09/30/2026
Reports I have been receiving from Blue Heron Academy graduates indicate that many of them are doing very well in the current economic environment, with strong and continuing demand for their therapeutic services. At the same time, I am saddened to hear reports from other massage practices, clinics, salons, and spas that are experiencing declining appointments, cancellations, and, in some cases, serious financial hardship. The contrast has caused me to reflect upon why some healing practices remain strong during difficult economic times while others struggle.
This is not a new question. It is something I began learning about more than fifty years ago from the doctors and therapists who were my teachers, mentors, and practice partners.
Some of these remarkable men and women practiced during some of the most difficult periods in modern history. They lived and worked through world wars, the Great Depression, economic recessions, epidemics, social upheaval, and periods when many families had very little money for anything beyond the necessities of life. I was fortunate to learn not only their therapeutic methods, but also something of the values and principles that sustained their practices through those difficult times.
One of the lessons they taught me was that a healing practice becomes strongest when it becomes genuinely useful and necessary to the community it serves.
When times become difficult, people understandably begin eliminating expenses they believe they can postpone. But pain does not necessarily wait for better economic times. Neither do injuries, chronic conditions, postsurgical problems, restricted movement, or the physical difficulties that interfere with a person's ability to work, sleep, care for a family, and live a normal life.
The practitioners who taught me understood this. Their practices were built around caring for people with genuine health problems. Their patients came to them because they needed help. The relationship was therefore based not primarily upon selling a service, but upon knowledge, service, trust, and the practitioner's ability to relieve suffering and improve function.
That does not mean abandoning relaxation, wellness, skin care, or the other services that people enjoy and value. These services have their own place and purpose. It means recognizing that massage therapy also has a long medical and clinical tradition and that practitioners can continue developing the knowledge and skills necessary to serve people who are hurting and who genuinely need care.
Looking at the massage profession today, much of that foundation is already present. Many therapists have pursued advanced education and developed skills in orthopedic and rehabilitative massage, myofascial techniques, lymphatic work, headache and TMJ care, athletic recovery, prenatal massage, scar and postsurgical work, chronic pain, and other therapeutic applications. These are valuable skills that can make a meaningful difference in people's lives.
Perhaps a difficult economic period can therefore become an opportunity: an opportunity to deepen clinical knowledge, strengthen therapeutic skills, build appropriate professional relationships with other health-care providers, and help our communities better understand the role that skilled massage therapy can play in addressing pain, dysfunction, recovery, and quality of life.
There is also an ethical dimension to this that has always been important to me. A healing practice is ultimately built upon service. It is not simply a matter of filling an appointment book or selling a service. It is about asking, “How can I become more useful to the people who need me?”
Throughout my own career, I found the wisdom of my teachers repeatedly confirmed. Competence, compassion, affordability, professional responsibility, continuing education, and genuine concern for the patient created something that advertising alone could never create: trust. And trust creates relationships that can last for decades.
These are also among the issues I continue to address in my ongoing workshops for massage therapists and other health-care practitioners. Although we teach specific therapeutic methods and clinical applications, the larger purpose is not simply to add another technique to a therapist's toolbox. It is to help practitioners expand their knowledge, clinical reasoning, therapeutic skills, and ability to serve people with real health problems. Continuing education, at its best, should make us more capable of helping the people who place their trust in our hands.
The world has changed enormously since some of my teachers first entered practice, but human suffering has not disappeared, nor has the need for compassionate and knowledgeable practitioners. There will always be people who hurt, people recovering from injury or surgery, people struggling to remain active and independent, and people simply trying to get through another day with less pain.
Perhaps the question for our profession during difficult times is not simply, “How do we find more customers?” but rather, “How do we become more useful to the people and communities we serve?”
I believe there is both wisdom and hope in that question. The generations of practitioners who came before us endured extraordinarily difficult times. What sustained the best of them was not simply their ability to sell a service. It was their ability to serve, to adapt, to continue learning, and to remain valuable to the people who depended upon their care.
That is a legacy worth carrying forward.
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