Massage & Bodywork

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2017

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GUIDELINES FOR SCHOOLS, SPAS, THERAPISTS, AND CLIENTS School Owners and Administrators If you are a school owner, be sure you have processes in place to (1) screen out inappropriate employment candidates, (2) effectively train students in ethical touch and communication, and (3) detect warning signs that a student or staff member may be acting inappropriately. Be alert for any evidence of poor physical, emotional, or verbal boundaries. If guidelines for sexual ethics are clearly and explicitly taught, other students will help keep their peers accountable. Encourage all students to come forward and safely speak to a faculty or staff member if they feel violated or intimidated in any way, and thoroughly investigate any complaints. If you don't take these responsibilities seriously, you run the risk of putting clients, students, and other therapists in danger, sullying our profession, and destroying the reputation of your school. Spa Owners If you are a spa owner, manager, or supervisor, please carefully consider all the risks outlined in this article. Help prevent abuses in your spa by adhering to the following guidelines: • Run a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check on your prospective employee, if your local or state agency has not done so recently. Relying on a background check performed in the course of licensing makes sense for a practitioner who was licensed a few months ago, but is inadequate for someone who has been practicing for several years. • Screen your therapists carefully before you hire them, including a thorough check of their references, a Google search, and a social media search. In several legal cases that I've worked on, a simple Google search on the defendant revealed incidences of criminal sexual misconduct that happened out of state or in another country. • Before hiring a new massage therapist, have them interview both with an administrator and with an experienced therapist. A supervisory-level staff massage therapist should receive a therapeutic session from this person. It's fine for an administrator to receive a session as well, but highly skilled therapists are much more likely to detect inappropriate actions. • Periodically send in a "mystery shopper" to ensure your therapists are behaving appropriately. 5 62 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k s e p t e m b e r / o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 The common denominator, we discovered, was light touch. Many massage techniques have two parts: the primary movement, where the greatest pressure is applied, and then the firm but lighter drag back to the starting position. Each of these students was working too lightly, especially on the return part of the technique. The issue was not just a matter of pressure—it's OK to use a small amount of force—but the particular quality of the contact. This type of touch felt like a light grazing or brushing against the skin, causing a sensation verging on tickling (Image 9). Even without sexual intent, this type of touch can feel sexual to a client. Once this faulty aspect of the students' technique was recognized, they received more explicit training and their technique was corrected. None had any further issues with client sexual arousal. With good training, massage therapy students learn the difference between therapeutic touch and light, potentially sexual touch, and therefore avoid these issues altogether. However, a therapist with sexual intent uses light touch deliberately—often with the palms lifted off the body and/or with the fingertips barely grazing the skin. Most of us can sense that something is off when we experience touch that is more sexual than therapeutic, even if we can't pinpoint exactly what's going on. 9

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