Category Archives: Guest post

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Learn Barefoot Massage with Instructor: Julie Marciniak

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.).

What did you want to be when you grew up and why?

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4 ways to be better when learning (and practicing) barefoot massage

When massage therapists are first learning ashiatsu barefoot massage, it can be like starting massage school all over again. It’s especially humbling for therapists that have been doing massage with their hands for many years.

But the same learning concepts for learning traditional massage in massage school can be applied when first learning to massage with your feet.

1. CLOSE YOUR EYES or LOOK UP!

It may feel strange at first but for the sake of proper body mechanics and improving your barefoot skills you have to learn to look up more. When you are first learning, once you get the stroke and go through the movements a couple of times, try closing your eyes or looking up as you massage with your feet. This will help develop the sensory pathways to the brain by taking the visual interpretation out and heightening the sensory awareness of the feet.

The brain can’t rely on what it SEES; it has to rely on what it FEELS. This concept is evident when training students to learn barefoot massage for the first time, and clients give feedback in our LIVE classes. It never fails that the client thinks a stroke feels better when the student isn’t directly looking at their feet. Of course, there’s always going be times when you need to look and make sure you’re in the right spot or avoiding areas that you need to avoid, but that’s where the next point comes into play.

2. KNOW YOUR ANATOMY/LANDMARKS

There are familiar landmarks and bony prominences that are easy to find and we, as massage therapists, frequently use to orient ourselves to where we are and the muscle attachments.

Some examples may be the sacrum, the trochanter, the iliac crest, and the scapula — many of these landmarks we use to begin and end strokes. Being able to palpate and orientate yourself with your feet USING these landmarks will go a long way in developing your barefoot skills and allow you to utilize appropriate body mechanics like looking up more.

3. SLOW DOWN!

When first learning barefoot massage you have to slow down. While your feet have the CAPACITY to feel and palpate knots and tightness they usually aren’t sensitive enough to do it in the beginning.

You want to be able to feel the different textures and muscle layers so you can gauge the appropriate pressure and strokes to use. The neural pathways from your feet to your brain have to develop. It’s a process that comes with time, and there’s a natural progression of adaptability and sensory input from your feet.

4. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

It never fails for a student to say in class, “Wow, you make that look so easy!” Or, “You’re so graceful!” Well, I’ve only been practicing it for 18 years. That’s eight years longer than with my hands! So with practice, it will come. You have to be consistent.

If we made it look hard, why would you want to learn it?

Consistency can be a problem for some Massage Therapists when they get back to their practice, and they feel limited or intimidated by the types of clients they have.

Barefoot massage isn’t always about finding the perfect kind of “body” to work with. There will be clients who have contraindications that may not allow for the use of your feet, but that doesn’t mean you can use them somewhere else.  99% of my client base receives some form of barefoot bodywork.

For that 1%, I may still do barefoot bodywork, but I restrict it to the appropriate areas. So every day that I’m working with clients, I’m using my feet. By using my SOLES every day, they are JUST as sensitive as my hands.

These are just a few of the ways you can increase your sole sensitivity in your barefoot massage sessions.

When your clients start saying, “Wow I didn’t even have to tell you what was going on today and you figured it out!”, That’s a huge accomplishment and a high five moment for barefoot massage. Our soles are just as capable of providing safe, therapeutic and EFFECTIVE pain relief to our clients as our hands. We only have to put in the time and effort to develop them.

Today’s guest post is brought to us by our fantastic Durham, NC instructor, Julie.

You can find her Rolfing with her feet, teaching at and running her multi-therapist barefoot biz, Bull City Soles.

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Talent, practice, and passion in barefoot massage

I have been an Ashiatsu instructor for almost ten years, and many types of massage therapists have come through my training studio. A few newbies fresh out of school and some seasoned massage therapists that been in the field for several years. But learning ashiatsu can level the playing field when it comes to length of experience for many massage therapists.

Unlike other massage CEUs massage therapists take to when they get out of school, we’re not only learning massage theory; we’re learning to use different TOOLS altogether: the FEET!

I’ve found three things make a great Ashiatsu therapist. Talent, Practice, and Passion. These are the words of a great visionary and architect, Frank Lloyd Wright,

What is talent?

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Think you have to live with pain? Not if my foot has anything to say about it! (Part 2)

In 2006, at a massage convention, I ran into the author of the article that saved my back from pain, Richard Rossiter. I told him that I had been studying his work through his online website, DVDs, and books since discovering the powerful effect Rossiter had on my back. Since my wife, Mickey, was the only person who had worked on me thus far, I asked if I could sample the foot of the master. 

Eager to grant my request, he invited me to hit the floor and proceeded to apply weight with much more authority. It was definitely more difficult to move through the stretches, but the effect was much more profound.

My back felt even better!

A year later, I was a Certified Rossiter Coach, and through continued advanced work on my legs, I experienced the ultimate back pain relief that continues to the writing of this article.

The crazy thing is, nobody ever touched my back.

All Rossiter work (for my situation) was done on the inside of my thighs (adductors). The work was done in less than thirty minutes, and my reward was a back that felt like it did when I was in the prime of my dance career.

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Think you have to live with pain? Not if my foot has anything to say about it! (Part 1)

When people meet me and find out that I’m a manual therapist with a reputation for getting people out of pain very quickly, they want to know what it is I do and how do I do it. To keep it simple, I tell them that my work is nothing more than power stretching and that they should visit my website (DontFearTheFoot.com) to get the full picture on how it works.

This is Chuck. He does not fear the foot.

Here’s where the fun starts. They immediately want to know what does fearing a foot has to do with massage, stretching or getting out of pain?

I spent 20 years of my life professionally stretching, for  I was a professional Broadway dancer for twenty years. And during my professional career, I probably stretched more in a day than most people stretch in a year (or a lifetime for that matter).

My flexibility served me well throughout my dance years and now, with the addition of mobility and stability training, it continues to be my preferred weapon in maintaining a “relatively” pain-free body. now help others in their quest to getting out of pain.

I now help others in their quest to getting out of pain.