It’s been two months since I graduated from the SF School of Massage, and it’s time for a public update! I am going to give you one in a weaving, story-like fashion, because I have many threads of happenings going on. And that’s the way my brain works. 🙂 I imagine this would be useful content for current or prospective massage students curious what the process of getting started in the field is like. I also hope that by sharing my process, current and future clients can get a chance to understand me better – both where I am coming from, what I am trying to do, and the why behind my work.

I’ve basically had my head down transitioning from full-time student to full-time-bodyworker-in-progress. I say “in progress” because part of the “full time” element is me trying to sort out what direction feels right for me and a potential solo business endeavor.

Coming out of school, I figured I’d split my working time roughly 50/50 — 50% working for other people, 50% working for myself to start my own practice and business, or at least the beginnings of a process of setting that up. I’ll give a little report on both of those ventures.

Working for Others: Events and Spa

This has been the simplest part. I was well prepared by my school to start applying for work in the field immediately. The SF School very generously offers job placement support services, so I had help with refining my resume, exploring different employment options, and being referred directly into places I liked that had open positions.

Interviewing in the massage world involves giving full-length massages, and I found this process really helpful because it gave me a chance to feel out actually working in a space. Visiting different spaces and interviewing also helped me clarify for myself what feels important and good for me at this point in my career.

It was a very exciting moment to realize that spa massage is something I want to do. There’s a whole other writing piece in the works about why that is, because past versions of me would have been really dismissive of spa massage as compared to more specifically therapeutic Western massage like Deep Tissue work, or… I’m not sure what else, I just thought spa/relaxation massage was a time-killing and superfluous activity reserved for the rich and ultra-pampered. But lo and behold, massage school actually enlightened and changed me. Stay tuned for my deeper reflections on that in another update. For now, I’m really proud to report that I accepted a job offer at Kabuki Springs & Spa, which is an absolutely wonderful legacy business in San Francisco, and also the ONLY spa that is certified as a San Francisco Green Business. I started a couple weeks ago, and love it so far!

Overachiever-me also bought a massage chair, because I had an opportunity to work a chair massage gig at a big Tech conference and I decided to jump on it. For four days I worked in something like a VIP lounge for one of the sponsoring companies at a huge Tech conference at the Moscone center. That ended up being a great experience – I’m sold on chair massage being worth the time! I could tell I was having a really meaningful impact on people’s days there – busy working professionals have lots of stored tension in their upper traps, no surprise! I was way happier working at a Tech conference as a massage therapist, than I ever was as a software engineer! Go figure.

This is not going to be the bulk of the massage work I do, but I’m now prepared for it and would be happy to book events periodically.

Working For Myself: Now What??

This has been by far the most overwhelming and confusing thing. I have no education in business. And it turns out there’s quite a lot to learn about navigating in the business world as a solo-preneur — in my case, it seems there is a huge learning curve in both my outer and inner worlds, and this is something I feel a lot less prepared for by just going to massage school. But some part of me wants to tackle the challenge of it anyway. As much as I feel really excited to develop my craft by being a part of existing spaces and organizations, I also want the freedom of developing my own practice in my own way. There are pros and cons of this, and I’d be going absolutely crazy if I was working for myself full-time right off the bat, but I hope my efforts now will pay off down the road.

I started by visiting the SF Small Business Office and learning some of the ins and outs of business permitting for massage therapists in this city. It didn’t really get me excited about the process, but I’ve got the basic information now and am now giving myself some time to consider my options while I try to develop my craft, a vision for my business, and a bit of a client base.

I signed myself up for coaching pretty quickly, including business coaching with my dad which is both an amazing resource I have access to as well as an emotionally confronting process! I love the idea of family business even if my family doesn’t have one; this is my way of employing my dad in my journey?

A non-family-member coach is helpful too – it’s an investment of time for us to get to know each other, but a bit more of a blank-slate person to help hold my vision, process, and some accountability for the actions I’m taking to move the ball forward.

With both of their help, and ongoing ad-hoc check-ins with friends and people in my communities, I launched a little promotion to offer massage to my direct networks and friends-of-friends. That’s been a really successful venture so far in terms of getting to meet new people and feel out the process of running my own practice. Those sessions have by and large been fantastic. Hooray!

Under the hood, I’ve been semi-furiously at work trying to answer bigger questions about what I want my practice to be and where I want my work to go in the world. I’ve been reading business-related books and trying to answer a lot of writing prompts that hit me right in my weak points. The good news is… I really don’t need to have all the answers right now. I’m allowed to be in a creation process, and that process can organically grow at its own rate as long as I’m covering my bases. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, and sometimes it feels totally fine. I’m just “building an airplane while in the air”, as one of my clients said to me. No stress at all, right? 🙂

Luckily I’ve had some important inner breakthroughs that I want to share thanks to two recent experiences: a workshop in Esalen massage one month ago, and an SF Climate Week event this past weekend.

Esalen Massage: Pure Art & Nature Alignment in Bodywork

Something has been stirring in me about explicitly connecting my work to Nature.

Nature and Earth-rootedness is a radically essential part of my personal path as a human… and soon, I believe, will be expressed in my brand as a holistic healer.

Recently I took my first Esalen massage workshop. I’ve suspected I’d be headed in this direction since before starting my studies at the SF School of Massage, to be honest. Every encounter I’ve had with the modality has struck me, and this was my deepest experience yet. On Day 2 of the workshop I found myself crying wordlessly on the table because my heart was so deeply pierced by the Beauty embodied within the experience. It was as though the spirit of Nature herself had graced humans with the ability to become a direct channel for Her loving and healing aspects.

Through Esalen massage, I felt the ocean and the trees and the rocks and the wind wash through my body. I felt myself to be inside a current of healing energy, gently cleansed as a rock in a stream.

Have you ever been touched by the play of sunlight on glimmering Aspen leaves, as they dance in the wind? As though the breeze laughs when it passes through them.

Have you ever laid in a rocky creek bed and felt that the water passing over you takes with it your woes, leaving you clean and fresh?

Or how about lying in the shallows at the beach, feeling the tide wash over you rhythmically? Have you ever let yourself fall into a trance with the tide?

Esalen massage felt like all those things to me. Completely without a goal or an agenda. Timeless. Rhythmic. Cyclical. Hypnotic. Healing. Carrying within it some innate knowledge of the changeless.

Crying on the table, I knew that I would be willing to devote my whole life to embodying that essence. To becoming something akin to the ocean or a grove of beautiful Aspen trees. Simply an expression of the unconditional goodness of Nature.

I immediately put money down for a full-length Esalen training later this year, and in the meantime am weaving pieces into my existing practice as best I can.

SF Climate Week & Deeper Purpose For My Work

SF Climate Week sprung up on me out of nowhere. It honestly wasn’t on my radar because I’ve been so immersed in my schooling and work journey. By complete random blessing, I was invited to attend an event with my roommate, friend, and colleague Elena – an “Earth Stewardship Dinner & Concert: Discussions on Indigenous Wisdom & Living Embodiment.”

I didn’t know the group hosting this event, Huya Aniwa. In fact, I don’t know many or any of the local organizations and communities that are oriented towards Earth Stewardship through partnership with Indigenous groups, though I very deeply align with this cause in my heart of hearts. Elena presented the event to me as an opportunity to meet more Earth-rooted people, and I felt a strong Yes to that… along with some insecurity, if I’m honest.

Wholesome Insecurity: Something to Lean Into

There is a flavor of insecurity that shows up when I stand before people who are embodying MORE of what I want to be in the world, than I currently am.

I’m a bit afraid to show up in spaces like that and to be seen as “the fraud that I am” (so my inner negative voice says). But, the difference between showing up here and showing up in the Tech world as a faking-it software engineer, where I also felt a lot of insecurity and imposter syndrome… is that, in this case I’m immersing myself amongst people who are farther along a path that I genuinely feel called to walk. I should and do feel appropriate respect towards these people and take to heart the kinds of things they are sharing, and the calls to action that they propose. Whereas, my insecurity in Tech spaces was compounded by the fact that I felt myself to actually be phony in my intentions, which I was. I was always trying to cover up my lack of true passion and belonging in that space by simply performing well.

Now I am showing up in spaces with this “wholesome insecurity” because I don’t honestly know what I have to offer or give towards this effort. I am a baby in a certain sense, not entirely skill-less but a little clueless about what my role to play is here… but, it is a wholesome experience because at root my intentions are clean, sincere, and good. This kind of insecurity is tolerable to me — A bit uncomfortable, but good for growth. It actually means I can show up with a beginner’s mind, that I’m willing to be influenced, that I’m willing to show up imperfectly because the cause itself is more important than my ego or pride.

So I walked in the door to this Earth Stewardship event with curiosity, that flavor of tolerable uncertainty, and a whole lot of my own big unanswered questions bubbling just underneath the surface about what I ought to actually be doing with my life.

The main question I’ve been sitting in, if I were to propose it right now to God, the Universe, and Everything, goes something like this:

“Okay. I was 100% guided to massage school. I’ve done my schooling and am starting to practice massage professionally. That’s great! But, what’s the bigger picture? What, more specifically, am I doing with massage? What and who am I in service to? What can I uniquely offer? How am I going to present the work I’m doing as I evolve in it? And, what is the big Why behind it all?? What really matters to my soul, and how can I align my life’s work to be genuinely of service in both a global and local sense? “

Coaches, books, and people in general have been asking me these kinds of questions and I’ve stumbled over my incomplete answers, feeling like I’ve only had wisps of a sense of “what I’m meant to do” here. I felt so good about the 100% alignment I felt around the choice to go back to massage school with complete commitment to finishing and following my path in that direction. Then I had that crystalline embodied experience of receiving and giving Esalen massage at the workshop, another “100% Yes” experience that solidified an inner understanding about the way I want to practice massage. Now, I feel a call to align inner and outer purpose – to bring my embodied understandings into the broader social and political landscape that I live inside of.

Earth Connection: Clarifying Inner & Outer Purpose for my Bodywork

One of the panelists at Saturday’s event was Chief Rasu of the Yawanawá tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. I was deeply touched by the words and sentiments shared by him and the other panelists. After the panel and a shared meal, Chief Rasu played us some of of the music of his people. I found myself again crying in soul-level recognition and remembrance… a signature spiritual experience that tells me I am in the presence of deep truth. In my state of question-holding, while in the presence of that truth, I received some answers and clarity about how I want to align my soul’s work in the outer world.

My bodywork practice is an embodiment of my connection to the Earth, and one of my main guiding lights is reconnecting humans to Nature — both inner and outer.

One thing that was said by Chief Rasu and other panelists, is that Western culture tends to think of Nature as an “outside us” thing, but the truth is that we are Nature. We are each of us living manifestations of Nature. We are not separate from the Earth — we are made up of her elements and we are in direct relationship with the whole living web, now and immediately. Even those of us who live in cities surrounded by concrete — we are still in direct relationship with the water, the soil, the plants, the animals, the sun — we have direct reciprocal relationships with every part of life. We have an ecosystem right here that we are a part of, locally and globally. And, we are all responsible for caring for the web of life through what we are in direct relationship with.

Some weeks ago I wrote into my Bodywork page, “The body is each of our own slice of Mother Earth’s vast wilderness.” And this is really what I mean. I believe that through my own hands-on bodywork practice, I can both strengthen my own awareness of the Earth and Nature, as well as inspire and grow that connection in others who I work with.

It is a literal part of my bodywork practice to connect directly to the Earth, in my body and psyche, before I lay hands on a person.

This practice was strengthened and reinvigorated at the Esalen workshop, where we would start our days with grounding meditations and visualizations – connecting ourselves to the natural elements and viscerally feeling our direct connection to the Earth.

At the Saturday event I heard a definition of Indigenous as “Belonging to Place”, as well as a perspective that all of us humans are Indigenous no matter where we come from or live – that we all belong to this planet, and live in direct relationship with it. Modern humans have simply forgotten what that means, and the result has been suffering for the ecosystem of the world at large, AND our inner-ecosystems.

I believe a lot of the symptoms of collective spiritual illness in the modern world – loneliness, isolation, disconnection – are a result of this fundamental forgetting. We all need to know that we belong here on this planet, we need to feel it innately. \

What is healing? On some level, it’s awakening to this reality. It’s a re-alignment with fundamental truth, with goodness and harmony and beauty and reciprocity! We were made to be connected to one another, interwoven with the elements, connected to an innate understanding of who we are in connection to one another and all beings.

For my work in this life, this is my framework. I want to support healing and real connection with Earth and all of Life for people who care to open those channels of awareness more deeply. My highest calling is to offer my own healing work as an expression of Earth care. For as I believe, “The body is each of our own slice of Mother Earth’s vast wilderness.” If we care well for our bodies, we care well for our Mother Earth. And vice-versa. They go hand in hand.

I Want to Build Earth Rootedness and Stewardship into my Business

I feel that I’ve got the beginnings of a way to invite Nature explicitly into my craft, and a direction to continue growing into that with Esalen Massage.

But now I’ve also gotten clarity that if I do build a business, I want to align that business with Earth stewardship somehow, explicitly. I want my business to be an entity that connects me to bigger community around these pressing issues of healing our relationship with Nature and the planet.

What will this look like in practice?

This is an open question right now, and I’m open to your input if you have any to share. My first ideas are just to start putting this kind of messaging in my business materials, and to openly invite people who identify themselves as Earth stewards (or Earth stewards in training) into my practice. One reason to have my own practice is that I actually use it to develop meaningful relationships with other humans — I want this thread of Earth-rootedness and Earth-care to be one of the common threads that brings me towards others in community. Because my soul needs to be a part of this collective healing effort, and in order to do that I need to build real relationships with others who are on that journey as well. We can’t do it in isolation. It’s a “we” job, not a “me” job.

Parting Call to Action

Here’s my next concrete step: I’m extending my April massage promotion into May, and in honor of SF Climate Week and my own calling to align my work with the greater cause of Earth stewardship, I’m going to donate 10% of the proceeds to Earth Stewardship causes. I will default to donating to Huya Aniwa, but will also accept suggestions and requests for other good organizations to donate to.

If you’re local: Come check out my practice! (Promo link here.) Give yourself or a loved one the gift of Earth-aligned mind-body-spirit massage, and help me grow into the web of community that genuinely cares for the wellbeing of humans and our greater ecosystem! We need both the inner and outer dimensions of healing to be living our best and most on-purpose lives.

If you aren’t local: share this with someone who is! Or, share in the comments one step you’re taking to be a good steward of the Earth. This is a collective responsibility, and none of us can do it alone. Your positive actions inspire me!

Thank you for reading and following my work, and for being in my world. I hope we can align and interweave in good works and positive forward steps!

In connection and health,

Emma