What ‘doing less’ has taught me about effectiveness in massage.

I remember being a brand-new massage therapist—those first clients who are complete strangers, and all the feelings that suddenly come up. Am I good enough? Do I know enough?

But actually, my inner voice was a lot less confident: You don’t know enough. They can tell you’re brand new. You don’t even remember what muscle you’re touching.

Anxiety spread like wildfire.

So I went down the path many therapists go: do more. Use all your tools. Push harder. Grind down the taut bands. I took the entire session onto my plate. It was my job to fix this client’s pain issues, and I could do that with more.

This is not unusual for me. Call me an Aries, eldest daughter, perfectionist, people pleaser—whatever label you want (all of the above). I remember getting in trouble for pushing too hard when I was writing and doing my homework. Turns out the dining room table was made of soft wood, and I was leaving indentations of every word I wrote.

I scrubbed my face raw with apricot scrub as a teenager, desperate to control the blemishes on my skin. I singed my hair with a curling iron (flat irons were expensive) because straight as a pin was the accepted style. I bit my tongue around people, trying so hard to say the right thing, stand the right way, react just right.

I pushed—and never noticed the damage I was doing to myself, physically and emotionally.

That more tendency showed up in my massage work, too. It wasn’t until I learned how pain actually works in the body, how the nervous system controls the state of muscles, and received some negative client feedback that things began to shift. It wasn’t “your massage was bad.” It was, “I was really sore after our last session.”

I’m not sure what finally made everything click, but I was able to zoom out and see massage as just one piece of the puzzle. There are so many things filling our clients’ cups, and our work should enhance—not overstep, not correct. A gentle guiding back.

Maybe it was also becoming a new parent and learning about gentle, respectful parenting—treating another human with empathy and curiosity. It made sense that our bodies and muscles act a lot like toddlers. The brain, our higher cognition, filters much of the whining and turns it into anger (Why can’t I just lose the weight? Why can’t I just run a mile? Why can’t I just start the laundry?) or shame (See, this is why no one loves you).

What if we could gentle-parent ourselves?

So when that anxiety came up, I approached it with curiosity. What was the real fear? Losing a client? Losing money? Not being 100% satisfying?

I decided to test it.

And do less.