State of the bUnion

How it started, how it's going, and why we are here

Find your Center.

First and foremost: we are a continuing education company for Licensed/Registered/Certified Massage Therapists. Hi!

It’s been hard to get all the information that we want to share with the massage industry and our students when Instagram and Facebook’s algorithm is noisy and unpredictable. The Center for Barefoot Massage has a lot to say about Barefoot Massage, and our messages are not always reaching our followers, or being seen below the images on a scrolling feed. Do you want to see pictures with a message that is buried in the noise, or do you want to find deeper meaning within the work? We are here on Substack because we want the latter: where the images are less, and the intentional message is the center of it all.

1. Why this, why now

This year, 2024, is the Center for Barefoot Massage’s 7th year in existence. Over these years we flipped an idea into reality in a short period of time and launched 6 unique classes (with more on the way this year.) We’ve met so many massage therapists from across the globe who are now bringing Barefoot Massage to towns it hasn’t been available in previously. We spurred a bigger movement in the industry that highlights Barefoot Massage as a valid form of myofascial bodywork that helps real people manage pain and stress because we have trained LMT’s to work differently through their feet more than ever before. We have held strong to our values that Massage Therapy is touch-based work which “kneads” to be experienced and learned in person, not online. (We also held onto all these foot puns. Never gonna give that up!)

Our knowledge comes from experience that reaches back further than these seven years, and we have so much insight from our insoles to share with the Massage Therapists of the world that we needed a platform that supports more than 2,200 characters, and we need something more interactive than our trusty and sometimes forgotten blog.

If you are new to this platform, Substack can be read like blogs, but you can also get new entries from as many or little of the ‘Stacks you follow sent to your inbox as if it were an email newsletter. If you get the app, you’ll have a news feed with snippets of every Substack you subscribe to, so you can still get that “endless scroll fix” but can stop to focus your eyes and attention on a good long juicy read. It’s cool. It’s off the grid a little bit. It almost requires you to brew up a cup of coffee and hang out for a while. I like it.

We’ll still keep our other social platforms going, but this place is where things are going to get deep.

2. Who are the Massage Therapists are we talking to?

It’s our goal to grow the awareness and understanding of barefoot massage within the massage industry and in the public eye - but to do that, we need to help our students echo the message through their skilled feet.

We are looking for massage nerds who are always trying to improve their skills. The ones who never stop learning. We are looking for Massage Therapists who want long, happy, successful careers not ~just~ because of the technique they offer, but because their loyal clients notice the benefits that a constantly growing, skilled practitioner has to offer them. We just happen to use our feet.

With the raising trend of massage being presented as a performance or competition, and more profiles endlessly posting content for contents sake just to accumulate attention and likes and looks through videos and photos, the message is being lost. We are not here for performance art or competition, or here for what looks cool. How many of those hundreds of “likes” on a pretty ashiatsu post actually convert to a local, paying, regular/repeat massage client underfoot who actually gets touched and sticks around long enough to experience the long-term benefits of the technique? Not many. Where is the message of skilled, healing, therapeutic touch in all this?

We have an approach that offers more effortlessness in the physicality of barefoot massage than ever before so that while working, practitioners can experience less mental or physical strain and overwhelm long enough to find their center, focus on the moment, and choose their stroke intention. To support our students in the ongoing journey of discovering the potential of the work, we need a conversation, not a slideshow.

That’s our Jam. If you nerd out on always gaining more little nuggets of knowledge to inform every barefoot massage that you provide, then The Center for Barefoot Massage is for you.

3. What to expect from this space

Some of this is for any massage therapist or bodyworker, and all of it is specifically curated for our past or future students. Expect long, run-on sentences. Expect puns and metaphors. Expect made up foot-focused words and anatomical jargon. I’ll be using this space to “FEETure” the info that I think is important to the work. You’ll see expansions on old blog posts, repurposed content that didn’t get the attention it deserved, and secret special insights for your insoles. You’ll read shared content that helps educate your local town and build your credibility with ideas on how to implement that stuff. Some of this will be free, and eventually, some of it will be only available to paid subscribers - with parts exclusive only to our Sole-Providers who’ve attended our live, in-person classes. I have a low-pressured goal of 1 post per month so that you can have time to chew on it and and implement the ideas without burying you in TMI. If there is more than 1 post per month: then that means inspiration struck! Right on, extra credit!

4. Keep your toes on the pulse of the work

When you need to turn off your brain and look at the pretty pictures, go scroll through our Instagram or Facebook feeds. If you are a student, log in to the Alumni area and rewatch our training videos with deeper understanding from the help of our words. If you want to train with us, visit our website and see the schedule of classes offered across the nation. If you stumbled onto this Substack and aren’t “one of us” but want to feel what a Myofascial Barefoot Massage can do for you - here’s our directory of alumni who have chosen to be found! Go get underfoot and experience the work in action.

We are always evolving, more is coming, so just get a toehold on one of these spaces where we share info, and you’ll always be in the know of what’s aFoot. ;)