If massage is so great, why have so many people still never gotten a professional massage?

Turns out it’s actually pretty common for people to be too anxious or worried about some aspect of bodywork to schedule their first massage.

Some worries that commonly get in the way of people enjoying massage are 1) self-consciousness about how their body looks or smells, 2) fear of close one-on-one physical contact being too “intimate”, and 3) the possibility of pain (just to name a few).

There are even more massage fears than these five common reasons listed here that make many people worry massage is not right for them. Fear of how much a massage costs is a huge concern not mentioned in our previous list, and what I want to start unpacking in this post today.

Let’s get started with the biggest practical obstacle to getting a massage, and the very rational fear many of us have around it:

FEAR THAT YOU JUST CAN’T AFFORD IT

It is completely rational to worry that you just don’t have enough money to pay for massage. Can anyone honestly argue that you should get a massage when you know you simply cannot afford it? NO! If you don’t have money to pay for massage, it makes perfect sense to be afraid of spending your limited funds on such an optional service.

For a lot of people, massage is simply not in their budget. If you struggle to pay for food, shelter, transportation, and basic healthcare, massage is probably not an option. But if getting massage is a very strong desire, and/or something that can improve your health and well-being to the point you may actually save money in the long run and/or be better equipped to earn more money, it’s worth creating a vision and plan for including massage treatments as a regular part of your future life.

Having a realistic monthly spending plan based on what your actual income and expenses are today is important. But it is also important to have a clear vision of what your ideal spending plan could be a year, five years, or ten years from now. Putting massage in your ideal spending plan can be a clear, powerful, and attainable motivator to cut expenses you don’t really enjoy (ex. alcoholic beverages, streaming subscriptions like Hulu, etc.) in favor of something you actually want more, or to take a risk and ask your boss for a raise or start that side hustle you’ve been mulling over.

FEAR OF LUXURIES / “SELF-INDULGENCE”

Another cost-related fear people have is that massage is a luxury: something extravagant that is just blowing money to be fancy. People worry that getting a massage is something only a diva with a lot of money to toss around would do: a waste of resources that should be spent on more important things.

What is at the heart of this belief that massage is a service only for a certain type or class of person?

A big component of designating massage as a self-indulgent luxury is cultural. In North America (where HaveAMassage.com and I are located) most of us have been enculturated with a very puritanical work ethic. We are proud of working doggedly hard for our money, but rarely feel we’ve actually earned enough of it to justify something as extravagant as an hour having our body deeply attended to by a professional in a practice we’ve heard actually feels good from head to toe. How many of us feel comfortable allowing ourselves just to rest for an hour doing nothing at all? If making time to be silently alone in a room resting for an hour makes us uncomfortable, of course making time and spending money being lavished with touch while we just lie there is going to feel inconceivably selfish and lavish.

At the root of this belief is not holding oneself in high enough esteem to warrant a health care treatment if it is potentially pleasurable and not an emergency. In short, we don’t believe we deserve to feel good or to attend to our bodies unless we have a diagnosable illness or confirmed injury along with a Doctor of Western medicine’s approval. These fears rely on a value system that holds money in higher regard than your incredible priceless body.

Do any of these notions about self-indulgence, money, and work strike a chord with you? I’ll bet they do! We’ll come back to these ideas and palpate them more another time. Fully unpacking the cultural iceberg underpinning our fear of indulging in massage is a big process of excavation I want to do with you here so you can HAVE A MASSAGE, and feel completely deserving of every benefit you derive from it.

In the meantime, rest assured that massage is a normal part of basic life in many other cultures, even amongst working class people of super-modest means. If your resistance to getting a massage is rooted in fears of being too self-indulgent, shift your perspective to other times and places where massage is as routine as going to the bathhouse.

FEAR OF BEING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF

Let’s face it: a lot of people are afraid certain kinds of service-people will take advantage of us. We worry that mechanics, used car salesmen, waitresses, and entertainers will see us as a sucker, and take us for a ride without delivering a commensurate product or service. Some of us spend a lot of time trying to be the kind of person who is too smart to fall for a scheme, a line, or a service provided with kindness and a pretty smile.

Some of us want to make sure a service provider really works hard — REALLY hard — for every nickel we spend, and really LIKES working for us on top of that. This often goes hand in hand with devaluing work people consider “unskilled labor” or “so easy anyone could do it”, and being ignorant — often willfully so — of all of the labor, expertise, and investments involved for service-oriented professionals.

Many people expect helping professionals (teachers, nurses, animal rescue workers, etc.) to be primarily motivated to do their work for intrinsic rewards rather than money, and to genuinely always infuse all of their work with an authentic loving commitment to the recipients of their labor. As a result, people tend to expect more from practitioners of massage than they should while simultaneously being dismissive and blind to the extraordinary work they actually do.

When it comes to massage therapists, sexism plays a huge role in dismissing the value of most kinds of bodywork. Your average massage therapist working in a spa (usually a woman) is more likely to be perceived as doing a kind of soft, effortless, and intuitive “women’s work” while chiropractors, physical therapists, and sports massage providers (more often men) are viewed as educated professionals with specialized expertise performing musculoskeletal rehabilitation and injury treatment.

Let’s look at the stats. According to the Census Bureau (via DATAUSA)

the massage therapists workforce in 2022 was 78.1% women and 21.9% men
the average yearly salary for males was $34,677
the average yearly salary for females was $29,758

When you look at these statistics, it’s pretty obvious that massage therapists — be they men or women — are not getting rich doing bodywork. On average, they are just getting by with a yearly income that is not very good for people who are (on average) forty-two years old, to say nothing of the amount of education, expertise, effort, and expenses required to perform even a mediocre massage. They’re not just in it to make an easy buck; massage is NOT easy. Neither are they viewing even the richest-looking client as a mark or vulnerable meal ticket. If they do upsells it is likely they only get a small commission from their employers. If they get big tips, they are not as frequent or as life-changing as you may imagine, and even the slightest above-average tipper who becomes a regular is likely to receive personalized benefits exceeding the actual amount of the bonus money.

Massage is a very personal service that can take quite a toll on providers. Massage is physically-demanding work requiring complex knowledge and long-practiced techniques on top of the more obvious people skills, often done for more hours a day than the average person has stamina to perform. Most massage therapists need massage therapy themselves to recover from their strenuous jobs, but can’t afford it, so do work trades with each other.

If you want a massage and you can afford to get one, but are held back by a fear that the cost of a massage is not worth what the massage practitioner will provide, I’d encourage you to really reflect on where that resentment, paranoia, and stinginess comes from; is it truly in line with your values? Do these suspicions serve you, or are they keeping you from enjoying all the best of what life has to offer? How would it feel to move through life as the most generous person you can be, both to yourself and to others?

While there are some legitimate worries we can talk about later (fear of having less time on the table than you scheduled or paid for, for example, or an unethical spa making money in ways that take advantage of both you AND your massage practitioner, etc.), I think most of these fears of somehow being taken advantage of by a bodywork provider boil down to not believing women’s work is worthy and valuable, and being so practiced in paying women less than they or worth (or expecting to not pay them at all) that we feel threatened by the very idea of personally handing over a C-note+ to a woman after she spends time with you for an hour. Even when the service she provides is not social, but a clearly negotiated professional therapy that she worked hard to deliver.

Are there steps we can take to get over these fears and smash some of the sexist stereotypes underpinning them? ABSOLUTELY! I hope you’ll come back to untangle these hang-ups and transform them into freely and joyfully having a great massage soon.

FEAR OF PAYMENT ETIQUETTE & PROCEDURES

In our previous post about massage fears, “UNFAMILIARITY WITH THE PROCESS” was listed as the number four most common fear.

Etiquette and routines around paying for your massage is a hugely underestimated fear a lot of us have. Worrying we won’t pay the right person the right amount, and wondering when and where we’re supposed to make our payment (and will there be more than one of them?) can be so distracting and stressful that it can suck all of the joy out of anticipating and experiencing a massage, and make it quite daunting to schedule a massage at all.

I’ve probably gotten over a hundred massages in my lifetime, and I am still anxious and fearful EVERY SINGLE TIME about the payment and tipping process. More than anything else, “processes and procedures” are what get in between me, making the next massage appointment, and being thoroughly in-the-moment while receiving it.

While it would probably help to have so much money I could freely spend as much as I want to on massage without having to calculate nickels and dimes, there is more to my fears over “the process” than a lack of surplus expendable money. There’s also obviously more to it than being a newb; like I said, I’ve gotten dozens upon dozens of massages over the past thirty years, and I still feel a great deal of nervous apprehension when it comes to resolving the issues of payments and tipping. Every practitioner and spa is a unique, and even places you’ve been before can have different people working the front desk, or new systems, or unexpected price increases or changes in special offers.

I wish I could promise you all your fears about the process of getting a massage and paying for it are totally in your head and nothing to waste time thinking about, but the truth is more complicated than that. Paying for your massage and going through all of the processes to make your appointment, experience it, and part ways when it’s over having properly fulfilled your end of the bargain can be pretty overwhelming and hard to thoroughly pre-plan. And that’s a big part of why I made this website: to help people have a massage who are intimidated by fears that are not altogether unfounded.

I relate to all of these fears. They are founded in something real (or something we’ve really been taught) but are almost-always worth overcoming: the benefits of massage are SO GREAT. I want you to be able to have a massage and really enjoy it.

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coming soon: HOW TO HAVE A MASSAGE

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Maximizing massage: how to get the most out of every massage
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