Make Your Massage Career Dreams Come True!

“This workbook is a must-read for massage therapists, practitioners or students. If you didn't read this before you went to massage school it's not too late.”

—Alex R. Spassoff, L.M.T.
MASSAGE Magazine

“You guys really have written a gem. I've been raving about the book to others in my class.”

—Lisa Peters
Massage Student

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The following is the Preface to The Massage Therapy Career Focus Workbook.

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Preface

Focus. Just another buzzword, perhaps? The fact is, clarity of purpose in any endeavor is always more efficient and rewarding than an unfocussed approach, be it in massage or life in general. Having focus means getting what you want—not settling for whatever comes along or for that which seems most expedient at the time. Unfortunately, massage is a vast industry which, unlike most other professions, virtually defies all attempts at career focus. Until now, that is.

If you have just started your training in massage you stand to reap the most benefit from these principles. This is because you haven’t already spent any of your valuable time and money learning techniques or investing in business opportunities that don’t meet your career focus. If you are already a practicing therapist, we assume you are reading this because your career locomotive has jumped its track. In your case, these principles will help you to get your career locomotive back on track toward a practice which is not only enjoyable but also rewarding. If you are a school or clinic administrator, these principles will give you greater insight into what courses to offer or therapists to hire.

However, before we let you rush onward to figure out your exact massage career focus, we need to explain a few things. First, we want to explain the situation and reasoning which lead to the development of these principles. Why is this? you ask. It’s just that solutions are always better appreciated when one understands the full extent of the problems and circumstances which lead to the solution. Second, we will explain the benefits of these career focus principles. And third, we will give you some insight into the layout of this workbook and some tips on how to get the most out of it.

Two years ago, while writing the script for a ten-minute promotional video on massage therapy, we tried to answer this seemingly innocuous question: What is massage and why is it valuable? Our intuitive response was: Massage therapy is the manipulation of muscles and soft tissues and it is valuable because it makes people feel better. But that answer just didn't seem to do the profession any justice. What kind of touch was it? How did it make people feel better?

We pondered these questions awhile and came up with dozens of possible answers. We realized the answer to What is massage and why is it valuable? depended upon many things. It depended on the individual therapist, his or her training and objectives, the nature of the practice, and the needs of the clients. We also realized, given the terminology extant at the time, that no two therapists described massage or its value in the same way. We knew right then we were in trouble; we couldn’t possibly explain all these answers in a ten-minute video.

In the end, we limited the video’s scope to educating the public about common, everyday activities which could lead to muscle and soft tissue complaints. We then simply added the assertion that massage was uniquely suited to relieving such complaints. This approach, although not our original one, deftly skirted the entire issue of defining the nature of massage. But we weren’t ones to skirt an issue, especially when it came to something as important to us as massage. We resolved to do more intellectual ruminating starting with why the public should value massage.

Value is a highly subjective term. Were we talking about monetary value or just the intrinsic value of human touch? Or, were we talking about the value of good health? Because of this uncertainty, we decided to go back to the basics. We asked ourselves the following: What motivates a person to go to a therapist of any sort? We came up with another list of answers, most of which had to do with improved wellness. So, we surmised, massage’s ability to improve wellness made it valuable. But wellness was another one of those subjective terms; we still hadn’t discovered anything concrete. Finally, we asked ourselves, Why is wellness valuable? That’s when we had it ...Wellness allows people to do what they want, how they want.

Perhaps that sounds overly simplistic, but if you think about it, you will realize, as we did, that most people only seek health care services when they actually experience or fear the loss of a desired activity such as running, walking, or typing at a computer. Therefore, it wasn’t pain relief, stress reduction, or even good health per se that made massage or any other health service valuable to the public, it was their ability to help individuals regain or maintain the ability to do certain, chosen activities without pain, stress, dysfunction, or limitation. However, desired activities were not simply limited to those conscious activities people cared about, it could also include unconscious activities like breathing, digestion, and growing healthy skin. Furthermore, because every person has different activity desires and needs, wellness could not be defined as a single thing for all people.

What we needed was a simple method of determining a person’s activity needs and hence, their wellness. So, based on the assertion that activity was synonymous with wellness, we developed a model which divided all the activities humans perform into three wellness areas. We then used this model to create a massage practice building manual which exploited this phenomenon and called it The Active Wellness System.

At this point, we knew why massage was valuable, but we still hadn’t been able to describe massage. Being professional communicators (in addition to being massage persons) it was readily apparent to us that a significant factor contributing to the difficulty lay in the terms therapists were using; most were obscure, unfamiliar words to the public. Once again, back to the drawing board. What came out of that research was a plain-English guide for massage consumers we called The Massage Treatment Objectives and Preferences Guide or TOP Guide for short.

The objectives portion of the TOP Guide drew upon our previous discoveries revealed in the Active Wellness System. The Preferences portion of the guide were those optional factors we felt were common throughout all massage practices. What happened next was totally unexpected.

Therapists who ordered TOP Guides for their clients started telling us that the information (originally intended for the massage consumer) had helped them to focus their careers. Until the TOP guide, these therapists had never seen such a succinct, yet comprehensive, explanation of the range of possible choices available through massage. That’s when the penny dropped.

It became clear to us that it wasn’t the consumer who needed educating, it was the therapists. So we got out our pencils and paper (again) and revamped the entire format of the TOP Guide for use by therapists. It was only later, after we and some willing volunteers had a chance to test and implement these principles, that we discovered the range of benefits this approach to career focus afforded.

Now you know about the problems, and circumstances which led to this workbook. Let’s now take a closer look at those benefits we just mentioned.

The first benefit these principles offer is that they drastically reduce the amount of time required to find a career focus. Until now, even the most determined therapist would still probably require from five to ten years to find his or her chosen career focus. That is because it is basically a trial and error process (i.e., you just keep taking this course and that seminar until you finally latch onto a preferred career focus). This approach may have been fine in the good ol’ days when massage certification only required a hundred (or fewer) hours of training. Nowadays, however, massage certification can take up to 3,500 hours and cost thousands of dollars. Therefore, today’s new therapists just don’t have the resources to support themselves or the luxury of time to spend finding themselves. With these principles you can reduce the time from five or ten years down to a few hours of reading and practicing. Not a bad way to spend a few afternoons, wouldn’t you say?

The second benefit afforded by these principles is their user-friendliness. User-friendly not just because they incorporate terms which are easily understood by the public, but they are also specific enough to communicate the real-world value your massage practice offers. The self-explanatory nature inherent in these terms will help you to overcome the limitations of descriptions such as Shiatsu, Manual Lymphatic Drainage, or even Swedish Massage.

The third benefit is in the way our theory of wellness areas from the Active Wellness System reveal how every style or technique has its own unique and valuable place within massage. Until now, you really could not defend yourself if someone said their method or technique was better or truer than your method or technique. We are truly hopeful that this aspect of these principles for career focus will bring peace and harmony o'er the land of massage.

The fourth benefit is actually an extension of the third, but it is one of the most exciting. Because our model of wellness areas is non-massage specific, we find these career focus principles apply to virtually every form of health care. So, not only will you understand where your particular massage practice fits within massage, but you will also understand where it fits in relation to the entire health care system. And, if you can see where your practice fits within health care, it doesn’t take a great leap of intellect to realize that other health care practitioners and organziations will see where you fit.

Lest you not fully appreciate this benefit, let us explain further. Almost since the day massage became an organized profession it has struggled to justify its existence within the conventional health care system. Even the fact that we have to refer to the conventional health care system illustrates this point. Ipso facto, the conventional practitioners see massage as alternative. But now, with these principles, there is no need for phrases like conventional or alternative health care. Wellness is wellness, the only difference now is the degree and scope of the therapy.

The fifth and final benefit (so far) that these principles provide is that they allow you to do away with all the demographic, cultural, tradename, and symptom specific modifiers of the word massage. Examples of these are Sports Massage, Thai Massage, Cayce-Reilly Massage, or Stress-Relief Massage respectively. Granted, from a marketing standpoint, these may be useful, but they will no longer be necessary for describing or focussing your career.

Now that we have brought you up to speed on the development and benefits of these principles, we would just like to spend a moment telling you about the design and structure of the workbook.

First, there is the cover. Some people have asked us why we chose the image of a prism. It wasn’t because we are big Pink Floyd fans; rather, it was because prisms are simple yet powerful tools for revealing a complex phenomenon. That’s how we like to think of these career focus principles: simple yet powerful. And since there are three main sections (analagous to the three sides of a prism) from which seven focus principles emerge (like the seven colors within white light) we thought the image was a natural fit.

Now, we know we have been going on about how critical career focus is for success, and that’s true, but career focus is really only half the equation. The other half is effective communication. If we were not to give you the ability to communicate your career focus, we would be guilty of wasting your valuable time. That is why we have divided the seven career focus principles into those three sections we just mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Each section represents a portion of an effective communications statement you will use to tell others about your existing practice, school, or clinic, or to talk about your future schooling or professional development needs.

Specifically, the three main parts of the workbook which represent the three components of a communications statement are: Part One - Service Provided, Part Two - Service Method, and Part Three - Service Context. These are just fancy titles which reflect the fact that if you want to tell somebody about your practice you have to convey what you will provide, how you will provide it, and finally, where you will provide it. Within these three sections you will find the seven career focus principles. Each focus principle is further divided into four sections as follows:

At the end of this workbook, you will find an appendix containing additional resources designed to help you put these principles into action. If you want to get the most from this workbook, please be aware that each section builds on the information in the preceding sections. If you skip a section, the following sections may not make sense to you. Above all, discuss with others the focus decisions you have made about your training, career, practice, and professional development. This will further solidify your understanding and facilitate your ability to employ these fundamental principles, which in order to be effective, must become second nature.

One final bit of advice before you begin. Over time, your own objectives may change to some degree. If this occurs, you may find your career focus has become somewhat blurred. Therefore, use this workbook as a tool (just as a prism is a tool for dividing light) for splitting up your own jumble of thoughts and aspirations into its component parts. This will allow you to see if your career focus is still the same or if a new, more focussed career path has emerged.

That said, you may now rush forth and start focussing your career.

End of The Massage Therapy Career Focus Workbook Introduction. To continue reading this book online, click here.

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