Breathwork + Guided Imagery Facilitation for Holistic Practitioners

When it comes to providing a pain/stress reduction session, do you find yourself on auto-pilot, taking on the full responsibility for a client’s recovery and outcomes, even frustrated with new clients or bored with long-term clients?

Do your clients use language that relates to them relying upon you being able to “fix” or take away their pain? This model of reliance in the holistic practitioner field quickly creates a path to burnout. Why? Clients come in week to week with the same aches and pains, expecting you to “work them out,” then go right back to the same things that keep them in that same pain loop. They keep coming back for the quick fix.

Practitioners grow bored and even resentful with the repetitive, mundane treatments (even when the clients are content) and end up on “auto-pilot” with long-term clients, often doing work that doesn’t feel aligned and engaging. Clients hit a plateau in their recovery and think the practitioner (or the modality) isn’t getting the job done anymore, holding the practitioner responsible for them not getting the results they expect.

Practitioners feel to blame for their work not being good enough, and begin to question whether they should even be doing this work anymore. New clients come in feeling vulnerable, hopeless or in so much pain that they can’t tolerate longer or more intensive sessions, yet they have been referred to you and want your support. Practitioners feel like their only option is to try to get the client to adapt to their style of work, then grow annoyed or frustrated when the client is “overly-sensitive.”

As a practitioner, one of your primary responsibilities is to do no harm. Yet functioning on auto-pilot, taking on the full burden of responsibility for another person’s relief, or putting one’s hands on a person’s body when frustrated IS harmful to both parties.

What if all of these scenarios could be avoided or eliminated by shifting the model of reliance to one of partnership, engagement and empowerment?

Integrating facilitated breathwork and guided imagery into a hands-on session:

• creates a partnership between client and practitioner so that both are actively participating in the process of pain and stress relief and management, with the client feeling guided and supported.
• creates a level of engagement that transforms a client’s relationship to their body and their pain, so that the client becomes curious, willing and optimistic in doing the work, not just passively receiving. And the practitioner is engaged in the creative process that makes the manual work feel fun and exciting.
• is empowering to both the client and practitioner, in that the client takes the experience during the session and applies it in daily practice, seeing outcomes in surprising and unexpected ways. And the practitioner feels purposeful, encouraging, even innovative in the full scope of a session from intake to session completion.

Which model do you want to practice? What type of relationship do you want to cultivate with your clients? Reliance or empowerment?

Learn a new way to support clients to feel empowered. Deepen your relationships while expanding your results!

Cost: $97

Massage therapists earn 4 CE hours.