The Start of My Massage Journey

In my late teens and early 20s I was working at a restaurant bar in Virginia Beach, VA, and I don’t know if you know this, but waiting tables and bartending is very physical and everyone on the staff is an achy breaky mess. In the cracks of time we were often begging each other to please rub here and push there trying to get some relief from the pain of being on our feet, lifting, twisting, and bending for sometimes 16 hour shifts. We had an unused section that was kind of tucked away from view and often we would lay on the floor while another staff member kindly tried to help with our back pain. After some time it started to be that everyone started asking ME specifically to rub their back. 

This started my first official side hustle doing massage. I started leveraging the use of my skill to trade for side work tasks I didn’t want to do, like mopping the floors or cleaning the bathrooms, and some employees would offer to pay me. My first massage table was a pool table in the cocktail area after hours. It became a regular thing. After a few months of this, it was the dishwasher, Jon, that asked me why I was wasting my time at the bar when I should clearly be pursuing a career as a massage therapist. To be honest, I didn’t even know that was a thing. I hadn’t ever had a massage myself or been exposed to that as a profession. This sparked my curiosity and I fully credit him for inspiring me to enter the career that I have now been in for the last 2 decades. Thank you Jon!

Shortly after Jon planted this seed for me, I was moving to Austin, TX with my boyfriend at the time. He and I had a bit of an untrusting and troubled relationship and  though I was all in on giving it a real shot, I needed some reassurance that the move with him would be a good thing for me, so I insisted that if I were to go with him, I could go to massage school full time and he would handle the necessities of our life until I was licensed. (He had a lot to prove to me at the time. Which is not a healthy foundation for a relationship btw). He agreed and off to TX we went. 

I found my school by going around to the local massage businesses and asking them, “When you hire massage therapists, which school do you prefer they are trained at?” Overwhelmingly the consensus was The Lauterstein-Conway School of Massage. So, I went to the orientation and signed up as soon as I could. 

Massage school was still the most personally transformative experience of my life. At the time, I had a lot of stress and trauma in my life and I was flailing and ungrounded, but I wasn’t conscious of it. Suddenly, as my body was getting worked on and things were being released, it was all coming to the surface, very intensely. (There’s a book The Body Keeps the Score that dives deeply into what your body does with your life’s experiences that I highly recommend anyone who touches bodies for a living must read). Not to mention all the while, that (ehem, toxic) relationship I was in was crumbling and my self-esteem was in the shitter. 

But, I was thriving at school. I had the highest grades, I was being asked to tutor other students and help them refine their skills, I was honored to assist the founders of the school in workshops, it was like I had found my calling and I was right where I needed to be. I was simultaneously crumbling and being rebuilt stronger. 

I feel it’s needless to say, the relationship ended… badly. It was about mid-program, he had been away in Korea for a job training and came home and told me that he didn’t miss me when he was gone and that he didn’t love me. Oh did I mention it was my birthday.. Yeah, so he was awesome. Anyway, I cried and did the whole “poor me” thing for a while because I was in a panic about how I would possibly get through school now that I had to find a job and a new apartment, when suddenly this inner strength came rippling through me, thanks to all the space that had been made within me from all the bodywork I had been receiving, and I reminded him of his promise to fully support me while I went to massage school and he didn’t just get to revoke his end of the deal. So, he moved into the second bedroom of the apartment, I got a job and saved every single penny so I could get out of there the second school ended, and we cohabitated for the most uncomfortable five months of my life. I gotta give him credit that he did stick to his promise, and for that I am grateful. 

I still didn’t know what I was going to do when school ended. I didn’t want to stay in TX, but I really didn’t have anywhere else to go besides maybe back home to CA or back to VA but “back” felt like a step backwards and neither option felt right. Then I received a call from the founder of the school asking me if I would be interested in taking an interview at a prestigious spa in Carlsbad, CA. He knew I was searching for what to do and where to go after school and thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me. The spa director had called the school directly and asked if any graduates would be interested in working there since the school had such a great reputation and this spa wanted to bring in a therapist trained by them. Lucky me!

Back to CA I went. 

I hated that spa LOL! I didn’t last more than 5 months there. That’s a story for another blog. That was in 2007. Now 18 years later, I am here to share the lessons of my journey through this career. I want my wins and losses to inspire you to create your own dream career that supports the flow of your unique life. I want you to make the impact you’re feeling called to make, and I want you to be able to not only sustain your practice for many years to come, but to allow it to evolve with you as you need it to. 

With Joy,

Jessi