Some would say I shouldn’t be telling you this, but…
I think it’s too important not to share.
When I first moved to San Diego, I interviewed for the position of massage therapist at the most well-known massage chain in America. Part of it was giving a session to the hiring manager.
”Where would you like focus and attention today?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, shoulders and upper back.”
After flushing out her shoulders and rhomboids lying face down, I had her flip over so I could elongate her shortened pectorals and biceps.
”Nope, you’re not going to be able to do that here. We don’t do pecs here. It’s too close to the breast tissue.”
”But the pecs are not the breast tissue.”
”We don’t want to get sued. We just fired someone the other day for spending too much time around the pecs.”
”Do YOU believe they’re the same thing?” I asked in disbelief.
”Of course not. But that’s the way it is around here.”
To resolve any kind of pain, it is necessary to address both the afflicted area and the adjacent muscles that are indirectly at play. Most of us have pecs and biceps that are locked up from all the time we spend on computers and phones and in cars. Unsustainable body postures are unfortunately a modern epidemic.
I did not go on to work at the most renown spa chain in America. I left thinking more people should be aware of how prohibitive their legal policies are. I speak to countless people seeking clinical pain relief who went to this spa chain because they didn’t know anywhere else to go. Many of them left feeling like they’d wasted their money because their needs hadn’t been addressed.
This potentially impacts the faith and trust they have that massage therapy can be a true clinical solution to real physical ailments that restrict daily life. Corporate massage spa policies undermine the therapeutic massage industry as a whole as we fight for legitimacy and differentiation from the “massage” parlors of the sex industry.
Some corporate spas even require their employees to follow set choreography. If a massage therapist notices a client has knots in their neck and movement restriction, they will not be able to spend more time there than the choreography allows.
“Why, though?” I asked another hiring manager at a different spa, during a different job interview.
”We don’t want one client to complain that another client got something that they didn’t.”
Corporate spa massage will always be conservative. At worst, more focused on keeping people from being unhappy than making people truly happy. At best, able to reasonably meet the needs of a conservative crowd.
Clinical massage therapy is customized, results-driven and goal-oriented. Quite radically goal-oriented. Can-keep-a-patient-out-of-surgery level radical. That’s always been my intention. To raise the bar for what is possible by approaching every issue from every direction possible.
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Yours Truly,
Norell