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 ™.