When I was new to doing massage therapy, I had a habit of getting lost. Lost in the neck, lost on the back, lost in the space-time continuum. I’d glance up at my clock and see that I had spent 40 minutes massaging the back and I had 20 minutes to do the rest of the body. Or worse yet, 40 minutes just on the headache, and had 20 minutes to get hands on everything else!
And, learning point, most massage clients will be unhappy with that schedule. People will rarely complain, but they may decide not to come back. All my enthusiasm to erase that headache would cost me the opportunity to gain a client. Drat!
It happened often enough that I found a couple of solutions, which I will gladly share, and I 
developed some hacks – ways to get the client to forget that I had just given an uneven massage.
Fasten your seat belts.
Ask – Let the client decide – “Would you like me to spend all of our time today on your headache or do you also want a full-body massage?” Guess what the answer is 90 percent of the time…Full-body.
The clock – I drew a circle on an index card. The first 30 minutes was blocked in red, the next 10 in blue, the next 8 in yellow, etc. I hid the card behind my oil bottle, right next to my clock. The red zone was for the back and posterior arms. The next 10 minutes for posterior legs and feet. Eight minutes for anterior legs, eight for anterior arms. Four minutes for head and scalp.
Keep the card in view and practice, and you will run on time.
Okay, so what to do when space aliens have stolen your brain and you don’t have enough time to finish a full massage? When fudgsicles happen, make fudge!
Swoop – Big, long, slow, wasting Swedish effleurages. Three swoops to a limb will still trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. A timeless coma will result.
Hide – Stay in the room at the end of the massage and hold up the client’s robe in front of your face and conveniently stand in front of the clock. Offer to assist by holding the robe while they slip in arms and stumble out. “Let me help you with your robe.” It works.
I don’t recommend what one therapist did to me one day at an otherwise nice day spa. She carefully pointed out the clock to me to show that we were running on time. At the end of the session I got up and looked over at an empty space. She had removed the clock!
Massage and the Full Sixty…
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