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Why Reboot™

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I had a phone conversation with a colleague and he insisted that I’m driving away part of my target market by insisting that what I do isn’t massage. Legally massage is the manipulation of soft tissue. Legally massage therapists are the ones who can perform this work but to someone who’s already bought and sold the culturally hegemonic kool aid Reboot™ is less massage anything they’ve ever seen. Where’s the table?

My colleague wanted me to focus on the benefits, the features. When you sell it to massage therapists what are they looking for? What problems are they trying to solve?

Massage therapists get the following benefits by using what I teach:

Save your hands
Help clients in chronic pain rapidly
Deep compressions effortlessly
Do propped yoga while you work
Offer a truly unique service clients cannot get elsewhere
More effective next level 21st century work
Make more income offering an amazing service no facility comes close to
Have more fun in session!!
Engage full mobility for your clients and yourself
No hunching over a table
Increased range of motion and capacity to engage more intimately with clients
Help clients with severe menstrual cramps and debilitating low back pain by using advanced abdominal massage
Create a niche service that allows you to film and create tons of social media content
Spend less on cream and oils
Save on laundry since you only need a flat sheet on top of your mat
Make use of your full body including legs and feet to deliver pressure
Accelerate your business growth by having a service you can demonstrate easily
Create a space where you’re breathing fully and exploring your own range of motion while helping people
Work for yourself more easily
A clothed service helps with clients who may not want to undress
Male therapists may be able to open up new markets to clients who don’t want to undress
Meditate while you work
Did I mention that it’s more fun? 🙂

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.

Why Study Thai Massage with Robert Gardner?

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Occasionally I get phone calls or emails from potential students who want to know why they should study with me. This is always a loaded question because they presume that they already know what I’m teaching if they’ve studied some Thai massage with other teachers. They already know what I do right?

Usually I find this to not be the case. I’m mixing and blending Thai massage, yoga, yoga therapy, advanced abdominal work, pain science, trigger point therapy and myofascial release into sessions that are 3 hours long. This isn’t massage. It isn’t Thai massage. It’s a Reboot™.

I’m happy to talk with students and place them in class where they can pick up what I do but I’m just as much a yoga teacher as I am a massage therapist. I’m not going to use a table, cream, glide or nudity in my sessions. What that means in the larger culture is that though what I do is bound by massage law it’s not really considered massage by the population who’s been sold massage as an hour long cream and glide session on a table.

If you want to study with me you want to break all of the rules and help people while doing so. You’re an iconoclast and you’re ready to subvert the dominant paradigm.