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Beginner’s Mind
I’ve spent many years teaching and slamming up against intellectual blocks from students and failures from my end to adequately explain and brand/market my work. I got a message the other day and it was simple enough.
Do you teach orthopedic massage?
I gave a calm beneficial response but like usual I sit and go, “what?” Why all these labels and challenges related to something so simple that it’s common to all of human anatomy and physiology? To take it further my friend’s pets, cats and dogs mainly, love me because I massage them with the same enthusiasm because well, we evolved on the same planet from mammals and have very similar nerve endings and biological parameters.
I just looked up orthopedic to get a definition: relating to the branch of medicine dealing with the correction of deformities of bones or muscles.
I’m not sure it fits what I do but Thai massage came and went. Before you draw too many conclusions understand that I have the most documented bodywork practice likely in history. I wrote 4 workbooks, consisting of 700 pages of sequence manuals and 9 dvds of core content to…get students started. I then went on to record every class I’ve taught since 2017. That’s another 800 hours of footage, much of which is sampled across my social media.
As business grew, no one compared Thai massage to orthopedic massage. Students when I made my first specific issue course, carpal tunnel relief, declared that it was all “sciency.” ? Huh? When I looked at it I suspect they saw me take out anatomical drawings, talk about nerve and cardiovascular supply but isn’t that what everyone does? Don’t we as bodyworkers think about those things as we’re working?
I was told long ago that my work was not Thai. When pressed they declared, “it’s not Thai unless the theory is Thai.” My retort was that if the theory is Thai it’s based on thousands of years old outdated information, refuses to update itself and doesn’t work outside of a Thai cultural framework. I taught work that was common to all of humanity not people from a single geographic location. My work was global.
Ok I don’t teach Thai massage. Cool. Next.
I filed a trademark for Reboot. After a 3 year wait and much consternation the trademark was declined. Everyone around me wailed and gnashed teeth while I, who’d paid thousands of dollars, just said, “we’ll repackage and pick a new name. It’s window dressing.”
So here we are. Still debating what xyz is and of all the moments I’ve seen, when students complain that it’s not fair that I have to wait for a trademark review don’t seem to understand is that the engine of my work is hard to build. The paint job? That’s easy.
When I first talked about reboot in a class, a student, who was a teacher at a school but very open to my ideas started chanting, “reboot! reboot! reboot!” I was slack jawed in amazement. They’d never chanted Thai massage. Why?
Brand is an amorphous challenging thing. Having spent likely 10k on lawyers and paperwork over the years I’ve come to look at the idea and concept regularly. The above is what I really do.
What a good trademark does isn’t explain what you do but create beginners mind. 🙂
Next Level Pain Relief™
It’s a pain relief and mobility service. It’s not even massage.
Thai massage though beneficial as packaging to a point presented it’s own challenges and problems both for myself and students. Thai massage is to me a misnomer. Nuad boran that’s another story. 🙂 To this day, I can’t just explain what I do because they’re so busy comparing it to this or that other style of work. I’m told that what I’m doing is foolish. Just like I wrote in my first Thai massage workbook, I honor the teachers who’ve come before me but it’s time to push forward with confidence.
Name changes? Oh no worries. I can make up a word if this trademark fails and we’ll keep working at it til it sticks.
What do I teach? It’s some of the best science informed specifically pain relieving manual therapy in the marketplace. I accept none of my society’s social conventions or norms. I deliver work to people in pain to help them with common sense and a large dose of humor.
Argue amongst yourselves about whether it’s orthopedic. Argue about whether it’s Thai massage or yoga or yoga therapy. For years when I bring it to the massage community, they stand agasp at my mat and insistence on better body mechanics from mat based work. They announce, “this isn’t massage.”
I agree.
It’s Next Level Pain Relief™
I take the work into a yoga studio, everyone loves it and raves but then the studio owner looks over at what I see as massive potential and says, “I don’t understand. This isn’t yoga.”
Neither community I draw from actually seems to Want what I teach. You’re right! It’s not yoga.
It’s Next Level Pain Relief™
Well what the hell is that? The sessions are mat based only. They’re 2-4 hours long and we focus on client’s capacity for mobility and reducing pain using active and passive techniques to unwind tension, induce relaxation and change lives.
Massage is table, cream, glide and nudity.
Next Level Pain Relief™ removes the table. Removes the cream. Removes the glide. Removes the nudity.
It’s coming to a city/state and locale near you. Anyone on earth can study with me for $7 a month.
In Person Classes are Dead
Now before you have an emotional response to that, give me just a few minutes.
What if I could give you education for 75% less, make it more time effective, lower the cost to nearly free for many attendees and manage hands on feedback on pressure and touch?
Wait a second. I thought you said in person was dead? Well it is.
This is how my classes go in the future.
Students and our industry will adapt to online education but this will take years to implement at scale. I am using 4 cameras audio with filters and anatomy on screen to stream essentially globally via youtube. Information is set free. If a student wants CE credit and their state accepts NCBTMB homestudy CEs then awesome but what if you just want to learn?
What if one student pays $100 for their CE but that same student wants 5 colleagues to work with them? Invite them in, work on each other, call or text me Live and give Feedback on Hands On Pressure as a group. If the student who wants CE credit charges the other 5 students $20 a piece? Your CE credit is now free. I didn’t see it. I don’t know it. I just know life does what it does and I’m here to provide more information as rapidly as possible.
Look at it for a second from my angle. Students Love in person classes. They’ll constantly announce, “but I like hands on.” What they don’t seem to realize is that in an in person class with 24 students how much time do you really spend with me getting hands on attention? Very little. In fact it’s small enough that a 3 days class at $500 is $27.8 per CE hour (my classes are usually 6 hours each day.)
Online is not perfect. I’ll admit that but we’ve jumped a huge precipice and it will take years for the industry to understand what’s happened. Not only can you study with me Live Interactively once, you can do so each month. If there are 6 of you in your group, you’re putting me up on a big screen tv engaging in a #CEparty and having fun together as a group building community eating from a charcuterie plate and drinking wine (again, what I don’t know won’t hurt me) and you’re studying with a top notch educator not once but Every month for 6 hours. You’re getting feedback working with a partner and learning the work incrementally building the education of our industries future.
If there are 6 of you and the $100 cost is split it’s $17 a month for attendees. $17 each month for a year is $204 a year per attendee.
An in person class with 24 students is loud. Lots of chatter. An online livestream with your group is only as loud as your personal group. 10k students could study with me simultaneously for the moment across 4 time zones in the U.S. and it’s pretty quiet on my end.
Direct to consumer is the model. I’ve no wish to have gatekeepers take a cut, charge fees or get in between the information I’m trying to deliver therapists. I read facebook groups. I see the pain massage therapists are in and I have a solution. I can show you. I can show you for pennies on the dollar of what educators charge. Don’t believe me?
My subscription service is free for your first month.
After that it’s a whopping $7 a month. In a year that’s $84. After 10 years studying with me using a prerecorded vault it’s $840 I don’t have to tell you what the ROI or return on investment is doing 3 hour sessions for $300 is.
Every day I get feedback like this:
I’ll keep working to improve things. I’ve an undying unquenchable desire to make our industry better. I want you and your friends on board with me building the future.
I’ll see you in August for Rotator Cuff and Shoulder Pain Relief.
How Do I Get Started With Thai Massage
I get regular phone calls and social media contacts from students trying to figure out where to get started studying Thai massage. When you work with me I’ve done my best to distill 15 years of practice into a seamless experience. While many students will do best with in person classes I think they severely underestimate what can be done online with distance education as we have it set up. Here’s what it looks like:
First we have a free workbook. If you haven’t downloaded one get started now.
Second we have an online subscription service with 80+ hours of video instructional content. When you join you get an additional online live interactive class once a month and access to our private facebook group to ask questions and get more education. You can subscribe to the Reboot™ Insiders Club here.
Third we have a full series of workbook and dvds. So far we have 700 pages of sequence manuals and 6 dvds (we’re finishing another 3 as you’re reading this) available with detailed step by step instruction. Each workbook goes along with the videos step by step to walk you through complete sequences. These materials really go inside my practice and show you how I’ve been working in the last 15 years. They took me 7 years to create and distill the information to make it as clear and succinct as possible.
We currently have a payment plan and you can purchase that full retail package here. (For paper goods we only ship within the U.S. Alaska and Hawaii.)
These can be started immediately. It’s the quickest and fastest way to get started today!
Beyond that we have ongoing in person group classes. We have classes coming up in Round Rock, Dallas and Houston, Texas as well as Fort Smith, Arkansas. You can register for those classes by scrolling down to the bottom.
Let’s say you want in person private training. Please text me so we can arrange for that. 512 905 2298 I charge $80/hour with a 3 hour minimum for private training. I can also do this via webcam if you need private distance training and will work with you on the time as I don’t require 3 hours for that.
Hopefully that gives you a good start. There are tons of questions and we go over this regularly. I try to make the answers as simple as possible for students and provide the highest quality education in Thai massage at what I believe is also some of the least expensive and highly engaging online presentation. Our subscription service is taking the massage industry by storm. No one has ever seen anyone give away so much and beyond that $7/month is a complete steal.
Get on board the subscription service today. It’s the best deal in our industry right now for education. We’re building to offering CE credit as fast as we can.
Lomilomi Massage in Austin Texas
Jason Bratcher is a colleague and friend that I wanted to interview and talk shop with. He’s had a practice for many years and works in a polar opposite form of table based work called Lomilomi. It’s originally from Hawaii and the pacific islands. It typically involves lots of oil on a table and tons of glide.
Jason can be contacted via his website.
I really enjoyed this series of talks. After he did his wonderful demonstration of the long fluid strokes involved in his work he had a conversation about business where we went over some the details of social media marketing. I’m a huge fan of video production and this is where Jason’s work really shines. I’d no idea before our get together that it was so visual.
Therapists like Jason and I are committed to helping the massage community diversify and offer niche services like Thai massage and Lomilomi. I’m very happy to have him as a colleague and hopefully we’ll shoot more content over time. It’s a good excuse to get together and chat.
Why Reboot™
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? 🙂
Why Study Thai Massage with Robert Gardner?
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 Rebootâ„¢.
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.
What is Thai Massage?
What Is Thai Massage?
I used to think I knew. At least I thought I had an idea. Over time Thai massage has vaporized in my mind in the way that American history has changed due to revisionist history. When I first studied with my teacher it was just Thai massage sometimes called Thai yoga massage and the yoga was just to let people know it was something like yoga where you stretched the client.
At that time that was enough. My interest in the practice was immediate and I felt a deep longing to travel to Thailand and study more in time. Due to life, finances and work I continued using what I’d been taught over the years and noticed my confusion as to why massage therapists worked as they did. Mat work was easier on my body more pain relieving and effective for clients but I couldn’t for the life of me find work in Austin, Texas. Austin being a progressive hub I was quite confused at the lack of diversity in the bodywork marketplace. Swedish and deep tissue ruled the landscape. In places I interviewed for work they made it very clear that they have no idea what Thai massage was and wouldn’t be offering something consumers weren’t asking for.
In my search for information I could find schools in the U.S. but they didn’t seem to be talking. It was as if they existed in isolation. I did what I always do. I got up and went. I started the US Thai massage group on facebook and brought many of the prominent teachers to myself. Immediately they began arguing with each other and even moreso subtly announcing that I didn’t know anything. This westerner was teaching Thai massage having never been to Thailand.
I produced a free Thai massage workbook that I gave away on my website. I was criticized even more for polluting a sacred tradition with my theoretically errant writings. I’d never presumed to know everything. I just presumed to know more than the students I was teaching. Most of them were completely floored by what I was sharing as it was nothing like anything they’d been taught before. They did massage on a table with the client under a sheet and blanket using oil or cream on bare skin. I was working on clothed clients on a mat using things that looked more like Brazilian jiu jitsu than massage. I had full use of my whole body including legs and feet.
Six years in teaching later I still don’t know what Thai massage is. I teach something called Thai massage but that label only seems to work for people if they’re not interested in lineage. I read articles. I follow the traditionalist camps and listen to their rally cry of tradition and lineage but deep down it doesn’t resonate for me at all. I was never really interested in Thai massage in that way. I was interested in helping people overcome pain. Thai massage was just the vehicle to help them there.
What is Thai massage is still the most searched for keyword term for Thai massage via google. No one knows what it is. Increasingly what I notice is there’s someone as white and as western as I am smiling and telling you he can teach you the Thai secrets for a large sum of money. What is Thai massage? I’m not really certain but I enjoy a good debate and find people fun to watch.
At this stage in my career I’ve written eight hundred pages of some of the most detailed sequence manuals on Thai massage in the western marketplace. I’m biased of course but my materials were writtien with massage therapists in mind. I was helping them transition from the table to the mat, no small undertaking for a table based culture. Saying I don’t know what Thai massage is means I wrote eight hundred pages of what exactly?
My soul. Mostly that’s what’s on those pages. My toil and care for others over the last thirteen or so years is on display. Much like youtube video comments people will have much to say about my being fat. I’ll be told what I do isn’t Thai enough. It’s not this enough or that enough and doesn’t include prayers to Jivaka and the Buddha. If you’ve a keen eye you’ll take something out of context and tell me I’m off hara and not moving correctly. You’ll announce I’m doing it wrong.
At this stage I’ll just sit back drink some scotch ponder my age increasing belly fat and laugh. Frankly, I don’t care much about tradition. I’m a Scots-Irish born man from south Louisiana. My people are the ones you saw during hurricane Katrina on tv and in protests over Alton Sterling in my hometown of Baton Rouge, La. Critics? Oh I’ve got plenty of those. I’ll continue to have them as long as I live.
“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”~Aristotle
What is Thai massage? I’m still not certain. When you dig enough the pieces start to fall apart. Is it Thai? Is it ancient? Is it sacred? Is it for sale?
Your Thai massage is what you make it. Don’t let anyone criticize your practice. We all have opinions. My question to you is what you are doing helping others? Then keep going. Do you ask good questions and self reflect? Then keep going. I’m not as interested in Thai massage as I am in how you treat your neighbors. I help mine. Do you? Is that Thai massage?
Home Remedies For Carpal Tunnel
Over the years I thought I had carpal tunnel syndrome several times. As a massage therapist who uses my hands I place pressure on my wrists repeatedly each day while trying to help clients. I needed a home remedy for carpal tunnel much like my clients do. My practice grew and I knew not only that I did not have carpal tunnel but many of my clients didn’t either. Many, including myself, just suffer from trigger point pain in the muscles of the forearms.
Sound too simple? It does I admit. I get paid to help others and most of what I’ve learned has come from helping myself. If I can work on clients all day and be fine, you can be too. Musician with hand pain? Mechanic with what feels like arthritis? Knitter who’s afraid you’ll have to stop your favorite hobby? Not if I have anything to do with it.
The forearm flexors pull the hand in towards the inside of the elbow, the forearm extensors, extend the hands the opposite direction. When these small muscles are overworked they send pain down into the hand, wrist and fingers. I’ve seen this so many times that someone can tell me where they hurt and I work on those specific muscles. 30 minutes later clients look at me like how did you know that? I usually laugh and tell them I had to keep working and I figured it out for myself first.
Schedule a session with me and lets get those symptoms to go away. There’s no need to be in pain when help is available. If you’re not able to see me you can lean into a tennis ball on the outside of your forearm, near the elbow. It’s usually easiest to use a sturdy wall and place your arm at your side. Find a spot dead center on the outside of your forearm to press into. Lean in slowly and breathe. If you start to feel sensation, pain or light tingling in the hand, you’re on the right track.
A recent client reported they were at an 8 on a pain scale out of 10, 10 being the hospital. After a single session his look of awe told me everything. “How’s the pain now?” He responded shocked shaking his arm out, “A 2.” After several sessions he’d not seen me in a month and reported that it never goes past a 3 now. No surgery. No medications.
Let’s make carpal tunnel history.
Keep Going
I spent 6 years in central Texas without ever receiving another Thai massage from a practitioner. I decided to teach because the work wasn’t available anywhere and the community desperately needed it. Along the way things have grown and changed, developed in ways that even I couldn’t have foreseen. Class this weekend in Houston will be the last of the spring and every class has been fun, eventful and fortunately profitable as well.
I’ve gathered critics. I’ll continue to gather more. A trusted friend had a phone conversation with me and what I heard was a complete mirror. His only true feedback was, “keep going.”
There are more classes coming soon. Table Thai classes will start in several months and I’m working on the pain clinic in my home studio again. Stay tuned and if you have not, please subscribe to my email list. You get a free Thai massage workbook and it gives me direct access unlike social media which is increasingly filtering posts and information.
Much more to come. Stay tuned.
<3 Metta
Want To Get Better?
As I’m finishing writing the Table Thai workbook I’m amazed at all that’s going on. Classes in different cities, community classes at Blue Honey Yoga, private practice is booming and all the while I feel less like a massage therapist every day. I suppose these changes are normal growth, small turbulence in an active practice.
I love massage therapists and the public and I’m doing everything I can to show them there’s a better way. If you don’t know what Thai massage is yet, get ready for the rest of 2014.
Without a Net
Someone asked me the other day what I do in a 2 hour session. A 2 hour massage seems unfathomable to people. In a country where the average massage is a standard hour people wonder what secrets you must pull out for a longer session. I politely told the client that I do the same but I take more time, slowly work my way through each limb and do more detailed work.
Over time I’ve grown to appreciate a 2 hour session and the feel it gives me the most time to adequately deal with client concerns and complaints while at the same time providing space so that I don’t feel like I have to rush. Going to a movie that was almost 3 hours the other night made me wonder why so many therapists and clients seem guffawed at receiving bodywork for that length of time.
I saw an interview with Mickey Hart where he described the Grateful Dead and their music and how they were never a studio band. As I’ve been writing and codifying Thai massage in videos and workbooks lately I completely understood his meaning. A 2 hour session with me is akin to the Grateful Dead’s 2 sets or more of music. If you cut them in half and only give them a first set when do they improvise? That first hour of massage is just warm up. Much like the music I love my bodywork is also performed in the moment with no formal container. Life much like bodywork is best done when you realize you’re performing without a net.