Hot Feet, Warm Soles, and Toasty Toes: Winterize your FasciAshi

With autumn upon us, it’s time to start thinking about how to melt your chilly soles into warm soles on first touch. There are many ways to get your toes toasty and heat up your feet before you step foot on a client. Nothing is worse than cold hands beginning a massage – except maybe for cold feet!

How do you warm your feet before a barefoot massage?

Here’s some tips from our alumni and faculty for setting your SOLE on fire (figuratively, of course!)

? Julie Marciniak and the FasciAshi therapists at North Pointe Body Therapies have a hot towel cabbie in the kitchen/break area that has each therapist’s own foot warmers. It is on a timer that comes on every morning so we have ?? for every client! WOW! Even that timer idea is a genius idea!!!! No more waiting 30-45 minutes for your towel cabinet to heat up!

? Jeni Spring and the Barefoot Massage Sasquatches at Heeling Sole use warm foot soaks, customized with their fave combinations of scents and salts. They stand in a bucket while applying lotion with their hands, then dry off their feet and begin the massage! Watch the video below!

? Karyn Clafflin washes her tootsies in hot water, then puts on a clean, thick pair of socks and slippers! Ooooh that sounds nice!

? An old Ashiatsu Instructor trick that’s been around for a while is to fill Fomentek bags with hot water, burp the air out, and stand on them prior to your session. You won’t get wet, but the water bag will conform around all edges of your feet to get e-v-e-r-y part warm. Just don’t forget to burp it- or you’ll pop the plug and spill water everywhere!

? Mary-Claire Fredette from Affinity Massages as well as Rebecca Baumann from Grateful Zen both stand on their electric heating pad while they is lubricate their client’s back. Mary-Claire says that if she still feels chilly, she’ll put the heating pad on her ashiatsu barstool and massage with one foot while the other warms up… she just keeps switching sides to warm up each foot! (Hot footin’ hokie pokie dance: that’s what it’s all about!)

? Sara Newberry-Clavenna and her staff at Sole Shine Barefoot Massage as well as Mary-Claire all use their Mother Earth pillows through the sheet. They’ll do compression and myofascial work with their feet through the nice hot pillow, getting both themselves and the client warm. Yum!

? Thai practitioners of Yam Khang warm their feet on hot charcoal, then dip a foot into a bowl of oil, then gently rubs that foot onto a hot iron plate. The oil on the foot reacts to the heat, resulting in the momentary fire ball, and then voila: fire foot massage!

? Julie Gregory from Essential Therapeutic Massage has hot socks that she puts in the microwave for 1 minute. She wears them while lubricating her clients. If she feels that they’re still a little chilly, then she just wraps a hot towel from her towel warmer around each foot. (Bet they’ll be nice and “toesty” after that!)

? Deborah Thompson from the Loomis Massage Healing Arts & Wellness Center always uses hot towels to clean and warm her feet. (Who says that the contents of your hot towel cabi is for your clients only?! Treat yo’ self!)

? Lauren Gardner from Pure Health Massage & Bodyworks uses “Hot Booties” that she found at Bed Bath and Beyond. She keeps them in a hot towel cabbie and puts them on after spraying her feet. By the time she’s done applying lotion at the beginning of the massage, her feet are nice and warm! Now this idea is nice because it’s also warming the dorsal surface of her feet!

? Warm slippers are ALWAYS a good idea. Just get your feet clean before you step into them each time, so you aren’t coating the fuzzies with your massage creme. Mary-Claire suggests sheepskin slippers… Dawn Dotson of Barefoot Space suggests felt slippers after a steamy hot foot soak…. and Jeni suggests either the ever-stylish BEAR FOOT slippers, or the new Chewbacca Wookie slippers that growl when you walk. (Keepin’ it classy, as always.)

Hot foot it down to the comment section below and tell us how YOU warm up your feet before an Ashiatsu massage!