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™

Tim McCoy and Robert Gardner Talk Thai Massage

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Tim McCoy and I have been colleagues and friends in and around Austin for over 7 years at this point. Tim was looking for something and apparently part of it coalesced into the Thai massage I was teaching years ago in central Texas. Tim loves table based work but as a Brazilian JiuJitsu practitioner he kept commenting on the fact that I put clients in soft joint locks and worked tissue in a therapeutic way that looked awfully similar to the martial art he’d come to know and love.

As Tim and I continued to grow and teach he often was a teaching assistant for classes while working at Massage Harmony an Austin original spa that was one of the first facilities to add Thai massage to its menu of services. He’s got his own educational challenges now as a teacher and it’s great to see how far we’ve both come over the years while mentoring massage therapists in our area.

Reboot™ and the State of Massage Education

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I give talks periodically at the Lauterstein Conway Massage School here in Austin, TX. As a continuing education provider and entrepreneur it’s always interesting to walk into a class full of students and see where they’re at mentally. 15 years in my industry and I’m now 40 years old with a solid grasp of what’s going on in the massage world.

Some talks make me inordinately angry, others hopeful. Talking to students full of enthusiasm is one of the things that keeps me going. Wondering if I’m connecting when discussing branding for massage therapists who are taught to dole out a commodity is something I’ll continue to do. There are usually a handful of students who come up after a talk with questions knowing innately that there’s more going on that we just don’t have time to discuss in a 30 minute talk.

The state of our industry is that Massage Envy helped create inexpensive low priced massage for the masses. For that I sincerely thank them. My suggestion to students is to now go artisanal and sell services no facility can match. If students wonder what Reboot™ is it’s because no one does it no one teaches it and the bulk of the public doesn’t look at what I do as massage.

What I do is help those in chronic pain put their lives back together when soft tissue and muscle is the cause.