The Heart of a Massage Therapist

A big debate is quietly raging on Anitra Brown's blog about.com/spa regarding necessary qualifications for being a good massage therapist. This one started because a spa bigwig was quoted in a Luxury Spa Finder saying something along these lines: “good therapists have to have the heart of a servant.” This seems to be the call to action among spa professionals these days—especially because it’s becoming harder to find and keep good therapists.

That fact kept coming up at the Wellness Summit because apparently the level of talented healing hands entering the industry is not sufficient to keep up with the demand. Good technicians, on the other hand, are easy to find. You go to school, you study your anatomy, you learn the skills necessary to set up shop and you get a job. But when you have the heart of a technician apparently your heart may not in the right place. Your heart is probably in your head, which is more focused on your bank account. And burnout is a big issue in the spa industry these days.

In this country, of course, peddling flagrant descriptions of employees as servants is like issuing a battle call. The politically correct contingency will rear its head and Western therapists—some, not all—cannot, will not, wrap their heads around the word. Here, someone making minimum wage in a retail setting is called an “associate,” not a clerk. We’re big on titles, small on customer care. So people latch onto their title, the fancier the title the bigger the head. I’m not promoting classism; I just think that we put too much emphasis on impressive-sounding titles and not as much on putting in the work to fulfill the title.


After experiencing Asian massage therapists, I think it comes down to attitudes. I really believe there is a cultural precedent in the argument for the superiority of Asian practitioners. I mentioned how the staff at Mandala Spa greets visitors: right hand to heart and a slight bow. At another spa, which I’ll talk about another time named Nurture Spa, I was greeted by a man who put his hands, palms up, out in front of him and then brought them both back to his heart as he said, “Welcome home.” The gestures felt so genuine it nearly took my breath away.

Chinggay, my massage therapist and Mandala Spa told me that the massage therapists start each day with a Sivananda yoga class. In fact, I read on the spa’s website that even the kitchen staff and gardeners must attend a yoga class once a week. I hope they like it. I know Chinggay does. She told me that as a result of taking yoga classes she’s decided that she wants to spend time on an ashram. I credit Mo-Ching Yip, a yoga instructor, spa consultant and wife of Dieter Schrottmann, Mandala’s co-owner with Karen Villarica-Reina (see personalities on website). I believe that together they are creating an environment that is not just a pretty construct but a living breathing thing.

Levitating Yogi

I recently stumbled upon a great spa blog called Asia's Best Spa and Massage Review. (See blogroll.) The author, Katherine, lives in Singapore and is a wealth of knowledge on the spa scene in Asia. In a recent post she has included a video of a levitating yogi. It's a must see. Go visit her.

Mandala Spa and Resort is So Much More Than This

I learned about the two-to-a-room practice while at the Mandala Spa on Boracay. Our little group—three of journalists who had attended the Spa Asia Wellness Summit in Manila—arrived at dusk. On our rickety jipney we turned off the rackety main road to follow the simple sign (see logo, top left) that would lead us to a little piece of paradise—one of many. The grounds were enchanting. The design was so simple that I felt absolutely absorbed into its purity. A lovely woman named Preeti,, all dressed in white, held her right hand to her heart and welcomed us. Soon hot ginger tea arrived. I drank in the beauty and serenity along with my tea. I think I sighed a lot. As I wended my way through the wooded grounds—left to the Watsu pool, right to the yoga studio and upstairs to Prana, the vegetarian restaurant, where all the produce is grown onsite, and which overlooks White Beach—I wanted to pull out my credit card and book a room right there, right then, for the remainder of my stay. The place felt like The Land That Time Let Be.

Soon, Chinggay came to take me to the massage room. There were two beds. I didn’t know one of them would soon be filled with K, an American woman living in Bangkok that I’d only met that morning and who was part of our entourage. MC, who I’ve mentioned in my last post, was also in our group. She and I had rooms across the hall from one another at the Sofitel, where the Wellness Summit had taken place, and we had become friendly. MC told me that morning that she knew K, that K had lived with her and another friend a few years earlier in Bangkok. She also told me that K had skipped out on the rent. Just what an overly sensitive, people-pleasing Libra like me needs: to be caught between two women who are not speaking to each other.

In fact, I’d been handling it pretty well. Somehow I managed to float a few inches above the tension. Dare I say I even felt pleased with myself for being the human cushion that they both leaned against occasionally so that it wasn’t even obvious to our guide Rene that the two of them never actually spoke to one another.

What I didn’t know was that shortly after I’d been whisked away to my own room, K and MC were being led—together—to another. Luck of the draw. But K couldn’t handle it; in fact, she refused to enter a room with MC. I can only imagine how the lovely and gentle staff felt by this sudden burst of . . .rancor. What did they do? They separated them and put K in my room. By this time I was about 5 – 10 minutes into my session. Here I was, face down with my head in the face pillow and I hear someone entering and sotto voce talking.

What is that? It surely took me out of my own peace. Fortunately, I was done 5 – 10 minutes before K so we weren’t forced to dress or undress together. But I was scratching my head the whole time, metaphorically, of course. The massage lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes and on and off, I wondered who the heck was in my room. Remember this was my first twosome experience so I was doubly confused. I don’t know that all the other treatment rooms were taken, and I don’t know that they weren’t. Again, tradition has it that sharing is nothing unusual and so the doubling up was pro forma.

I can’t help but wonder how the outburst affected K’s therapist. After all, negative energy flows both ways. She may have had great difficulty working on K. I know I felt it, though it wasn’t until afterwards when MC fairly pounced on me to relate K’s scandalous behavior that the gaps were filled in for me. Let me just say that for the Libra that I am, always looking to smooth things over and make everyone else in the room comfortable, I stood up for myself when MC approached me. I put my palm up, shook my head and gently said, Please.

MC got it and apologized and floated away. K left early the next morning.

Two in One

One of the surprising things I found about spa-ing in Asia is that it is common practice to book friends and acquaintances in the same treatment room. Here is the US we are so private that it would be considered a real breach in etiquette to do so. Yet I shared a room during all of my massage treatments, except when I arrived alone.

No, I didn’t like it much. I especially didn’t like the pre- and post-treatment times when I was in various stages of dress and undress. I felt awkward and it put some of the tension back into me that had just been removed in the last hour or so. Also, ever aware of maintaining my roommate's privacy, I sometimes felt at a loss as to where to focus my gaze.

But I also felt that my awkwardness was my problem, not theirs. In other words, part of entering another culture is that you expect to conform to it, not the other way around. I think Americans are especially guilty of fancying ourselves the center of a universe in which everyone and thing should revolve around us. So I tried to give myself an attitude check and as time went on each session got a little easier—and I got a little better at covering up strategically and at figuring out how best to allow my roommate as much privacy as possible. It started working out pretty well.

I think this is a really important point for all spa goers to consider, no matter if you’re in your home country or not: Not everyone likes what you like. What might be considered absolute heaven for someone else might turn out to be your particular nightmare scenario for you. That’s why—even though I know I have a hard time practicing what I preach—you’ve got to let your feelings be known so that the spa can do its best to accommodate you.

In fact, I have a rather funny story about that, which I will share in tomorrow’s post.