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Video can be key to promoting and growing your practice. Yes, it may be intimidating, but learning a few skills can introduce potential clients to yourself and existing clients to the full gamut of your techniques and modalities. Bring your website and social content to life and beyond the written word. Ryan Hoyme, the Massage Nerd, tells you which platforms to use and lets you in on equipment choices.
A client with a serious circulatory problem—a failed femoral-popliteal bypass, or “fem-pop” surgery—wants a massage while he’s waiting for his next procedure. There’s no data on massage and failed fem-pops at all. What can this massage therapist do? In this episode, we look at fem-pop surgeries and the reasons why a person might need it. Then, we take apart some of the variables that go into making decisions about massage therapy for this client. It’s a critical-thinking exercise with immediate repercussions for this client and his health and…
Being a client makes you a better therapist. Besides the obvious self-care benefits, it heightens your awareness of good bodywork and the specifics that make or break a session. Listen as Cindy Williams puts on her professional educator hat and details moments from a challenging bodywork session where she was the client and her suggestions for improvement.
A contributor has an unusual question: how soon can I work with someone who recently donated a kidney? We have lots of information about massage therapy for people on dialysis, and known cautions for transplant recipients, but we don’t know much about how to help living donors. In this episode, we take a look at what it’s like to give up a kidney and what kinds of accommodations for massage that requires.
Doing the hard work has always been in Diana Thompson’s blood. From an early age, philanthropy and health-care inequities fueled her passions. Diana talks with us about the importance of charting and record keeping as critical steps in acting “like health-care providers,” the importance of participation in the client-therapist relationship, and resetting goals with clients to inform their long-term, committed therapeutic wellness path.
A client is seven months pregnant and has severe pain in both hands and wrists. Is it carpal tunnel? Can massage help? The answers are yes, maybe, AND—watch out for a significant risk.
Australian practitioner Elicia Crook tells us what it takes to rebook with success—and integrity and heart-centered-ness. She learned from working in a chiropractic office (where she met a retention ninja) and a spa (where she learned about retail sales) and then created a mashup in her business Massage Champions.
A client has frozen shoulder: a painful, limiting condition, and she is prescribed a powerful drug (methylprednisolone) to help manage it. When it is appropriate for massage to enter this situation?
Massage & Bodywork columnist (Table Lessons) and MTF President Douglas Nelson discusses honoring the uniqueness of every therapeutic encounter and remaining open and curious to each client. We discuss the partnership between client and practitioner, outline strong leadership during the pandemic, and define the difference between excellence and art in the work.
A young client has had dizzy spells and neck pain with stiffness for three years. His doctor can’t find anything wrong, and—huzzah!—suggests massage therapy to help. What is the source of his vertigo? Can massage help?
Dr. Ben Benjamin offers his inspirational path—a career driven by his consistent curiosity. Benjamin became interested in the healing power of touch when working with a local manual therapist in his youth to address injuries. Benjamin’s work now includes communication skills, and he occasionally serves as an expert witness in cases of client and practitioner impropriety.
In this episode, I explore a condition that is completely new to me, and you get to come along for the ride. A long-time client shows signs of some complicated neurological problems. Is it Parkinson’s? Is it hydrocephalus? Why not both?