Throughout the course of this years and last years Barefoot Massage Open, we’ve pulled out some pretty heavy challenges. I hope that todays challenge helps to answer a very common frustration that many of my mid-level students have: how do I fit it all in?!?!?!

I think that these particular past topics will help you optimize this weeks challenge – so go review these before scrolling down too much further:

1.3: Game Face (Spend an hour with the client supine!)

1.4: Not yo’ momma’s Ashi: (Spend an hour with the client in Sidelying!)

1.5: Weight then Wait (Stop moving!)

+ Take what you learned from this years 2.2 Challenge (Xray Vision) which helped you study the structures that lay underneath the tissue you are aiming at AND revisit the last challenge I posted, 2.3 Mindfulness – where you took a long hard look at what strokes you do most often and why.

Got all that at fresh in your thoughts again? OK, now lets scroll down!  >>>>

There is SO MUCH POSSIBLE TO DO, but only so much time to do it in.

SO MANY of my barefoot massage students who come back for class after class tell me they struggle with this simple fact.

Tell me about it!!!

You could always make the sessions longer – but then you run the risk of still spending too much time on the easy stuff that you and your clients love, and only ending up with say, maybe 5 extra minutes on the new material.

What I suggest is: don’t try to do it all.

Have a focus for each massage appointment, create a treatment plan, and progress through it all as each client needs it. But how do you do that when it’s so easy to get lost in the moment and hover on the area of complaint?

I hear from therapists who tell me that their client is looking for “A, B and C” – whatever that is (maybe this client just wants 60 minutes of blissing-out while you massage their area of complaint, and you feel stuck in that pattern massage after massage.) These therapists, however, see that steps “X, Y & Z” would really help the client out in the long term, but they can’t get that far in the time allotted.

SO here’s what I do: only allow yourself 20 minutes to work on the new thing you’ve wanted to do to this client, and then spend the next 20 minutes following where the first section led you – just exploring and finding bits and pieces of information you’ve already learned that could nicely be plugged into what you and the client are feeling, starting to transition towards the last 20 minutes where you go to town on your signature work that you and your client love – the stuff that you can easily knock outta the park with your eyes closed – the stuff they really want.

This 20 minute increment mindset has helped me to boil down all the things I could ~possibly do~ down to just what I need to do, and it’s sorta become a series of protocols that I have in my back pocket for each client.  A bunch of interchangeable sequences of things that I know get me to the point of all the best strokes for that clients tissue issues.  That mindset gives me the peace of mind to know I can confidently work out what they are looking for, then have plenty of time left to modify, follow the rabbit holes, and bring in the intuitional work I want to do to dig around in the compensating tissue issues.

Try that out on your clients this week, and see how far that 20 minute mindset takes you!