these pills or we can perform a surgery. Those are wonderful options and I’m a fan of science but American healthcare is a shambles.

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My sessions are 3 hours and are the equivalent of the manual therapy a physical therapist might provide if they took the time to. This is an art. I’ve dedicated my life to what I do and I’m still learning as I go. Clients with chronic pain related to car accidents, sports injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, thoracic outlet syndrome and other things they feel a massage would never help regularly improve from my work. It’s a great honor to provide nonsurgical carpal tunnel relief but as a massage therapist in our culture it’s a challenge to convey what I do and why.

What you will notice when you get a session is that:

There is no massage table.
You do not get undressed.
I use my legs and feet to perform deep compressions in addition to mobilization of your limbs.
The session lasts 3 hours.

What I basically just told you is that what I do ***is not considered massage in any way in our culture.***

Law in TX says that massage is manipulation of soft tissue. What I do is legally massage but it looks nothing like the sessions consumers get at local establishments. It’s more effective for most chronic pain that’s muscle and tissue based but is it part of healthcare? I know it’s healthcare but it’s too outside of the usual framework to bill insurance for. If you’re ready to improve and work on yourself I’ll be here in Round Rock waiting to help you.

Are you ready to Reboot ™?

What Is Reboot ™?

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We’re gearing up to start offering Phase classes of my Reboot ™ curriculum. Students and the public are asking questions and I hope to provide answers with some website changes and a plethora of videos that demonstrate what I’m teaching and why it’s so important for the public and massage therapists.

When Reboot ™ is mentioned the first question is, “I thought you taught Thai massage?” Fundamentally what I’ve developed is based on the biomechanics of Thai massage but the theoretical framework is completely different. Although my work is based on a foundation of Sen lines (you can see those in the Intro to Thai massage workbook I give away for free) I interpret those lines in a completely different way than what I understand from other teachers. As a westerner I felt it my duty to push forward, innovate and do the best bodywork I could create. That bodywork has nothing to do with tradition and everything to do with clinical experience and a desire to continue learning about pain management and pain science.

Reboot ™ classes and certification means that I’m also teaching a massage therapist elements of yoga, yoga therapy, pranayama, anatomy and physiology, trigger point therapy, myofascial release, self care and rehab exercises blended into a cohesive whole that is easier for the client to pick up and use. This isn’t asian. This isn’t tradition. This is innovation in America.

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The deepest respect I can pay to tradition is to take what I know and move forward. I’m going to take you along with me. Consistently what I see is that there are two groups of people who freak out after having sessions with me. The first are those in chronic pain who didn’t realize they could find relief. The second were massage therapists themselves. When I worked on them they inevitably got up and said, “I don’t understand what this is.” I often ask them questions to clarify and when I ask if they didn’t like the session they often reply, “It’s amazing but what you just did isn’t massage. I don’t know how to describe it.”

It’s not magic. It can be taught. It’s good bodywork, patience and care over years of practice and pattern recognition. I’m not just trying to help clients. I’m trying to take a massage therapist from poverty to affluence while helping their clients lead pain free lives. I’ve had many teachers along the way. Some who’ve I’met in person some who I’ve not.

My best two teachers were a drunk driver and poverty. The drunk driver taught me pain management. Poverty taught me business. My struggle with both means I know our art and business from the inside out.

The challenge isn’t whether I’m going to change the bodywork industry in the U.S. The question is whether you as a client or student are ready to Reboot ™.

Thai Massage or Thai Yoga Massage?

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Someone wrote me to ask what the difference was between these and I felt it’d be a good idea to write a post about it. I’m tied into this confusion myself and if you download my free Thai massage workbook you’ll notice something if you look very closely. The cover page says Thai yoga massage. The copyright page says Thai massage. So which is it? What’s the difference between those things?

In America marketing is king. If you can’t sell something then it’s far more difficult to continue sharing with the public. My understanding is thus, years ago as the first westerners were encountering Thai massage and learning it they compared it to what they’d seen before. It’s not typically table, cream and glide like Swedish massage which most consider the norm so what did it look like? Yoga. It’s done clothed on a mat and involves stretching so Thai yoga massage was born.

I’ve asked about this on the US Thai massage group before and I’ve been told the same basic story for years that then comes with heated debate about what traditional Thai massage is.  Adding another category causes even more confusion for potential clients just looking for relief.

If you were an early practitioner of Thai massage and told a westerner you did Thai massage what images rolled through the consumers head? Thai? What’s that? Frankly the images rolling through their head were asian massage and if you were lucky the word parlor didn’t roll through. Thai yoga massage as a marketing strategy worked quite well. The potential customer knew that they were clothed, being stretched and it involved something akin to stretching like in their popular yoga classes.

So what is Thai yoga massage? It’s a western creation to sell Thai massage to the budding yoga community. That has its own challenges and caveats. What’s happened recently is more and more yoga teachers were learning the work since it’s related to yoga right? It’s just a passive form of yoga correct?

What’s now happening is the yoga community is grabbing onto Thai massage that they were once calling Thai yoga massage and now they’re just calling it Thai yoga. The issue is that there’s no licensure, no rules and no regulation of yoga and teaching it. Slowly the yoga community encroaches on what I’m struggling to teach to licensed massage therapists. As much as I try what I’m selling is so different that guess who picks it up more easily? Yoga teachers. The problem has grown large enough that the largest certification organization, the Yoga Alliance, has stepped in declaring you can’t use their certification and practice anything called therapy or yoga therapy. Thai yoga therapy anyone? What a great way to avoid massage licensure and massage school.

Welcome to regulation in the U.S. If you’re not a licensed surgeon you can’t just change the name but if you’re a yoga teacher looking to skirt around massage regulation and going to a massage school it’s an easy switch. Drop the word massage from your Thai yoga massage and you can work on whoever you wish with no license.

There are still debates about the historical accuracy of these issues but in my case I’ve always been a yoga teacher and a licensed massage therapist. I’ve understood that these two traditions influenced each other but were separate entities. I use both. I teach both. I share both but with the understanding that they came from separate cultures and theoretical backgrounds.

What happens next? No idea. In TX the massage board is moving under another regulatory agency and there’s hope that there will be a crackdown on unlicensed massage practitioners. Until then, caveat emptor.

Home Remedies For Carpal Tunnel

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Over the years I thought I had carpal tunnel syndrome several times. As a massage therapist who uses my hands I place pressure on my wrists repeatedly each day while trying to help clients. I needed a home remedy for carpal tunnel much like my clients do. My practice grew and I knew not only that I did not have carpal tunnel but many of my clients didn’t either. Many, including myself, just suffer from trigger point pain in the muscles of the forearms.

Sound too simple? It does I admit. I get paid to help others and most of what I’ve learned has come from helping myself. If I can work on clients all day and be fine, you can be too. Musician with hand pain? Mechanic with what feels like arthritis? Knitter who’s afraid you’ll have to stop your favorite hobby? Not if I have anything to do with it.

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The forearm flexors pull the hand in towards the inside of the elbow, the forearm extensors, extend the hands the opposite direction. When these small muscles are overworked they send pain down into the hand, wrist and fingers. I’ve seen this so many times that someone can tell me where they hurt and I work on those specific muscles. 30 minutes later clients look at me like how did you know that? I usually laugh and tell them I had to keep working and I figured it out for myself first.

Schedule a session with me and lets get those symptoms to go away. There’s no need to be in pain when help is available. If you’re not able to see me you can lean into a tennis ball on the outside of your forearm, near the elbow. It’s usually easiest to use a sturdy wall and place your arm at your side. Find a spot dead center on the outside of your forearm to press into. Lean in slowly and breathe. If you start to feel sensation, pain or light tingling in the hand, you’re on the right track.

A recent client reported they were at an 8 on a pain scale out of 10, 10 being the hospital. After a single session his look of awe told me everything. “How’s the pain now?” He responded shocked shaking his arm out, “A 2.” After several sessions he’d not seen me in a month and reported that it never goes past a 3 now. No surgery. No medications.

Let’s make carpal tunnel history.