Massage is a conversation between a client and their practitioner, and each client’s needs are what’s most important to us.
We will offer only what is okay for us. Thus, we don’t have super early morning or late night hours because we can’t give you our best work at those times. We don’t provide deep-tissue massage, but we’re happy to offer a range of pressure according to what you request. We wear layers so the room and table temperature can meet your needs without interfering with our working conditions.
The success of your treatment is decided by your nervous system’s response to the work.
Is the touch pleasing, neutral, or noxious as it’s occurring? Do your mind and body feel increasingly safe and relaxed? Later on, are the lingering sensations and memory of the treatment a comfort? Or are there irritations and ways you wished the experience had been different?
We regard you, our client, as the source of wisdom for our work together. You are who determines what’s therapeutic for you. We bring our techniques and decades of training and experience as offerings, and we adjust those offerings based on your needs. Areas we can adapt include bodywork techniques; manual pressure; bolsters and supports on the table; room and table temperature; music (or no music); and lighting (some feel safer in a brighter room; others relax more in a dark room).
No one type of massage technique is better for a particular condition. If it hurts or leaves you feeling worse, it’s not helpful. If it comforts and leaves you feeling better, it is.
Some clients want us to avoid their feet. Others want extra time or, indeed, entire sessions devoted to their feet. People feeling tension in their neck and shoulder muscles might request less work—or no work—on those areas, and they know best.
Please know that we respect your boundaries. We believe that your trust that we will uphold your safety and comfort above all is what will allow you to relax.
When a massage therapist violates a client’s boundaries, it hurts everyone.
We were heartbroken to read that several women reported that a Rutland massage therapist touched their chest and near the pelvis. Please know that this is not normal. No relaxation massage techniques we’re familiar with call for touching those areas. We drape clients carefully to protect them, providing a tactile sense of security. No practitioner should ever touch a client in a typically sensitive, protected area without advance discussion, informed consent (remembering that “No” is a complete sentence), and very good reasons, such as physical therapy orders (and we are not physical therapists!).
Some might wonder, Why didn’t those clients say something if they were uncomfortable? A client lying on a massage table in a state of undress is at a different point of power than a fully clothed person standing upright, especially when that person has a title and a role that suggests expertise, authority even. That can cause internal conflict and thoughts such as Am I imagining this? Should I just go with it because it’s good for me?
It’s simple, though not always easy. As a bodywork client, if there is somewhere or some way you prefer not to be touched, there is no excuse for a practitioner’s attempts to override that. There is no massage technique that anyone “should” have. For example, bodywork is not a mammogram, where breasts are the point of the procedure and comfort is a consideration but secondary.
In bodywork, this is the bright red line: client comfort is primary; client safety (that is the client’s sense of safety) is primary.
No client should have to wonder if their discomfort is valid. It is.
An ethical practitioner will never put them in such a position. A massage therapist who touches clients this way commits crime. That’s just one damage. This boundary violation erodes clients’ trust and confidence in all massage clients. It’s abuse that harms all of us.
After practicing for thirty years (me) and forty years (Chris), we know that both female and male clients are likelier to request a female massage practitioner.
While you are just as safe in Chris’s hands as in mine, and you have a choice of techniques, pressure, etc. with him just as with me, we are not about to judge a client’s request to see a female practitioner doing otherwise would hinder relaxation, which after all, is what we’re here to facilitate—your relaxation and ease.
Stories like this leave us more determined than ever to uphold our safe space and continue offering client-centered work that reduces stress and promotes relaxation and ease.
We hope you will always be safe in the hands of those you entrust with your care.
To report a violation, options include calling the police, filing a complaint with the Vermont Office of Professional Regulation, and contacting RAINN, the confidential National Sexual Assault Hotline.
