Do you need massage confidence? Then do this:
1. Get reliable feedback about your massage.
2. Then tweak your massage if you need to.
That will give you confidence 80% of the time. For the other 20% of the time…
3. Do a high-power pose.
High-power?
Yeah, think Wonder Woman pose. (Believe it or not, there’s science to this.)
Seriously, Dude?
I know this seems way too simple, but here’s how all this looks in real life.
You have some solid confidence because you got good feedback and tweaked your massage.
Then one day during a massage you press a couple of spots that make your client squirm.
Ruh-roh.
You start thinking: Is my pressure off?
Next thing you notice is that your client’s breathing is shallow.
So you slow your stroke down, anticipating your client will start breathing deeper, but instead you get a head adjustment.
Is she hating on my massage!?
Then you lift her arm to put it under the sheet, but she won’t let it go and does all the work.
OMG, I suck!
Your fingers now feel like wooden sticks. Your strokes are awkward. And you can’t get out of your head.
And that’s precisely when a high-power pose can snap you back into that “doing not thinking” mindset.
But before we get into high-power poses, let’s talk about steps 1 and 2: Evaluating your massage and tweaking it if necessary.
A Massage Confidence Struggle
Jim was in his late 40’s when he graduated from massage school. He was a hard worker but his massage needed improvement and he knew it.
In fact, he thought he was so bad that he felt like an impostor.
I put together a plan and we started working on his massage issues. Soon his massage started to get better, but Jim still had that little voice in his head telling him that he was an impostor.
Looking for Massage Confidence
Here’s some more background about Jim: He wasn’t so good at relationships.
Don’t get me wrong, Jim was a kind person and everyone liked him. His issue was staying engaged with and connected to people.
In some ways, I saw massage as a way that Jim could connect with people through helping them, and it could serve as a template for deepening his personal relationships.
And I had a feeling that Jim sensed this, too.
So, to me this was not only a massage mission, it was also a life mission.
Reliable Plan and Feedback
That’s when I brought in reinforcements–fellow MTs who could give Jim reliable feedback.
After a few sessions, Jim knew he was getting better because his colleagues were giving him good reviews.
Even so, Jim refused to work on a paying customer.
Quite frankly, the little voice in his head just wouldn’t shut the f*** up.
Fighting the Little Voice
I tried countering that voice by reminding Jim that he had graduated from massage school.
I also reminded him that though he wasn’t the massage therapist he wanted to be at the moment, he was on track to being that therapist.
He agreed with me, but still wouldn’t budge.
So, I pulled out the guilt card. In a nice way I let him know that I’d put a lot of time in with him and that our goal wasn’t to just massage MTs. It was to massage a paying customer.
That’s when I asked him to do me a favor and work on a paying customer even though he felt like an impostor.
Unknowingly at the time, I was asking Jim to fake it (pretend he wasn’t an impostor) till he made it (felt like he was a massage therapist).
Jim hated me at that moment, but agreed.
Fake It Till You Make It
Faking it, pretending to be something that you’re not feeling, will actually create physiological changes in your body.
For example, if you hold a pen in your mouth (which forces you to smile) it can make you feel happy.
Researcher Amy Cuddy, in her moving and powerful TedTalk (a game-changing must see video), explains that pretending to be powerful can actually make you feel powerful.
In her experiment participants were asked to hold a high-power pose (e.g., Wonder Woman stance) or low-power pose (e.g., arms drawn in) for two minutes. Participants’ testosterone and cortisol levels were measured before and after they posed.
Powerful and effective leaders have high testosterone (which means they’re assertive, confident and optimistic ) and low cortisol (which means they don’t freak out in stressful situations).
High-power poses produced a rise in testosterone and a lowering in cortisol, the hormonal characteristics of powerful leaders!
Cuddy concludes: “Our bodies change our minds, and our minds change our behavior, and our behavior changes our outcomes.”
In terms of massage, assuming your massage is on solid footing, if you fake it, pretend you’re a competent massage therapist even though you don’t feel like it at the moment, you can do more than make it—you become what you’re pretending to be.
Dude, are you telling me to do a Wonder Woman pose when I’m working on a client?
Not Wonder Woman.
Find your own.
For me, a high-power pose happens when I get vertical and can raise an arm in the air.
That arm raising is not only a good stretch, it also feels strong and empowering to me.
I typically hit a high-power pose 5 to 15 times during a full body massage.
It’s such a habit for me that it feels unnatural not to do it.
Jim Nearly Snapped My Shoulder
Oh, about Jim, well, he “faked it” and the client loved the massage:-)
A few weeks later, he nearly dislocated my shoulder when we high-fived to celebrate his first repeat client.
As Jim accumulated more wins, his confidence grew and that little voice was put in it’s place:-)
Here’s the recap.
3 Steps to Massage Confidence
(1) Find someone objective in the field of massage who will act in your best interest and give you reliable feedback about your massage, like a fellow MT, a friend (who gets massaged regularly), a teacher or a coach.
(2) If you need to tweak your massage, go ahead, but make sure you have confidence in the tweaking plan and continue to massage as many people as you can.
(3) If you feel an impostor moment coming on hit a high-power pose.
It’s not rocket science.
It’s body language science.
Now that you’re confident with massage, let’s make sure you get confident with bringing in the business.
Get my how to build a massage business course right here: Jumpstart.
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