More and more massage therapists are wanting to ONLY massage with their feet and specialize in Barefoot Massage. A trend of retiring hands-on massage and sticking to feet-on work has echoed outwards from our instructor’s local studios. Barefoot Massage Specialists are reaching into a variety of environments within our industry, ranging from solo practitioners to multi-therapist massage businesses across the globe.  

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!