Better Game
Better GameA BetterGame by EdwardZimmerman
two weeks off
In the summer of 1999, I spent two whole weeks holed up studying to take the licensing exam in New York State for massage therapy. I had scheduled two weeks of vacation time to coincide with my friend Lanie's vacation out of town. That way, I could house sit for her, and I could have an isolated quiet house in the woods where I could easily focus on studying. I spent my days reviewing western anatomy and physiology, Swedish massage, relevant New York State law, and pathology. I also had to spend quite an effort reviewing the basics of oriental medicine, including the principles of yin and yang, five element theory, the meridians, and shiatsu techniques.
My responsibilities as a house sitter were light. I had to feed the cat and clean the litter box. In the morning, I would pinch the Petunias then water all the flowers. Other than that, it was check the voice messages for emergencies, see if there were any calls from Lanie, and of course, clean up after myself. There was still time left for many long walks in the rolling wooded hills of Danby. It was on these ecstatic walks that a vision arose.
flashback
Before I describe that vision, I want to give a little personal history that I am sure helped supply the fuel from which it arose. For most of my adult life, I have been both a techweenie and a sometimes gregarious, sometimes shy, people person. I have always aspired to being both technically competent and highly sensitive at an interpersonal level. Very early in my life, I was aware of group dynamics, although I didn't have the language to describe its principles. Over the years, I have played many different roles in many different groups. Since 1984, I have worked professionally as a member of several hightech engineering groups.
As a member of these engineering teams, I have learned a great deal about creative collaboration. I have also repeatedly experienced the limits of language when working across diverse cultures to achieve a set of common goals. In addition to having to keep abreast of endlessly accelerating technological advances, a deep desire to understand and several painful personal conflicts have led me to further study topics covered in the humanities over the years. This was easy for me to do, because I have had a lifelong curiosity about many of these 'human' subjects.
One of the great conundrums encountered along this path has been my professional encounters with the Free Software Foundation. I began my career in hightech developing realtime computer hardware. After several years of doing that, I became deeply intrigued with software engineering and decided to point my career in that direction. In the summer of 1988, I got my first job working in a small R&D group developing core CAD-related software. I was quite happy to be getting paid well to do what I would rather be doing anyways. On about my second day there, I discovered Richard Stallman's GNU Manifesto. In it, Stallman states his motivation for creating and distributing an entire UNIX-like operating system with a full set of useful utilities and complete documentation for free!
The golden rule, social contribution, and an emphasis on sharing were Stallman's stated motivations for claiming that software, like air, should be free. There I sat, reading Stallman's manifesto, using the free GNU Emacs text editor, written and freely given away by him and his comrades. I was working on a Sun work station, also supplied to us at no charge. But the software we were building with these free tools was to be proprietary and, hopefully, sold for a king's ransom.
Five years and a couple of jobs later, I took about six months off to re-evaluate what I wanted to do next in my life. I spent a lot of time reading, journaling, drawing, painting, and hiking. During this time, I stumbled across Garrett Hardin's Filters Against Folly. In it, he discusses the struggle between the sciences and the humanities. He also considers human impact on the biosphere. His thesis can be summed up as "Words matter, numbers matter, time matters". He lucidly demonstrates that exclusively emphasizing either a science-centric or a humanities-centric approach is a formula for disaster in the long run. We need both, he suggests. At the same time, he acknowledges our human tendency to be short-sighted. Here, he suggests we should always ask ourselves "And then what?" when considering a potential solution to a current problem. I especially appreciated his succinct definition of the capitalist's strategy - commonize cost, privatize profit. See the previous paragraph for a vivid example of this strategy in action.
Economic pressure helped me finally decide what I wanted to do next with my life - make money fast. So, I went right back to writing software for profit at the same company I had quit just six months earlier. There, we developed CMOLD, a set of finite element analysis programs which simulated the plastic injection molding process. Two of our strongest marketing slogans were "CMOLD - for a better world" and "Always a step ahead". The first implied that technical progress made the world a better place to live. The second implied that staying a step ahead of the competition was the way to progress. So by out-competing others, we would make the world a more livable place? Well, at least for the time being, it was more livable for most of us at CMOLD as well as for many of our customers. We were all very good at what we did.
Along with my work on CMOLD products, I was heavily involved with improving the software development process itself. We wanted to automate our own internal processes wherever the greatest leverage could be achieved. I played a primary role in developing automated tools that built and regression tested the 20+ individual programs that made up CMOLD, every night, across a dozen different hardware platforms and four major operating systems. Through this work, I came to grasp the impact of continually increasing automation. I could see it's potential power as a crowbar to increase the gap between the haves and the have nots.
Between the summer of 1994 and the summer of 1995, stress in both my professional and personal life started taking a toll on my health and attitude. At the same time, an injury forced me to permanently give up playing racquetball which had been my main form of exercise and stress relief. We were six months late shipping a much anticipated version of CMOLD. There was tremendous pressure at work to get it out the door, but the quality also had to be up to snuff. Also around this time, my marriage was heading into troubled waters. A month or two away from finally shipping the latest version of the product, the shit hit the proverbial fan. My boss, the head of engineering, got killed in a head-on car accident. A short time later, my father-in-law died of a fractured skull, having fallen on his morning walk around the neighborhood. Then, my wife threw in the towel for good.
CMOLD IV finally shipped. I decided to do something to cope with the stress. I got some counseling. I started taking tai chi classes. I was skeptical that the gentle movements of tai chi would really do it for me. I considered myself somewhat of a jock, and I liked getting pumped up playing sports like racquetball. Tai chi helped anyways. Then, I also started taking Chi Kung and African dance classes. And I was doing some yoga too, which I had dabbled in for a couple of decades. I started watching what I was eating, and tried to get plenty of sleep. While I often went through waves of grief over all my recent losses, I started feeling physically the best I had felt in years. While the crowd at this club seemed a bit too new age for me, I had to admit that most of them seemed very fit, happy, and mentally balanced. I also noticed a significant percentage of bodyworkers there.
For the hell of it, I made an appointment with one of the massage therapists that attended these classes. I had received massage as part of my physical therapy before, but I had never gotten a full body massage just to help me relax. It had always seemed too indulgent. I was a little apprehensive the first two times I went, but I got deeply relaxed anyway. It was like taking a two week vacation in an hour. It was more satisfying than sex. I vowed to make massage a regular part of my self-care program.
Meanwhile, early in 1996, I was offered a software development position at the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) in Sante Fe, NM. Their stated goal was to develop software that would support the Human Genome Project. I thought this might be an opportunity to better integrate my desire to help more of humanity with my finely honed technical skills. I resigned my position at CMOLD and moved to Sante Fe. However, my somewhat romantic vision of this new job soured quickly as I realized the real goal was to make a few white folks richer (my perception). Also, within the first few months there, another one of my co-workers died unexpectedly in his sleep at age 38, the same age as me at the time. I left this new job, fully dissolutioned, after just six months. I had no real future plans.
now what ?
I spent the next few months reading, traveling around the southwest, and thinking about my next move. At that time, I was dating a woman who was heavily involved in exploring educational models. We had many fascinating discussions about modes of learning and philosophies of education. Also, I discovered Super Learning 2000 by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder. I found the techniques described in this book fascinating. The author claimed these techniques could produce a gain of two to five times faster learning over using conventional techniques. If this was true, I wondered why these techniques weren't being used more widely.
In a nutshell, the core teaching technique described in Super Learning 2000 involved the rhythmic streaming of information to the student in optimal-sized chunks. The technique engages the student visually, auditorally, and kinesthetically. These techniques were then reinforced by repeating a given informational stream in combination with background music of a certain beat and harmonic composition. While the techniques described relied on what I considered outdated technology (cassette tape, paper, highlighters), I could envision how they could be incorporated into a software system. One part of this system could greatly enhance the ability to author educational content in this format efficiently. Another part of the system would let that content be distributed and consumed by interested students over the world wide web.
I surrendered to a wild idea and promptly decided what to do next. I signed up for massage school at the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts in Sante Fe. Suddenly pressed to memorize large volumes of anatomy and physiology, I could not get my idea for a system of accelerated computer-assisted learning out of my head. But I had to ignore my urge to implement it while I was in massage school. Instead, I had to fully immerse myself in the school's special environment. I still consider it one of the most profound and beautiful learning experiences of my life. It was also quite challenging.
The challenges I faced in massage school were not in my ability to learn large volumes of scientific material. I had always excelled there anyways. It was on the softer side of things that I faced my biggest challenges. While I considered myself quite self-aware and open-minded, everywhere I turned, there was another confrontation with my conditioning. If self-knowledge is one of the goals of education, massage school is probably one of the safest, friendliest, and most efficient places to rediscover yourself.
My fellow students came from every walk of life. In my section of 18 folks, my classmates ranged in age from 19 to 67. There were five males and thirteen females. Among us were former artists, engineers, an administrative assistant, a lawyer, a boat captain, a retired marketing executive, a self-made millionaire, a deadhead, a housewife, a biker-bartender, a champion bodybuilder, and several dropouts from the conventional college education. Here were straights and gays, rich and poor, young and old, educated and uneducated, worldly and naive, male and female, fat and thin, tall and short, scary-looking and magnetically attractive, people from four different continents. The single purpose that unified this diverse group was our common desire to get through massage school.
Before massage school, I would have guessed that I was by no means unique among my classmates in my belief that I was quite self-aware and open-minded. But in massage school, you get to feel your prejudgements at a visceral level. You get to practice suspending judgement of others and yourself every minute. You get to learn how to turn off or, at least, ignore the old cultural tapes in your head so you can listen deeply to what's going on inside the core of this unique being you are touching, skin to skin, with all the conscious loving attention you can muster. Meanwhile, your teachers are always looking over your shoulder, periodically giving you feedback about both intent and technique. It is under these working conditions that you attempt to stay completely relaxed, open, and attentive. It's always an interesting challenge.
Often, during even my earliest practice massages, a small miracle would happen. I would be working with someone whom I respected, but the thought of touching them made me a little uneasy. It would take me awhile to get into this space, but my mind's chatter would slow down, then almost stop. My fears would evaporate for a moment or more, and I would deeply connect with this person at some essential, non-verbal level. I could feel this person letting go too. My hands were really listening to what was going on inside this person, and this person's body knew it was being profoundly listened to, even if the person's mind was objecting to that information. Other times, I would be the one on the table being touched by someone I was a little (or a lot) leary of, and that person's conscious loving attention would come through their hands into my body, and eventually defeat all my mind's defenses. I would relax deeply and profoundly in spite of myself. Imagine a mother lovingly holding her small child, and the child basking in the bliss of this safe, loving, sensual moment. That's as close as I can come to describing this feeling.
Western science has documented that massage activates the parasympathetic nervous system in both the giver and receiver. That's part of what causes the deeply relaxed, blissed-out feeling described above. The usual fight or flight response that's almost always on in the modern world gets shut down, if for only a little bit. This has all kinds of health benefits that I won't list right now. Instead, I want to point out that these pleasant feelings and positive results can be induced by someone that I might think that I don't even like. After someone has put me into this state, I cannot help feeling some kind of connection to them, even if I basically still don't like something about them. No matter what my mind thinks, my body knows that they have done something good for my health and peace of mind.
At most massage schools, there is considerable time given to dealing with this bond that can form between the therapist and the client. Ethics, communication and self-care are very important aspects of any good program. Much role-playing and discussion help the massage student learn about how to deal effectively with projection, transference, counter-transference, and sexual overtures made by the client, as well as the sexual attraction to the client by the therapist. Power issues in the client-therapist relation are heavily discussed, and the healer's contract is made clear. Dual relationships are discouraged in a professional therapeutic setting. All of this is necessary because the deep bonding that can happen in massage between client and therapist (and vice versa) needs to be managed so both can return to their differentiated individual lives with their individual senses of self fully intact.
Of course, a person's sense of self shifts all the time whether the self that's currently driving wants to admit it or not. For instance, I am a white male that grew up in the Midwest, born just in time to still be classified a baby-boomer. I come from a long line of German stock that settled and farmed north-west Ohio for nearly a century. I grew up in a small town with a strong protestant work ethic. While growing up, I went through the typical socialization process for a male in my culture. By the age of six or seven, I was discouraged from hugging any of my male friends or family members. I was also discouraged from giving females any physical contact, or I would risk a severe teasing. The ultimate humiliation was to have some of your male peers or family members see your mother being physically affectionate with you. It was time to grow up, by God. But controlled violent contact with males through sports and general rough-housing was encouraged. Then, as puberty approached, males were expected to relentlessly pursue sexual gratification from the opposite sex, and, at the same time, be somewhat loathed for their male nature. But god forbid if you had an inclination to want to touch other males in an affectionate or sexual way. I grew up in an extremely homophobic culture.
For decades, I have considered myself a gay-friendly heterosexual. I have come to know many queer folk over the years as friends, co-workers, and family. In my late teens and early twenties, I became aware of my cultural conditioning about homosexuality, and I thought I had thoroughly outgrown it. However, there was this whole thing about never touching males in a nurturing way that had completely missed me. Here I was in massage school, 38 at the time. I considered myself open-minded, self-aware, and worldly. One day in Swedish massage class, we were learning techniques for working on the gluteals (the butt). Of course, there was a lot of nervous joking during the teacher's demonstration, as it was sinking in that we were soon going to be rubbing each other's bare asses for practice. When the demo was over, it was time to find a partner. Because we were encouraged to rotate, I looked around the room for someone I hadn't worked with recently. There was Peter, the biker-bartender. Hmmm.
Peter agreed to partner up with me for the practice session. While I maintained my composure on the outside, some primordial fear started rising inside me. I was about to violate one of my native culture's deeply held taboos. I was going to touch and be touched by another male, intimately and lovingly. On top of that, our work was going to be focused in an area of the body that's loaded with sexual associations. Despite my trepidations, I launched into my practice massage with Peter. I thought I would probably never be able to relax in this situation, but much to my pleasant surprise, I still found myself eventually getting into that entrained state of mind described above. When Peter worked on me, I got so deeply relaxed that I fell asleep for a while. Ironically, falling asleep on the table during a practice massage is one of the taboos of massage school. So, I got to break two taboos that day for the price of one. What a deal.
Kidding aside, this experience with Peter was a big eye-opener for me. Intellectually, I had no problem with men touching men in a nurturing way. However, I probably hadn't touched a male in a nurturing way since the age of six or seven. In under an hour, this direct experience of touching and being touched by Peter had taught me more about myself and the power of cultural conditioning than years of reading, philosophizing, thinking, and talking about it. My nearly lifelong, deeply-held subconscious fear of men touching men in a nurturing way was well on its way out for good. My world had expanded, as did my options for getting what I needed to maintain health. This was just one of many lessons that were adding to my growing respect for the healing power of nurturing touch.
Another area where massage school changed my life was in my relationship with women. I learned that I could give and receive non-sexual touch with an attractive female without it needing to be interpreted as an indication of interest to form a romantic or sexual relationship by either of us. Again, here I was at 38, experiencing directly for the first time in my life that I did not have to become lovers with an attractive women that I was connecting with deeply through nurturing touch. If only I had learned this in junior high school, how much heartache could I have saved myself and others over the ensuing years? How many sexual/romantic relationships had I gotten myself into just because I was touch-starved? Looking around the torn fabric of many American adults' love lives, I would think broadly educating folks about touch in this area alone would profoundly change our society for the better.
I could go on and on with these personal stories of how massage school rapidly expanded my world-view and helped restore me toward wholeness. We touched the old, infants, teenagers, the dying. We learned about protecting ourselves and our clients. We learned about setting up the situation that would allow for this deep contact to happen between therapist and client, complete with a safe return to individuality, all within an hour-long massage session. We also learned that, as professional massage therapists, it would be best if we considered ourselves professional athletes. The main tool of our trade was our own body, and we had better take very good care of it. We learned a great deal about nutrition, exercise, meditation, rest, and proper body mechanics. We learned most of the same anatomy, physiology, pathology, and universal precautions as taught to nursing students. And, just so they are not hypocrites, most conscientious massage therapists will always be working toward their black belts in self-care.
Is massage school for everyone ?
Perhaps you are getting the idea that I think massage school is something that everyone should experience. I do. If I could somehow give this experience to everyone, I would. I believe that doing so could profoundly transform our ailing society in the fastest, safest, friendliest way possible. But going to massage school was far from free.
A couple of months before graduating, I started worrying about money. I had quit my last software job without planning to do so, and I had very little cash put away for this contingency. Also, Sante Fe has a relatively high cost of living. On top of that, I had spent the first couple of months of my hiatus traveling around the southwest, spending money much faster than was prudent. But I really wanted to go to massage school, so I put the whole $8,000 tuition on a credit card. Then, I proceeded to support myself on credit cards for the duration. Somehow, I had maintained an excellent credit rating throughout most of my adult life. I guess it's easier when your individual income potential as a software engineer is two to four times the median household income. Anyway, I managed to rack up $22,500 in credit card debt alone by the time I graduated and re-entered the workforce.
This financial pressure started playing on me heavily. I did not really want to go back to computing for a living. I wanted to make my living as a professional massage therapist. Around this time, a former CMOLD co-worker contacted me and encouraged me to apply for a position at the CAD company he was now working for in Ithaca, NY. Then, a former NCGR worker, using me as reference, also recommended me for another position at another CAD company in Portland, OR. Just for giggles, I sent the required cover letter and resume to both places. A few weeks before graduating massage school, I had fly-in interviews at both companies, which were on opposite coasts, inside of three days. Welcome back to life in the fast lane.
I got offers, and I had to come to a decision fast. What a dilemma. Should I go back and do what I had always done, again becoming a hightech mercenary? Or, should I do what I now loved, massage therapy? I had done my research. I knew choosing the massage therapy route would likely mean making, at best, 1/5 to 1/2 of what I was used to making as a professional software engineer. As usual, I succumbed to financial realities. I accepted the position at Autodesk in Ithaca. In my last weeks of massage school, I spent my off time packing for the move and saying heartfelt goodbyes to my newfound friends. I sold off a lot of stuff and shipped out most of the rest. On August 2, 1997, I attended graduation ceremonies with the rest of my dear classmates while my car sat packed full in the parking lot, waiting for me to blow out of Sante Fe, maybe forever. Twenty days later, I reclaimed my seat working for the American corporate machine.
I quickly became absorbed in my new job. It turns out, Autodesk is probably one of the best companies around to work for. Also, the product we were developing from the ground up was quite intriguing. On top of that, I was getting to collaborate with some very bright minds in the field and, I was getting paid well, allowing me to pay down my debt very quickly. However, I had not forgotten my dream of practicing massage professionally. The move back to New York meant that I had more academic requirements to complete to qualify for taking the massage licensing exam. I had my work cut out for me. I eventually arranged to complete this extra coursework through independent study from the school I had attended. I say eventually, because it turned out be another two years before I finally took the state exam.
What finally set me in motion was finding out that the state's educational requirements were about to go up from 850 hours to 1000 hours. So, after dabbling and procrastinating for over a year, I finished the required coursework and finally got my ducks in a row with all the credentials, paperwork, and fees the state needs just to let you attempt the exam. The one remaining obstacle to professionally practicing massage therapy in New York state was to pass the exam. At the time I took it, the exam was only offered twice a year. In the spring of 1999, I successfully applied for a seat at the exam to be given a few months later in August. I quickly realized that meant I was going to be taking a challenging exam related to a lot of material I had not looked at in nearly two years. So I did my research.
Finding the facts about the exam turned out to be easy because I had become close friends with one of the teachers at the local massage school. There, one of the owners of the school sat on the state board that governs testing of massage therapists. While I didn't learn what would specifically be on the exam, I learned more than I had ever wanted to know about how tests are put together for state governed professions. Apparently, every profession, even bodywork, has its shadow side. Like the message in my fortune cookie once said, it's best not to know how laws and sausages are made. My friends did, however, map out the general terrain of knowledge that the 140 exam questions could come from - basically everything you learn in massage school plus relevant New York State law. Also, they informed me that the test was disproportionately weighted toward questions related to oriental medicine. I was warned to expect at many as 30 or 40 questions in this area.
Being a numbers guy, I pulled out all my books from massage school and made a rough estimate of how much material I had to review. All told, I think I estimated about 1,800 pages. I had only a few months to review this, and I was still deeply involved with my full-time work at Autodesk. I started to panic. Then, I started to study furiously, trying to relieve my panic. Remembering the accelerated learning techniques I had stumbled across a few years before, I briefly felt a sense of hope. However, no-one had bothered to spend the thousands of hours formatting all of this material in a way that my brain could optimally absorb it. Even if they had, it would cost an arm and a leg to get it. I would have to go the slower, more conventional route.
two weeks off
This brings me back to the beginning of the story. With less than six weeks until the exam and with a huge volume of material still to review, I decided to take two weeks vacation to house sit in the woods for my friend and focus completely on studying for the exam. If you recall, in the beginning, I mentioned taking many long walks in the rolling wooded hills of Danby during these two weeks. I also mentioned something about a vision arising on these ecstatic walks. Almost everything I am going to share with you beyond this point came to me during those walks, or was inspired by this initial vision.
what's the real problem ?
During these walks, my vision unfolded in several phases. Looking back today, the software engineer in me would like to call the first phase problem definition or requirements analysis. My favorite definition of a problem is 'the gap between what is desired and what is perceived'. Problem definition or requirements analysis is a polite way of saying what I was really doing on my earliest walks, mumbling bitches to myself about the way our crazy society operates and, eventually, clearly articulating exactly how I wished it were different.
Of course, my most immediate problem was learning large volumes of material in a short amount of time. I wondered again, if accelerated learning techniques really work, why most educational material was not already in this format. Why couldn't I just go to the web and find exactly the material I needed to study, download it for free or have it shipped for a small cost, and just pump it into my head at an optimal rate? Of course, it didn't even have to be in the computer-based format I had imagined. It could be the old-fashioned cassette tape and paper method, or even video tape.
While it wasn't formatted for optimal learning, I had found a very good video tape series that was useful for learning bones and muscles. It happened to cost over $100. Even the simplest muscle flash cards available to anatomy students cost over $10. If I remember correctly, my used Anatomy and Physiology text cost me over $50. Maybe I should give up software development and go into publishing medical educational material. This seemed like robbery. Here I am, trying to learn something so I can go out and help other people, and everywhere I turn there's an economic hurdle to getting there. What a racket. Fortunately, I am a well-off white guy, so I could just pay the admission price to get into this game.
Wasn't I just as guilty as the rest of them? I was spending all this time, money, and effort on getting professionally licensed so I could charge people money to help them. Well, in this society, people need money to live, and I knew first-hand that massage could really help some people. I imagined that pursuing a career in massage was my ticket to integrate my heart's desire with my livelihood. Even if I had to be a corporate mercenary by day to support myself, I could still do massage part-time. If I kept my day job, I could even afford to offer massage at a lower cost to those that would not be able to pay standard rates. Of course, offering massage at a greatly reduced price might negatively impact the livelihoods of my professional peers.
By my best guess, there are no more than 20 full-time massage therapists in Ithaca supporting themselves full-time from this work. There are probably 30-50 part-timers. There's a massage school here that dumps out about 70 new graduates every six months, a few of which choose to stay in Ithaca. This seems like a lot of competition when you're thinking about going into business for yourself.
I think there are something like 100,000 people in Tompkins county. Assuming a weekly massage could really help a person maintain their health and peace of mind, that comes to a potential demand of 100,000 massages a week. The average full-time massage therapist would definitely be overworked maintaining an average rate of 20 massages a week. That means for everyone in Tompkins county to get a weekly massage, 5,000 full-time massage therapists would need to be burning themselves out working to keep up with the demand. But this town only supports maybe 20 full-timers and 30-50 part-timers. Why?
Well, even though the massage trade generates a humble income for most who practice it, only the well-heeled and the well-insured can afford to get this much needed help on a regular basis. The going rate for massage in Ithaca these days is about $40-$60 per hour. Maybe the client throws in a $10 dollar tip on top of that. Maybe the client wants the hour and a half special for $65-$70 from the one of the more experienced therapists. Or maybe the client is at the other end of the economic spectrum, doesn't have insurance and can only pay the rock bottom sliding fee of $25 dollars. This gives us a possible total price tag range for one professional massage of $25-$80. If the client buys this service weekly, that would end up costing him about $1,250-$4,000 a year. So, regularly getting a professional massage is cost-prohibitive for all but a few.
There is a part of one low to moderate income population that can and often does get regular massage. These are the massage therapists, themselves. One of the biggest hidden benefits of becoming a massage therapist is that you get to trade massage with other therapists. If for no other reason than this one glorious benefit, it's too bad everyone hasn't gone to massage school. But unless you are very well-off, the only way you can possibly financially justify the cost of going to massage school is as a stepping-stone towards a career in professional healthcare. Like many other professions, you have to get your union card.
At $40-$60 per hour, it may seem like massage could be lucrative, but the self-employed massage therapist faces many obstacles. Injuries, sickness, seasonal downturns, free promotional work, the need for vacations, and purely business-related tasks, keep most full-time therapists down to an average sustainable rate of something more like 12 paid sessions per week. That comes out to about 600 paid massages a year at an average price of maybe $50/session. That's a gross of $30,000. Right off the top, subtract at least $600 per month in expenses (office rent, laundry, phone, supplies, advertising, continuing education, equipment, business travel, insurance, etc.) which leaves maybe $23,000 before taxes and putting any money away for retirement. Being generous, say this mythical full-time massage therapist can get all aspects of work related to her practice done in an average over the year of 35 hours per week. That comes out to an equivalent gross hourly wage of a little over $13 dollars per hour.
Thirteen dollars per hour?!? What was I doing jumping through hoops, beating my brains out studying for the state exam so I could get my union card in massage and make just $13 dollars per hour? With no retirement package? And, I would have to pay my own health insurance? Knowing next to nothing, I had once had a summer college job holding a flag on a road construction crew for nearly $18/hour, and that was 25 years ago! What the hell had I been thinking? My total financial investment in massage school including the opportunity cost of net wages (wages I would have made as a software engineer if I had kept working instead) came to at least $25,000 so far.
Looking back, I had never really thought of massage as a way to make a lot of money in the first place. Going to massage school just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It still stands out as the single most positive experience of my diverse life. So, I have no regrets about the monetary costs of my massage school experience, even though I cannot really justify it from a financial investment standpoint. I am also not unique in my struggle between doing what's healthiest and doing what will make the most money. The real kicker is that even if I sacrificed making a lot of money as a software engineer and took on the humbler income and lifestyle of a full-time massage therapist, only a very tiny percentage of the population could ever afford to get this service from me frequently enough to be beneficial as an important part of their preventive healthcare.
Furhermore, while most folks can't afford regular massage, a much tinier number will ever experience massage school. Almost every person I know that's gone through massage school found this to be one of the most positive, transformative experiences of their entire lives. Almost everyone that's been fortunate enough to have had this beautiful experience in their lives agrees that our society would benefit greatly if everyone went to massage school. This environment is so moving and transformative, many massage therapists seriously consider teaching at these schools, although only a few are chosen for these much desired positions.
I wish everyone had access to regularly getting massage.
I wish everyone who wanted to go to massage school could do so.
I wish every massage therapist that wanted to teach had the opportunity.
I wish basic healthcare education were affordable for all who wanted it.
I wish healthcare information were delivered in such a way that people could learn it as fast as possible and with little disruption to their current schedules.
I wish there were grass-roots support groups for individuals trying to nurture optimal health in themselves.
I wish technology were more often used to support basic health for all, instead of being used to make a profit for just a few.
I wish there were a forum for experimental use of computer-assisted accelerated learning.
I wish there were a central repository for compiling free healthcare related content.
I wish I could unite the minds, efforts and resources of frustrated social reformers in a way that might enhance all participants' health.
I wish existing institutions would support, or at least not try to stop, any efforts along these lines.
I wish there was some way for all these wishes to come true together.
I wish there was a better game.
If wishes were wings, we all could fly, I thought. At that exact moment, my thought train was suddenly disrupted as I spotted a glider soaring high above me. I laughed out loud at the irony of the moment. I relaxed, took a few deep breaths, and smiled inside. My mind's chatter stopped for a moment. Almost instantaneously, I was hurdled into what I considered the second phase of my vision, a glimpse into the realm of the possible. I received a vision of what could be. (See OufshaHome)
COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE: (Feedback is the easiest way to participate -- EdwardZimmerman)
Very interesting account. The book mentioned is too long (436 pages) and not very well bound. Much of the rather promotional stuff about 'smart food', 'super nutrition', and many other things of similar ilk (but not food-related) needs to be taken with a pinch of salt! Possibly, individual chapters could be used in isolation - I haven't had enough time to try it out.
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I wish there were a forum for experimental use of computer-assisted accelerated learning.
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