The benefits of side-lying barefoot massage are plentiful. Once you get past the “my client only wants to lie face down to receive the massage” mentality, you’ll find that you can access a number of muscles more easily when they lie on their side.
Why side-lying barefoot massage?
Providing side-lying barefoot massage allows you as a therapist to have better access and angles to work on shoulders, hips, quadratus lumborum, IT band, adductors, and abductors, to name but a few.
Sometimes you’ll find that your client (typically women, who are more curvy than men) may have trouble lying on their side as their 11th or 12th rib feels like it’s close to or hitting their iliac crest.
This makes it tricky for even the most skilled barefoot therapist to find the QL, as there’s often not enough space for even the heel. Resorting to the lateral edge of the foot may be a solution, but there’s something super simple you can try instead.
Bolstering with a small pillow
It’s easy fix- small toddler or travel pillow placed under their waist in between their body and the table.
Watch the video to see how Mary-Claire uses the pillow and how it flattens out the client’s torso. This makes barefoot side-lying massage much easier (and more comfortable for both the LMT and the client).
The client simply rolls over when you’re ready to work the 2nd side-the pillow should stay pretty well in place.
If you’re going to use the pillow under their stomach for prone work, they simply roll onto their stomach and adjust as needed. (See this video on how to do that.)
Are they rolling on their back next? Just have them lift up a little, grab the pillow and hand it to you or toss it onto the floor-whatever’s easiest.
Let us know what other bolstering techniques are in your grab bag (or you’d like to see!) in the comments.
Doing a Google Search for “Ashiatsu Massage near Me” doesn’t always bring back the results you need.
More and more Massage Therapists across the nation are learning barefoot massage. There is a wonderful surge of trained ashiatsu practitioners in the industry… but not all are actually trained in our “FasciAshi” myofascial ashiatsu barefoot massage technique, or held to our standards.
We know that you can easily do a search for “Ashiatsu Massage Near Me” or “barefoot massage near me”… even “ashiatsu 78209” (or insert your zip code here!) What you’ll get is anyone who’s website or SEO content uses the word(s) Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage near where you are geographically located at that moment. Anyone can enter those words into the coding and content of their website. They can do that regardless of the level (if any) training in the technique. On the flip side, not all local massage websites contain the words necessary for this kind of Google search to even work.
So how do you find trained myofascial ashiatsu barefoot massage therapists?
We at the Center for Barefoot Massage are slowly growing our base of students across the nation. We offer a locator service that helps you find a local massage professional associated with our FasciAshi technique. True to our pun-filled form, we called this the “Sole-Provider Directory“.
Not every LMT that we train wants to be found, so not everyone will choose to list in this directory. To protect the privacy of our students, we do not give out contact information unless it is listed on this directory.
We DO vet every listing to make sure that the business listed has our students providing the service. We make sure that the barefoot massage therapists are legit. The Center for Barefoot Massage only trains Licensed Massage Therapists, so you can rest easy knowing that our providers are held to the standards of the profession and the massage laws of your state.
If it’s a business that employs multiple massage therapists, we’ll make sure that the business is actually providing the service. (Not just listing it on a menu without a trained pro on staff.)
Your Google search for “ashiatsu near me” can sometimes turn up disappointing results. We want our locator service to be the resource that helps you find the massage you are actually looking for.
Find a barefoot massage therapist
Step your search up a notch. Don’t just look to find any ashiatsu massage near you – find YOUR barefoot massage therapist!
How do you “Find an Ashiatsu Massage Near me?” We have a Sole-Provider directory available to help you find a local myofascial ashiatsu barefoot massage therapist.
Our Sole-Provider Directory offers “feet-ures” that help you choose a practitioner when you have multiple options.
Search a radius around a zip code, AND get Google directions to them!
Read a review, leave a review. If you’ve been underfoot with this provider, tell us how it went so others can feel the vibe.
Search by their level of training. Beginner to advanced, on the table or the floor, we can help you find what you are looking for!
Search by state, country, and even find the expert instructors all in easy to navigate categories
HERE’S WHY YOU SHOULD LIST YOUR BUSINESS AS A “SOLE PROVIDER”
We have a great network of Barefoot Massage Therapists across the nation – and their clients travel! We all know that once you try Myofascial Ashiatsu, you won’t want to go back to normal massage, so let us help these fans of our work find their favorite bodywork in the town they are relocating to, or visiting!
Every SOLE Provider is verified. Although not every FasciAshi or Fijian Barefoot Massage trained Massage Therapist will choose to list here, those that DO can have peace of mind that every pair of feet represented in our directory has been trained by the Center for Barefoot Massage.
Reviews from real clients are available!!! No expensive scamming from Yelp, just pure barefoot massage fans leaving their feedback on their experience at your business.
Google Maps integrated: clients can search within a radius of any zip code. If you don’t live in a city with an often-searched name, you can still show up in searches for the nearest searched area!
Upgrades available for your listing. You can give it an extra little BOOST with a 6 month “FEETured” listing when you need it!
Every listed business gets FREE DOWNLOADABLE LOGO’S! You’ll get to choose from a variety of the Sole Provider graphics. Post them on your website as a reciprocal link back to us. (That’s the thing that hyper-boosts your SEO!)
Each level of Certification completed will add the associated seal of Certification to your profile for free. Regardless of what level listing you pay for and code the images to help boost your local exposure. You’ll also be searchable by your level of training/Certification. More credibility, clout and bragging rights!
Have you ever had a client who has back pain while lying on their stomach to receive barefoot massage or even hand-on deep tissue massage?
This is often caused by hyperlordosis. An excessive curve in the lumbar (it’s sometimes seen in the cervical dish as well) can be caused by structural issues such as:
1. kyphosis AKA “dowager’s hump” 2. discitis 3. obesity (especially with a large stomach) 4. spondylolisthesis
Muscular imbalances: 1. weak glutes, hamstrings, and abdominal muscles 2. tight erector spinae, quadratus lumborum (QL), and hip flexors (especially iliopsoas)
If your client is not comfortable lying on their stomach, try using a small pillow between their pelvis and rib cage.
You can use a travel pillow (mine has feathers, which makes it squishy and moveable) or a toddler pillow (with cotton/polyester fill). The toddler pillow is a little smaller.
Check out our Tuesday Toesday Tip video to see how Mary-Claire uses a small pillow to make her clients more comfortable. (It’s just 3 minutes, 35 seconds.)
Next week will be another tip for when you need to bolster women for side-body massage (you do work on clients on your side, don’t you? 😉)
If you haven’t learned sidelying massage, definitely look into our Intermediate class, where we’ll teach you amazing anterior barefoot massage (mmm..quads! pecs!) and super effective side-lying barefoot massage-you’ll reach muscles your clients may never knew they had.
We’ve found barefoot massage at high-end resorts, backstage at concerts, on the finish line of marathons, in medical clinics, at military bases across the world. They are on the beach at surfing competitions, onsite with professional sports teams and dance companies, and in private practices that work on a range of clientele. Ashiatsu has popped up with traveling Renaissance Faires, motorcycle rallies, art-walks, yoga festivals and even inside refurbished busses. We’ve even had clients whose lives have been changed by receiving barefoot massage so much that they went to massage school and got licensed just so that they could come back and learn our barefoot work. Many people have built their first, second, third and even ninth careers around that magic.
How can you build your dream job?
Just like what you learned in massage school is only the beginning, the material presented in any single barefoot massage class cannot address the infinite possibility of niches for massage. Massage publications show us how traditional hands-on massage therapists have successfully narrowed down to specialize in interesting demographics, modalities or tissue-issues. Barefoot Massage therapists can do that too! The Center for Barefoot Massage aims to push the growth of myofascial ashiatsu. We want LMT’s to expand into any market, specialize in barefoot massage, and work with their tool of choice: their feet!
Beyond training in our live classes, Certification is a big part of becoming a barefoot massage specialist. We have another page with that information available here, so I won’t talk much about that self-study process in today’s blog post 😉
We often get asked “Can I do a full massage after just one class?”
Of course you can, but you can do a much better and more informed massage session if you keep training.
Your 1st step
Take the FasciAshi Fundamentals course. That class alone will give you the information and tools to provide a massage that could be interpreted in a few ways. Use it to create a slow, focused myofascial session, and/or as a relaxing blissed-out deep tissue massage.
The 2nd step
We recommend everyone attend is the Intermediate Supine + Sidebody FasciAshi class. This is a prerequisite class for the Advanced course, and thereby the Clinical track of classes. This class has all the meat. This is where you learn the versatility of the strapwork and dive deeper into slower, more strategic and specific techniques. Learn to make ashiatsu effortless on your body (and yet still deeper than deep for your client!)
Here’s where you can really start to specialize in Barefoot Massage:
Relax Track:
If you have a spa, or trauma-informed safe space to provide massage with a focus on holistic healing, meditation, relaxation, self-care, “treat yo’self” and even escapism: follow our Relaxation track to fine-tune your box of tricks. We released the first track, Hot Ashi, in early 2019. This isn’t just hot pillows + barefoot massage. In a single day, this specialty class teaches you to change your direct downward pressure into a more shearing approach with heat (which magnifies pressure.) You’ll work with the mechanoreceptors and Ruffini nerve endings. (Relaxation CAN be nerdy!) We have more classes in the works for this track, but you’ll need to be Certified and trained at the Fundamentals level to gain access.
Sports Track:
Do you work with athletes and weekend warriors training to achieve certain mobility goals? How about people who are your size physically or don’t like/need deep pressure? Are your clients actively working to challenge their bodies?! Attend the ROM class. (It stands for Range of Motion.) This is more than just a table-thai massage, because we are teaching resisted and active movements with stretch theory to improve the quantity and quality of motion. You can get Certified at this level and gain access to our soon-to-be-released Sports Track of classes. That track is where we’ll focus on injury prevention, and activity-specific techniques to benefit your clients’ fitness gains. We are excited to introduce specialty tracks embedded with self-care that empowers your clients to take ownership of their own myofascial health. Of course, the Sports Track will address pre/post-event barefoot sports massage protocols, too.
Critical Thinking:
Need to get even deeper and more creative in your massages? Want to spice up any ashiatsu session you are already doing? Aim for the FasciAshi Advanced class. This is more than massaging with 2 feet. It’s all about how you really learn to go deep on a variety of body types using 1 or 2 of your feet. The Advanced class also works with the clients in side lying, supine and prone. (Plus some with unexpected in-between positions during the transitions!) You’ll get to distribute all or most of your weight safely while creatively sequencing together a unique series of strokes. We help your critical thinking skills come to the forefront so that you can cater this full body massage on the fly confidently.
Clinical Track:
Working with a client base who is fighting off chronic pain? Do you want to feel more confident in creating a treatment plan and work with assessments? After attending the Advanced class and passing your Certification there, you can dive into our more calculated classes that hone in on how to address specific conditions and past injuries. We’ll be using a very fascial, slow and direct approach to each region of the body. These upcoming Clinical Track classes will be heavily informed by Rolfing and myofascial release techniques. Your palpation skills and understanding of anatomy is crucial to the successful application of this specialty work.
Matwork:
Need to massage without limits? Learn Fijian Barefoot Massage – our matwork based class that doesn’t need a massage table or overhead bars. This stuff works so wonderfully with our FasciAshi Strap and/or a chair. Fijian is great to blend into existing matwork (take the compression work away from your aching wrists!) and easy to take on the road for events. If your client base is smaller than you, this massage will work better than our Myofascial Ashiatsu classes listed above. Why? You won’t have to hold up your weight in the bars. You can literally sit down on the job and give a great massage! Without using lubrication, this massage gets specific and trance-like. Fijian’s magic is in its clever use of toe-work. It finds a use for all the parts of your foot – not just the soles.
Additional Techniques:
We love to host classes from barefoot massage instructors outside of the FasciAshi universe. Watch for when our faculty hosts courses like Chavutti Thirumal and shiatsu or thai bodywork. Other complementary courses to help you niche down with your feet will show up at our training centers, too. Follow each instructor on our team to stay in the know.
To a certain extent, you can take these classes in any order to create the massage you need to give. (Heads up: some courses will have prerequisites.) This is a “choose your own adventure” style of learning. You don’t have to “do all the things” or take all the classes to give the best massage for your client. Just use what works from what you want to learn. Check out this flow chart to see how you can get to the class of your choice.
The owners of The Center for Barefoot Massage, Jeni Spring and Mary-Claire Fredette, have been massaging with their feet since 2002 and 1999 respectively. At the beginning of westernized ashiatsu’s existence in the US – there was 1 class you could take. Just one. Any ashiatsu therapist who trained in the 1990’s learned what eventually became 2 classes later on in the early-mid ’00’s. Two more classes came out in the late 00’s, but that’s it. Just 4 classes. Us old-school ashi-folk ran out of options and were held back. We wanted to learn more, but there weren’t more classes available on the market.
The future of massage is afoot, and we are here for it!
The Center for Barefoot Massage stepped up in 2017 to stimulate the expansion of barefoot massage within the industry. We toil endlessly to support the growth of Barefoot Massage Therapists as they dig down and specialize in this work. We hope to increase barefoot massage awareness in the public so that there are more people looking for the massages we all love to give. And most of all, we don’t want you to get bored or burnt out on massaging!
Tuesday Toesday Tip-today we have another tip for using an extra large sheet-in this one, you don’t need rubber bands. You can either watch the video or read the transcript!
In today’s video, we show you a quick tip for if you’re using twin or extra long sheets that bag and sag on the table. Let’s get them nice and snug so you keep firm footing in your barefoot massage.
Here’s a link to the original video (2017) where I use the same sheets but rubber bands or hair ties–that’s quick and easy too and works perfectly if you don’t have a protective cover or wrap-around fleece pad.
Both of these are great tips for hands-on massage too.
You just need, in addition to sheets, an Earthlite protective cover or a fleece pad that goes all around the table (doesn’t just lay on top).
Find out more about the Earthlite protective cover with this link to the blog post I wrote a while back.
Jeni Spring is her name, and barefoot massage is her game! If you’ve giggled at pun-ny funny ashiatsu sayings, if you’ve heard of Heeling Sole in San Antonio, if any #2sDayTOESday tips have helped your workday, if you’ve needed inspiration for ashiatsu at events, or if you use an Ashi-Strap in your practice (or have at least seen them in pictures) – then you’ve seen some of the footprints she’s leaving on the massage world. Lets get to know the #BossLady behind the Center for Barefoot Massage!
Have you dreamed of moving to the west coast to enjoy a life where you can walk outside barefoot 24/7? Our barefoot Instructor-in-Training Ashley Shears has done just that! While we may be a little envious of that beach life, we’re excited to introduce her to you!
Your name
Ashley Shears
Pets?
Although I’m currently pet-less, I had many pets growing up! I had 2 cocker spaniels (Sam & Sadie), 1 black lab (Scotty), 2 cats (Oscar & Misty), 4 finches (Minnie, Mickey, Daisy, & Donald) [My family loved Disney!], and a hamster my brother named Muffin.
Tell us about your family too.
I grew up in a small railroad town in northeast Indiana. Though my family was small (just my brother and me), we had lots of cousins which made it seem like our family was huge! Most of my family still lives in my small town with the exception of my brother, who lives in Colorado, and myself.
Fun fact: Colorado Springs was recently named the best city to live in for the 2nd year in a row (US News & World Report). Visit Helen Hunt Falls, the Manitou Incline in Manitou Springs, paddleboard in the Springs, or get a massage from one of Erin’s gifted therapists. And now, meet Erin!
Your name?
Erin Poovey
Pets?
I’m a crazy plant lady but no pets currently.
My husband and I keep talking about getting chickens. I think that would be so fun.
Tell us about your family!
Married to Justin for 6 years and I’m mama to Norah Luna. She’s 2. I’m a completely obsessed mama so be fair warned that if you follow my personal social media its just Norah. They keep my life full of light and fun.
What did you want to be when you grew up and why?
In elementary school, I wanted to be a teacher. I totally forgot about that until thinking about this question. Guess that came true <3
Nestled amongst trees and goats in Delmar, near Albany, NY, is our barefoot massage training instructor Dawn. Yoga (including Goat Yoga!) and mobility training are her jam, along with barefoot massage for athletes. And she likes to TYPE IN ALL CAPS. 😆
Your name
Dawn Rochelle Dotson
Pets?
Doggie: Lola,
Goats: Benni & Joon
Tell us about your family!
I have a large family mostly in the greater Seattle area of Washington state.
My immediate family is:
✓ Son: KC /25yr/ CrossFit coach, cf affiliate owner, Olympic lifter. He takes after mom. Loves to watch people move & their mechanics.
✓ Hubs/Corey/old dude/ environmentalist / musician / working on the compound & playing disc golf now days
When you meet our Durham barefoot training instructor Julie in person, you may be fooled by her petite size. Her sweet-sounding Southern way of talking is simply sugar coating on her wickedly deep and specific feet, which she uses to Rolf.
Your name?
Julie H Marciniak
Tell us about your pets!
Jack is our last dachshund baby. We lost Max right before Christmas this year. He was a dachshund too.
Introduce us to your family.
My eldest is our son Blake, SPC (Specialist) in the Army. Our daughter Michaela is a sophomore in college. My husband is Michael, a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard (his photo is in the header.).
