Self Care for Massage Therapists

As a massage therapist, self care is one of the most important things you can do for yourself whether you own your own business or work for someone else.

How you take care of yourself is a reflection about the beliefs about yourself and how much you value yourself. One of the simplest things you can do to build your business is to make sure that you are getting a massage once a week. What client would want to come in once a week themselves and do something that you are not doing yourself?

Self care also includes how you take care of yourself financially, as well as mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Charging less than you are worth or not doing the marketing you need to get the clients you need to support yourself is poor self care. You need money to take care of yourself and family - to pay the bills, take vacations, pay for healthcare and save for retirement. How you set your fees, cancellation policies and boundaries for your massage business is all a reflection of self care.

Your emotional needs - needing to be needed and appreciated are also best to have met outside of your massage practice. When you count on your clients to provide the feeling of being needed it can influence the therapeutic relationship which is really the basis for healing. When the therapeutic relationship is compromised it can create problems which can result in working with draining clients or less than ideal clients.

The need to help that is so often a basis for becoming a massage therapist can also create challenges in the client/therapist relationship. Helping usually has another side to it. We help thinking that if others need us they won't leave us. Helping is really a reflection of how needy you are yourself. Learning about helping and discovering the reasons why you help are addressed in peer supervision groups or individual supervision sessions.

The more you take care of yourself in whatever form that is good for you , the better your chances of being successful. Your massage practice is a reflection of your beliefs about yourself which include your ideas about success.

See also:Setting Your Fees for massage - This is one of the highest forms of self care along with anything that has to do with money and finances. So many massage therapists end up going out of business when they don't set their fees competitively and raise their rates every year.

Voice your opinion, comments or story on this topic.

|| FAQ's  ||  Career Guides  || Websites  || Supervision || About Me ||

Visit My Other site : www.thebodyworker.com