Best Practices: Shari Auth

Q. What advice can you provide about marketing a technique or product?

A. Publish educational articles on the topic that pertains to your technique or product. It’s generous to your audience and demonstrates your expertise on that topic.

Q. If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently starting out?

A. I’m happy to say, mostly nothing, I would have just been more confident about my decision to go into holistic medicine at a time when it wasn’t

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that popular or recognized.

Q. How do you balance your work life and your personal life?

A. I don’t work weekends and I’ve learned to say no to my clients to maintain reasonable work hours.

Q. Describe a time when things weren’t going well in your business and what you did to turn it around.

A. When my practice was slow, I set up cross-referral networks with practitioners with a similar client base, like personal trainers, raw food chefs, hairdressers and doctors.

Q. What was the best business decision you’ve made?

A. I used to have a house-call practice. When I finished my master’s degree in Chinese medicine, I decided to switch to an office practice. It meant risking the loss of clients and starting over. In the end, I lost the bulk of my house-call clientele but managed to establish a busy office practice. Having an office means I can book more clients in less time, and the energy I put toward traveling from house to house I now put toward treating clients.

Tanning-Bed Addiction Found

Massage therapists are on the front lines of helping prevent skin cancer, by noticing suspicious moles and lesions on clients’ skin. About 120,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

But it doesn’t take the sun to create skin cancer; the uptick in tanning-bed use over the last decade is creating new cancer cases, especially among young adults. In 2009, The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer moved UV tanning beds to its highest cancer-risk category, “carcinogenic to humans.”

New research shows tanning-bed users exhibit brain changes and behavior similar to addicts.

“This could explain why some people continue to use tanning beds despite the increased risk of developing melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer,” noted a press release from UT Southwestern Medical Center. “The brain activity and corresponding blood flow tracked by UT Southwestern scientists involved in the study is similar to that seen in people addicted to drugs and alcohol.”

People younger than 30 who use a tanning bed 10 times a year have eight times the risk of developing malignant melanoma, the investigators noted, adding, “While public knowledge of these dangers has grown, so has the regular use of tanning beds.”

Research Exclusive: Aquatic Exercise for Multiple Sclerosis

For people with multiple sclerosis, a recent pilot study has shown that an aquatic exercise program is both feasible and beneficial, resulting in improved motor function among the subjects.

The study, “Community-based group aquatic program for individuals with multiple sclerosis: a pilot study,” involved 11 adults with multiple sclerosis, 10 of whom completed the entire intervention. Inclusion criteria for the study included a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, a medical clearance for exercise participation and limited physical activity prior to participation in the study.

The aquatic exercise program used for this study was designed by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and approved by experts in physical therapy, occupational therapy and sports science, as well as a certified aquatic instructor with 15 years of experience conducting classes for people with multiple sclerosis.

Subjects in the study attended this one-hour group aquatic exercise class twice a week for five weeks. At the start of each class, the participants warmed up, then performed the aquatic exercises, and then there was a cool-down period, all of which took place in the pool.

Evaluation of the study’s subjects took place before and after the five-week aquatic intervention. The 10-Meter Walk test, the Berg Balance Scale, the Timed Up and Go, a grip-strength test and the Modified Fatigue Impact Scale all were used to assess results of aquatic exercise. Participants also filled out a satisfaction survey in regards to the aquatic exercise classes.

An analysis of the data showed significant improvements in walking

speed, balance, functional mobility and grip strength following the five weeks of aquatic exercise. There were no significant changes from baseline to post-intervention in terms of fatigue.

Data from the satisfaction survey showed high approval ratings for the overall experience, and none of the subjects reported any adverse effects related to the aquatic exercise.

“The findings demonstrate that a community-based aquatic program for individuals with multiple sclerosis is feasible, beneficial and safe to implement and may serve as a good model for community-based wellness programs for people with disabilities,” state the study’s authors.

The researchers speculate the significant improvements in motor function may be due to the fact that the subjects were able to engage in exercises in the water that would not have been possible for them to perform on land.

“The positive outcomes from this study justify a multi-centered study to further examine the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the aquatic program,” state the study’s authors, “and to determine the cost of running short-term group-based aquatic exercise programs compared to long-term individual aquatic sessions.”

Authors: Yasser Salem, Anne Hiller Scott, Herbert Karpatkin, George Concert, Leah Haller, Eva Kaminsky, Rivky Weisbrot and Eugene Spatz.

Sources: Department of Physical Therapy, Department of Occupational Therapy and Division of Sports Sciences, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York; Department of Physical Therapy, Hunter College, City University of New York. Originally published online in Disability and Rehabilitation (2010).

Marketing Gift Certificates for the Holidays

The fall and winter seasons are the busiest time for many massage therapists. Gift-certificate sales can be brisk for the holidays, and massage therapists may see more new clients compared to any other time of the year.

Although you can’t directly charge for your services as a student, you can still receive valuable experience marketing gift certificates. Experimenting with gift-certificate promotions can do a number of things for you as you look toward building your practice.

1. It will get people in the habit of thinking of your services as a wonderful gift.
2. When people come to see you with a gift certificate, it helps you build your list of contacts and potential clients.
3. By learning how to market gift certificates now, you won’t lose valuable time learning this skill once your practice is up and running.
4. You’ll make mistakes, learning what to do and, maybe more importantly, what not to do.
5. It will help you learn how to talk to clients about how you can help them as well as other people they know.

As many massage therapists will tell you, speaking to clients about booking their next session or buying a gift certificate can feel awkward in the beginning. “I’m a massage therapist, not a salesperson,” you might say. While this may be correct, it is also true that if you care about clients feeling better, you will encourage them to receive bodywork. This goes for their friends and family, too.

Create a gift-certificate promotion
How do you express the idea that giving a gift certificate is giving the gift of health?

1. Start by researching why people seek massage. Ask your friends or clinic clients why they carve time from their schedules to receive massage. Listen carefully. They are giving you clues to what motivates people to get massage—and, consequently, to buy gift certificates for other people.
2. Link those concerns to the benefits of what you do. Here are some examples of complaints massage therapists frequently hear:

• I’m stressed to the max.
• My back (neck, feet, shoulders) hurt.
• I’m exhausted and drained.

3. Now draw the conclusion: Massage can help reduce pain, relieve stress and help people feel better as a whole. The secret is you have to tell them that.

Practice marketing at the clinic
Give yourself a practice marketing assignment at your student clinic.

1. When appropriate, gently remind clients gift certificates are available.
2. Ask if you can put up a gift-certificate display. On it, display the clinic’s gift certificates along with messages that will speak to the clinic’s clientele. Adjust the messages below to echo the concerns you heard from your clients.
   a. We live in a fast-paced world. To keep going, the people you care for need a time and space to let go. Give the gift of massage.
   b. Lighten up for the holidays. If your special someone has not been feeling his best, make the holidays better for everyone. Give him (or her!) the gift of massage.
   c. Have a friend or loved one in pain? Give the comfort of massage therapy.
   d. Reduce your holiday shopping stress. Give a beautiful gift certificate to a friend or loved one.
3. Market clinic gift certificates online, using some of the same messages you used in your display.

Practice using gift certificates on your own
If you are doing practice massage before receiving your license, consider offering friends and family members a chance to give the gift of your services to others—for no charge, of course. Make or purchase gift certificates. Give them to some of the people you have practiced on, but be selective. Give them to people you enjoy working on, either because they respond well to your favorite techniques or because you are especially able to help them with their particular challenges. These are the people who are most likely to use gift certificates, and who are most likely to pass them on to other people who will respond well to your work.

Gift certificates are basic to marketing bodywork at the holidays, and that goes for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, too. Get a jump-start on understanding marketing gift certificates. Do what you can to practice now, so you have the skills later as you begin to build your practice.

Marketing Massage with Postcard Mailings

As you begin to establish your practice, you’ll be focused on how to get more people on your massage table. Most of them will like what you do so much they’ll come back. These are the people who will be your bread and butter, and to keep them scheduling, you should stay in touch with them between sessions.

Postcard mailings are an effective and inexpensive way to do this. Postcards are more likely to be read and kept than other kinds of mail, and they are also likely to be passed on to others, supporting the word-of-mouth marketing so many massage therapists depend on.

What to do with postcards
Using postcards, you can send discount coupons, appointment reminders, session follow-ups, quick informal notes, announcements for events or specials—almost anything. Postcard are also a great way to let your clients and associates know they are important, so send postcards wishing a happy birthday, thanking them for a referral or following up with some information you promised. Also, if you want to make an announcement, such as introducing your new practice, adding a new service or reminding people you have gift certificates available for the holidays, a quick postcard will keep everyone up to date.

Focus your message
David Walker, a massage therapist who has marketed his practice in numerous ways, believes postcards are an inexpensive way to stay in touch. He adds highly focused postcard promotions work exceptionally well for him.

Not long ago, Walker created three promotions:

• An afternoon special for clients with flexible schedules.
• A “get back on the table” message to inactive 9-to-5ers.
• A discount offer to his inactive house-call clients.

From experience, Walker found that giving a percentage discount doesn’t get much of a response. What does work is such a message as, “Buy a 60-minute massage, get 30 minutes FREE.” (He’s a big believer in all caps.) Walker says, “The message you put out is important. If it doesn’t work, something was probably wrong with the wording.”

Reward your referrals
Seventy percent of people in the U.S. are significantly more inclined to buy something recommended to them by family or a friend. Positive word-of-mouth support from your clients to their friends and family provides the best advertising for your practice.

At her massage and Reiki business, Victoria Hux piles a stack of “Thank you for your referral” postcards on the office desk, so every therapist has access to them. When a new client has been referred by another client, the therapist will mail her a postcard with a $10 discount offer. The client who made the referral then comes in for an appointment with the discount card in hand.

Clients really respond to the program, Hux says. “It’s about the same overall cost as an ad in area papers,” she says, “but it’s more effective because Mrs. Smith is spreading the word about her satisfaction with my service.”

Postcard essentials
Remember to include these three items on your promotional postcard.

• An attention-getting headline. This can be a special offer, an announcement of your new practice or just, “It’s been awhile ….”
• A call to action. Tell people what to do. Some examples include: “Call before the 15th;” “Call to get the time slot you want;” and “Get $5 off when you reschedule.”
• Your contact information. Don’t forget your phone number, e-mail address and other necessary contact items.

It’s also important to keep your mailing list current by using first-class postage. Undeliverable postcards will be returned to you to help you update your mailing list. Here’s how it works:

• Make sure your return address is in the upper left corner of the addressing area.
• Print the words, “Return Service Requested” directly below the return address in at least 8-point type. (The postal service has to be able to see the message.)

Building a new business with a postcard
Here’s a last word from Jon Petersen, L.M.T.: In 2008, after only a year in business, he sent 320 Christmas postcards announcing this offer: “Buy a gift certificate by Dec. 31, and get the second one for 25% off.” By February, his mailing list grew to 400. In addition, half the bookings after the holidays were new clients due to gift-certificate sales, an impressive boost for his fledgling business. Petersen says, “People delete e-mail. With postcards, you have a nice-looking card in your hand.”

5 Management Must-Haves

There is a “must-have” list for nearly anything these days. Any fashion show will call out must-have colors, textures, accessories for the upcoming season. Wired Magazine has must-have gadgets, mobile applications and tech-tools. Shopping for a new car comes with a must-have list of things like satellite radio and great gas mileage.

As a manager and business owner, I have my own must-haves to keep me on top of my game and found a short, but powerful, list I think can help any professional. These are the tools that, no matter where you are, you could still manage your business and slip back into your well-run practice.

1. Blackberry, or other smartphone. A Blackberry, iPhone or other smartphone allows you to stay in touch with the business side of your practice while away from the office. If you’re traveling and you want to check your messages or check in with employees, having such a phone will allow you to keep your business on track.

2. E-mail guidelines. It’s hard to imagine management of a business without e-mail because communication is so critical to the success of any project. However, when it’s not managed effectively, e-mail can become a time drain. It’s important to create e-mail guidelines in your business. Depending on the culture of your practice, develop e-mail rules that ensure that the communication is saving time and not wasting it.

A great guideline to set in place is to put the action items in the beginning. This sets the tone of the e-mail and offers the most important information upfront. As they say in journalism, don’t bury the lead. Make sure that what’s most important is in the first paragraph. Also, your communication should be something short, sweet and to the point, or else your message will not be received.

3. A collaborative space.Good project management (especially if you manage employees) is about collaboration and communication. We use a wiki, which is an online collaborative workspace. There are many implementations of wiki software–and most are both open source and free. Our wiki is a central hub for our work, where we coordinate our projects and processes, providing a central place to remain in touch with one another’s duties and status.

There is also Twitter and other social media platforms that can be used well for work purposes.

4. Project agreement. A project agreement will always keep projects from running amuck and to keep things running flawlessly in anyone’s absence from the business. Without a project agreement, other people might not be on board or know what their objectives are, or their roles, responsibilities and timelines. Defining a project at the beginning is critical. It’s okay if things change, and they often do, but when you have a project agreement, you have a foundation to build on and work from.

5. Project management scorecard. We use an online project management scorecard that looks at three kinds of performance: business, project and project team. The scorecard gives you a comprehensive look at all three dimensions, so you know where and how to improve within your business. Accountability and the ability to measure ensure that you will know when you’ve arrived at the destination called success.

Other than yearly reviews, people often forget to take a moment to think about what did and did not work so that future business projects have a better chance of succeeding. It’s imperative for personal and professional growth and to continue succeeding.

The Importance of Self-Care for Massage Therapists

Massage school can be an exciting time, with many techniques and approaches to learn. The skills you learn in your training will enable you to help clients maintain their health and well-being. But what about your health and well-being? Have you thought about what it will take to deal with the physical and emotional demands of your new career as a massage therapist?

Massage is a rewarding profession that places considerable demands on the therapist. As a result, 77 percent of massage therapists experience symptoms or injury during their careers.1 With such a high rate of injury in the profession, learning effective self-care and injury-prevention techniques is one of the most important things you can do to have a successful career. Proven methods exist that have been shown in decades of research to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

While you’re still in training is the best time to start learning these methods. If you start integrating self-care and injury-prevention techniques into your life now, while you are still a student, taking care of yourself will become second nature. It’s much easier—and less disruptive to your career—to prevent injury from happening in the first place than to deal with an injury once it has occurred.

When an injury happens in a massage career, it’s nearly always the result of certain factors. A successful prevention strategy will need to address all of these factors. For this reason, using just one strategy—such as good body mechanics or conditioning exercises—is usually not enough by itself to keep you from getting injured. In combination, however, a variety of tactics can be very effective.

Here are six steps you’ll need to take to stay healthy in your career as a massage therapist:

1. Maintain awareness of the risk of injury in your work. Reading this article is a good start. It’s important to acknowledge risk exists, so you can learn how to best protect yourself.
2. Understand how risk factors can cause injury. You may have personal risk factors like a previous injury, for example, that can increase your injury risk. Massage work carries a number of risk factors, including repetitive movement, awkward postures and hand force. Particularly in combination, these risk factors can lead to injury.
3. Reduce risk factors through ergonomics.Because the work of a massage therapist is so physically demanding, workplace risk factors are often the primary cause of musculoskeletal disorders. While you can’t do anything about such risk factors, such as your age or a previous injury, you can usually modify
   1. your working conditions or workplace setup to reduce work-related risk factors. The science of ergonomics concentrates on fitting the work to the worker using proven methods that can be remarkably effective in reducing injury risk.
   2. Develop good body mechanics and work practices. Once you have used the principles of ergonomics to optimize your workspace and work life, you need to reinforce those principles by using your body properly in that workspace. Good ergonomics and good body mechanics go hand in hand. For example, if you don’t have enough room around your table, you won’t be able to use good body mechanics—and if you don’t use good body mechanics at your table, you won’t get the full injury-prevention benefit of having your workspace set up properly.
   3. Take care of your general physical and emotional health. You need to be in good general health to be able to withstand the physical demands of your work. Getting enough sleep and exercise, eating well and not smoking are among the healthy practices that can help your body heal quickly after a long day at work. You’ll also need to do a combination of exercises and stretches designed to keep you in shape for the rigors of your work. Avoid burnout and seek help for depression and anxiety, as these are also risk factors for injury.
   4. Recognize and treat injury symptoms. Remember, more than 75 percent of therapists experience symptoms. Be sure to listen to your body and seek effective treatment as soon after an injury as possible. With early, effective treatment, the majority of therapists are able to continue their work and get back to health.

   It is possible to prevent injury as a massage therapist, and following this six-step program will put the chance for recovery on your side.

   Balancing self-care with client care is one of the most important lessons you can learn as a massage therapist. Learning this vital lesson at this stage, when you have your whole career ahead of you, will give you a major head start toward having a long, healthy career.

Lavender Aromatherapy Reduces Stress and Pain

Aromatherapy is an effective complement to a massage therapy session. New research indicates lavender aromatherapy provides a significant decrease both stress and pain.

Investigators at the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, School of Dentistry, Kyungpook National University , Daegu, Korea, set out to measure the effects of lavender aromatherapy on 30 healthy volunteers, according to an abstract published on www.pubmed.gov.

The subjects were randomly allocated to two groups: the experimental group received oxygen with a face mask coated with lavender oil for five minutes, and the control group received oxygen through a face mask with no lavender oil for five minutes, the abstract noted.

Stress level, and pain intensity of needle insertion before aromatherapy were similar between the two groups; however, the stress values and pain intensity of needle insertion were significantly reduced compared with the control.

The research was published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Massage Therapy Strengthens the Immune System

Regular therapeutic massage sessions provide significant benefits beyond the immediate relaxation we enjoy. People who experience high levels of stress tend to get sick more than others. Combine stress with lack of sleep and poor nutrition, and our body’s ability to naturally protect itself against bacteria and infection is greatly reduced.

Numerous studies have indicated that massage can increase the immune system’s cytotoxic capacity (the activity level of the body’s natural “killer cells”) and decrease the number of T-cells, which improves the body’s immune functioning overall.

In one study by Gail Ironson, M.D., HIV positive men were given 45 minute massages five days a week, for a month. They showed an increase in serotonin and an increase in cells that are viewed as the first line of defense in the immune system. This is testing a very narrow aspect of the human immune system, but it does lend scientific credibility to a therapy which is widely recognized as therapeutic, based on experience.

Strengthen the Immune System Benefits

• Increases the bodies natural killer cells
• Aids in the fight against bacteria and infection
• Enhances the bodies ability to get nourishment to important areas

Courtesy of http://www.massageenvy.com

What Types of Dysfunctions Respond To Clinical Massage?

Massage and Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction

Pain and/or physiological dysfunction originates from identifiable points within muscles and their fascial tissues. These locations are known as trigger points because they often trigger distant reactions.

Scientists have developed extensive maps of such referred pain. They have also identified nearly a hundred dysfunctions that can have myofascial trigger point origins. Some of these are: carpal tunnel syndrome, TMJ dysfunction, PMS, headache, diarrhea, dizziness, cardiac arrhythmia, indigestion, tennis elbow, urinary frequency, sinusitis, deafness, and blurred vision.

 

Massage and Fascial Plane Dysfunction

Fascia can be compared to the body’s own version of “Saran Wrap.” It covers most of the body in large, continuously connected sheets. Injury, postural patterns and chemical imbalances can cause these sheets to distort and bind to themselves and nearby tissues. Since all major blood vessels and nerves follow these fascial sheathes through the body, properly aligned and released fascia is vital to good health and the proper operation of the circulatory and nervous systems.

 

Massage and Neuromuscular Dysfunction

The smallest muscular activity requires that countless nerve impulses be sent to the muscle to be activated and to all of the adjoining and opposing muscles. For example, let us say that you want to flex your elbow. This requires that you must tighten the biceps and other associated muscles while simultaneously relaxing the triceps and other associated muscles. The combined nervous activity and muscular response must be precisely timed and exactly proportionate.

For more complex movements like rotating the head or taking a breath, the amount of coordinating activity increases exponentially. Unfortunately, the mechanism responsible for such coordination can break down and muscle fibers or whole muscles can actually lock in opposition to their normal activity.

 

Massage and Tonus System Dysfunction

When overused, muscles can lose their ability to understand how to relax. This is referred to as hypertonic. As a result, the muscles become overly tight. They tend to harbor myofascial trigger points, and cause stress on the muscles that oppose them and the joints that they cross.

 

Massage and Dermatomic and Spondylogenic Dysfunctions

If a nerve is pinched where it leaves the spine, or anywhere along its route, the area that nerve serves will feel pain. Many people have experienced such a problem with the sciatic nerve. It originates in the low back, but when pinched can make the knee, shin, or heel hurt. This is an example of dermatomic pain – literally translated – pain in an area of skin.

 

Massage and Spondylogenic Dysfunction

This occurs when the joints of the spine are compressed or otherwise impaired and cause their own special trigger point-type pain or dysfunction.

Both of these are successfully treated with clinical massage by loosening the muscles and other soft tissue that surrounds the affected joint or nerve.

Courtesy of http://www.holisticonline.com