Whether You Want to Impact Your Personal Practice on the Mat or Your Career, Yogis Make Natural Massage Therapists
Yoga enthusiasts make successful massage therapists for several reasons – most of which relate to the yogi’s experience with body awareness.
Body awareness is the understanding of where one’s body is in space, and it is largely influenced by sensory information that results from the body’s movement. It is an invaluable skill (an art form, really) any LMT can and should leverage.
Here are three ways a yogi’s body awareness uniquely predisposes to them to becoming great massage therapists.
1. Yogis Are Already Mindful of How Their Own Body Works
Yoga enthusiasts make exceptional massage therapists because they spend a significant amount of time mindfully experiencing their own body.
In this context, the major benefit of this personal mindfulness extends to the massage client.
When performing massage, yogis-turned-therapists are able to draw on their own experience exploring, manipulating and positioning their own bodies and apply that practical experience to their bodywork.
Clients under the hands of these therapists will marvel how intuitive they seem to be when it comes to what needs to be worked and how.
2. Yoga Enthusiasts Already Have a Healthy Movement Practice
Yogis also make great massage therapists because they have practiced moving (and even just being still) in a healthy way.
The benefit of this healthy movement practice is to the therapists themselves.
During a session, massage therapists with a background in yoga are able to draw on their practice on the mat leveraging their body weight, adjusting their balance and simply breathing to move around the table, manage their posture during the work – and even to recover after the work.
Clients of yogi-therapists will wonder how their LMTs don’t ever seem tired after a long session.
3. Yogis Already Understand the Concept of Wholeness
Yoga enthusiasts also often make natural massage therapists because they know their body is body, mind and spirit and that all aspects must be addressed for complete wellness.
Both client and therapist are beneficiaries of this understanding.
Because of their foundation in yoga and personal practice on the mat, yogi-therapists inherently understand that when they affect the physical forms of their clients’, they are also impacting the mind and spirit of that individual. This knowledge allows the therapist to work more effectively to all the whole of the individual.
Clients will be amazed at how their whole selves feel more deeply balanced when they crawl off the massage table, and therapists will feel like they have comprehensively addressed the client’s needs during the session.
If you are a yogi or yoga teacher who would like to impact their yoga practice and career, contact an Admissions Counselor today.