The Thinking Practitioner Podcast:
Episode 57: A Fine Irish Visit (with Aubrey Gowing)

Til Luchau:

The Thinking Practitioner podcast is supported by ABMP Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. ABMP membership gives professional practitioners like you, a package, including individual liability insurance, free continuing education and quick reference apps, legislative advocacy, and much more.

Whitney Lowe:

ABMP CE courses, podcasts and massage, and bodywork magazine, always feature expert voices and new perspectives in the profession, including both Til and myself. Thinking Practitioner listeners can save on joining ABMP at abmp.com/thinking. And Til, how are you today?

Til Luchau:

I am well Whitney. How about yourself?

Whitney Lowe:

I'm doing very well and believe you have an interesting training that we want to call some attention to and mention?

Til Luchau:

Yeah. A kind of third sponsor spot for today. It's going to be me because today the day this airs is the free intro to our rib principles training.

Whitney Lowe:

Oh yes.

Til Luchau:

Yeah. And people can jump in later. A lot of people don't hear this the day they air, but all the way up until February 9th you can jump into this live online training. It includes all of the technique demonstrations from our two day in person workshop, but I'm going to go through it in detail, in live Zoom calls. And then people can either just watch those recordings or join us for the event. And then there's a bunch of discounts people can get. It can be as low as 29 bucks for that. The intro, like I said, is on January 26th, or you can catch that by recording later and you can start anytime up until February 9th or by recording anytime. That's my sponsor spot. How'd I do?

Whitney Lowe:

All right. I thought it was excellent. I was going to rib you about that, but I think you did a great job with it. Yeah.

Til Luchau:

Right. And we have a guest today.

Whitney Lowe:

We do have a guest.

Til Luchau:

Who are we talking to?

Whitney Lowe:

Talking to in the hot seat, we have a guest today. We're going to jump across the pond and have Aubrey Gowing from Ireland joining us today. So, good day to you there, Mr. Going, from Ireland. Or actually, good evening.

Aubrey Gowing:

Good day Whitney.

Whitney Lowe:

Yes.

Aubrey Gowing:

Good day, Till. How are you guys doing?

Whitney Lowe:

Yes. We're doing very well

Til Luchau:

Nice to be here with you, Aubrey.

Aubrey Gowing:

I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me, really looking forward to it.

Whitney Lowe:

All right. So, Aubrey, for those people that are new and across the world here who may have not been introduced to you before, can you tell us a little bit about yourself. We understand that you're president of the Irish Massage Therapist Association and a senior instructor at the Holistic College in Dublin, right? So, tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do.

Aubrey Gowing:

Sure. Well, I always say, I started with my folks actually taking up yoga when my mom was expecting me in the early seventies. There were no prenatal classes or anything like that, and she decided she wanted to do something and she dragged my dad along. And the two of them loved it so much. They went on, my dad trained to be a yoga teacher, my mom trained as a massage therapist. And from the time I was a small kid, like literally four years old, my dad used to-

Til Luchau:

You're saying that's your pedigree? That's when you started your bodywork experience?

Aubrey Gowing:

That's when I started, before I was born, Til.

Til Luchau:

Nice.

Aubrey Gowing:

I started in neutral. While my mom was doing meditation and breathing and I was just picking up on those good vibes.

Til Luchau:

That's great.

Aubrey Gowing:

So, then we started learning yoga as kids, and my dad started the first Holistic Center in Dublin in '86. And we started all just ever, we're a big family, there's seven kids in the family and all of us have gone through massage therapist training at some point.

Whitney Lowe:

Oh, no. That is incredible.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

I got to hear about the stories.

Aubrey Gowing:

...the entire family. Yeah. Myself and my sister really kept up that passion. Allison works with me and we founded the Holistic College Dublin because we got particularly interested in the training part of it. And Allison did her original training back in 1988. I trained in '89. And we've just continued to train ever since. Like I'd always say I'm really passionate about education and I mean being on both sides of that equation. Being both the educator and being the student that even now 30 what two, three years in, and I'm still studying, I'm really, really passionate about therapies and about education.

Whitney Lowe:

This is a fascinating visual picture for me about all these kids studying massage and everything. But tell me a little bit about your trajectory with this. I mean, did you kind of know at the outset, like from secondary school on and through high school and everything that you were going to do this or did you drift a little bit before you landed back in on it?

Aubrey Gowing:

Pretty much straight out of school, I started working in the family business. And the logical thing was, well, why don't you do a massage course while you're getting started and finding your place, your feet in the business? And I really, really enjoyed the massage, but I didn't necessarily see myself as being a massage therapist. I had an interest in photography and art and stuff like that. I kind of was intending on going to art college, and then my dad said, "Well, we kind of need an instructor for this course." So, oftentimes it was by need in the early stages that I got side stepped into teaching courses. But then I found the interaction, the kind of the aha moment that you see students get when you show them a technique. I just found that it gave me such a buzz. I really enjoyed that. And so it really changed the trajectory that I was on. I liked massage, but I didn't necessarily see it as a career. Not in those early stages. Yeah. So, a bit of an interesting shift.

Til Luchau:

I'm really interested in what the scene was in Dublin in the eighties where your dad started a Holistic Center.

Aubrey Gowing:

Oh, it was crazy. You still hear a little bit of it now occasionally from some kind of fringe, religious people, that back in the eighties, the church literally would say that the practice of yoga was a cult. It was really like you were seen as being completely bizarre. And even when I first started training as a massage therapist, all my friends who were my age at the time thought I was absolutely nuts. They were like, "You're training to be a massage therapist? Like you got to rub people." They thought this was the weirdest thing ever. But they were used to it because I was the weirder who was practicing yoga.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

And what was surprising is there was a culture shift kind of in the nineties that suddenly everybody, it's odd, the things that changed perception. Madonna saying she practiced your yoga meant all of a sudden everybody wanted to do yoga.

Til Luchau:

It was cool. It was mainstream.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

You wouldn't believe it. We would fill our yoga classes. We were running kind of five, six yoga classes a week where we would've struggled to fill two back in the eighties. Demand just completely changed, attitudes changed. People started to see it much more as a lifestyle choice than being something that was almost counterculture or against kind of the religious doctrine that was very dominant during the eighties in Ireland. So yeah, it was a weird time. We were those odd people, swimming against the current of popular belief. And you always felt that. I think I still carry that with me. I feel like that bit of an outsider, and I think it's good because it makes you stand on your own two feet and examine your own beliefs for yourself because you're constantly being required to justify and explain your choices to a certain extent.

Til Luchau:

Well, that's why I enjoy your company. I think I recognize that. My family in Suburbia, my dad had a geodesic dome in our backyard and ponytail, and we raised goats and pigs. This is like in Suburbia, and our neighbors thought we were from the moon, thought we were from Mars. Where do you come from?

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

We were cousins across the Atlantic there.

Aubrey Gowing:

That's so funny because that was really our experience. And I thought it was interesting. It's come up a few times in conversation about the idea of imposter syndrome. And I was saying, I don't get that. I don't think I've ever really suffered from it because from a very young age you had to self reflect. You had to think about, well, why am I doing what I'm doing? Because you're meeting so much resistance that you have to evaluate as you go along. And it gave you a lot of confidence in what you were doing, because you've actually drilled down. You're not just doing something because your parents did it and you're following in their footsteps, you're the one being challenged by your contemporaries and you have to think it through for yourself. And that follows me now.

Aubrey Gowing:

I even find to this day, I'd be doing something completely mundane and something will pop into my head about teaching and I'll go, oh, that's a better way to phrase that or to explain it. But you're always processing these ideas, working your way through concepts, coming to your own understanding and a vocabulary that you're comfortable with, a way of explaining. One of my big passions actually is making anatomy interesting. Because I find it fascinating because you've thought through it, a lot of people are terrified about anatomy. They think it's complex and it's difficult. And I go, no, it's fascinating. And you start talking to people, even at the introductory level, people thinking about doing training at a foundation level, and you can see they're getting excited about it. And that to me is that, that working it through for yourself. And I think I've developed that mindset through those challenges, that adversity in childhood.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. And tell me about your initial education experience there. When you first did your massage training, did you encounter things in that training where like, well, that's not what my mom said, because she's been doing this for a long time. And you were raised in that environment, did you have kind of a preconceived notion or perception or battle, all those things before you went to do your formal training?

Aubrey Gowing:

Not really because I was straight out of school, so I don't think I really questioned it in that way. We'd certainly never talked about any of the theory or the anatomy. Mom would just say, oh, do you want some treatment? I think it started when she was training to be a therapist and she had to do some soap notes. She had to do some case studies. And she worked on each of us as kids. And then every so often you go, oh my back is a bit sore. Could you do this? Or I was playing a match, could you work on my legs or something? So, I loved my initial training as a massage therapist. The idea of getting up on the table and getting body work each week was like a duck in  water. It was something I was so familiar with. But what's really interesting to me is when I look back at it now, the standards, the requirements in Ireland were quite low. When I was originally training, we had to learn 12 muscles.

Whitney Lowe:

Wow.

Aubrey Gowing:

That's what I mean by how simplified things were back then. Like 12 muscles on the syllabus and you learn maybe, I don't know, you certainly didn't learn individual bones. You learn some of the major bones. I always remember learning about the femur for some reason. I don't know. That sticks in my head, but not individual vertebrae or even how many there were just, these are the vertebrae. It was much more stripped down. We didn't do every system of the body back then. I think there was maybe the primary ones, like the ones I suppose that are most directly affected by therapy. So, we did a little bit on the nervous system and the digestive, and then it was muscular and skeletal.

Aubrey Gowing:

And I think that might have been it. Maybe skin. So, we didn't go into any of the kind of depth that we do now in our modern training where the anatomy is so thorough, it's every system of the body and so much more depth. Like our current syllabus, I think there's 80 muscles on it at foundation level. Obviously that expands as you go through into advanced training, but it's a big turnaround. Even the percentage of the training that's given over to anatomy, to theory in general, but to anatomy in particular compared to back then. But then back then there was a lot more emphasis, I think, on stuff that maybe doesn't get as much of a look in now. Like we did a lot of meditation and breathing exercises that you're calming yourself, so you're really able to connect with your client, be in the moment, all that kind of stuff. So, I think it was much more of an intuitive focus rather than an academic focus.

Til Luchau:

That's an interesting experience. There's a parallel for sure going on here just making me think about the first program I taught in was 125 hours, and it was one afternoon of anatomy. It was actually the first class I ever taught. It was a foot anatomy, I remember. We didn't even have to do 12 muscles. You can get to pick one part of the body. That was it.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. Right. So, what are the current requirements at foundation education levels there in Ireland right now?

Aubrey Gowing:

So, there are a couple of different bodies that provide qualifications that are recognized, and most of them are pretty consistent in what they require. So, it's not a very heavily regulated field here. I think it's less regulated than in the US, because you're not a licensed massage therapist. You simply will do a training course that leads to a recognized qualification, And then you can work as a therapist. I mean, we'll probably talk about associations a bit, but with the standard qualifications, it varies even in how it's delivered. Our awarding body here is ITEC, they're based in the UK. They do a lot of training across Europe and in different parts of the world. I don't think they're that big in the US, but they're quite big here in Europe. and they set out kind of their requirements in terms of the syllabus you have to cover, the number of hours, they then send in examiners.

Aubrey Gowing:

So, that's nice because it's kind of independently evaluated. It's not just the school deciding, you've paid us and gone through your training, so we're going to give you a certification. There is that kind of independent evaluation for both theory and practicals, which I think is good. So, at the moment they would say, we're kind of around 450 hours for foundation. And then how you deliver that is kind of up to yourself to a certain extent. Like for us, I think we're quite fortunate coming into the pandemic that we had invested quite a bit in an online learning platform, which I think a lot of schools hadn't at that time, made the transition for us easier. But we would have all of our theory available online lectures so people can watch that anytime during their training. It's 24/7, you can log in and you can watch these kind of bite size, 10, 15 minute long lectures. Students often say, if you're waiting for a friend for a cup of coffee, they'll stick in their headphones and they'll watch a lecture.

Aubrey Gowing:

And it's a great way of reinforcing. And I'd always say, particularly with anatomy, it's like learning a new language. So, it takes a while for you to pick up the vocabulary. And being able to log in and listen to those lectures over and over again, it's like being immersed in the language. It's like going to the country. And then in class when they come in, that's then further reinforced because we will do kind of a Q&A, we'll do an overview because they've already studied the material. We'll say, okay, what do you know about this? What can you tell me? Where's our gaps? Try and identify those, focus on those. What questions did you have?

Aubrey Gowing:

So, it makes it very targeted in class. But then also because of the nature of bodywork, when you do your practical, they're then placing those structures on the body, which I always say takes it out of the theory and makes it more of a concrete, an example that you can touch and feel. You go, oh, now I can feel gastrocnemius and soleus. And that to me is the big change point for people in their learning of anatomy. But it does mean for us that they've all that supplemental knowledge. So, we get to do a lot of practical work when we have them in class, in the college.

Til Luchau:

You're preloading with the online learning for quite a while.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

It occurs to me, you're like one of the first people that I did a virtual workshop with. You just said, "Yeah, let's go ahead and try a workshop."

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

And you and I did a collaboration there from a distance. I was sitting here in my office in Colorado, you were there and we just ran a workshop with the help of your brother and the experience that you guys had.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

fantastic.

Aubrey Gowing:

That was really great. I mean, we hadn't really done much of that before and I was surprised at how well it worked out, because my thought process and what we were talking about at that time was, where you have an instructor in the room, it's almost like having a TA. If people have been to these kind of big workshops, they'll see, oftentimes the presenter is up on the stage, they're presenting things are on a big screen. You can see everything really clearly. But then you have the assistants who are actually going around and doing the hands on work with you. And I was going, you know what, if we do a virtual presentation, it's not quite the same as pure virtual where the person and is sitting at home and they don't get the hands on, but we felt that worked really well. That you could deliver the material, and then I was the TA in the room and folks loved it. It turned out great. It was a real success.

Til Luchau:

Yeah. It was something getting up at four in the morning and going to work. I had jet lag.

Whitney Lowe:

I'd say.

Til Luchau:

But it was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

I've done a few of those in Australia as well, where the time zones are completely different to Europe, but like that 4:00 AM and you're delivering. You're often times getting up at 3:00 to deliver at 4:00. So, it's going to be a bit of a challenge. I'm looking forward to it. Whitney's going to be doing that with us as well shortly. So, that's going to be fun too.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah, so luckily it's only 8:00 in the morning for me, I think, when we're doing that. So, that's good.

Aubrey Gowing:

That's easy.

Whitney Lowe:

I got much. Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

What are you teaching, Whitney? What are they going to do?

Whitney Lowe:

They we're doing a thing on upper extremity nerve entrapments. So, a little short excursion on the, this is something else that I think they've got. So, you got some other things going on that day with them as well. Is that correct, Aubrey?

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

We're going to be doing muscular alignment techniques. So, we're going to be doing kind of neck, shoulder, arm and hand. So, it's a whole kind of chain look at those nerve pathways, but also the soft tissues, typical kind of pathologies, doing some joint work. It's going to be really nice. And I just thought that I'd always think of, because from my first hearing about Whitney, a lot of it was around assessment and I was going, gosh, it'd be great to have Whitney come in and talk about some of his assessment tools. Maybe we'll probably do a little bit of practical work as well kind of like you did, Til. Hopefully I'll be up to being your TA Whitney.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah, certainly.

Aubrey Gowing:

Hopefully that will work out.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. So, it's going to be a really interesting workshop. Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. So, it's gonna be fun. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about, now you were talking about some things that have changed significantly in the overall perception of massage therapy there in Ireland. How about with the healthcare system? Is there greater inclusion of massage in the healthcare system now as well?

Til Luchau:

Sorry, Ireland has a publicly funded healthcare system, doesn't it?

Aubrey Gowing:

Yes. Yeah, we do. Yeah. It's interesting because we have private health insurers as well. So, people will oftentimes take out private health insurance, even though there is free public health and they get various benefits for that. Usually you get seen quicker and stuff like that. Things cost less for private care. But there has been much more acceptance amongst the public. That early changeover that I talked about in the nineties, they kind of saw massage as being part of wellbeing. So, it increased the acceptance for massage with nearly more for like what you guys would call spa massage, what we'd call relaxation therapies or holistic treatment. That there was a greater recognition of the benefits of that just for looking after yourself, like part of the maintenance, like doing yoga to keep down your stress levels.

Aubrey Gowing:

What I think is really interesting is, in about the last 10 years, there's been much more of a recognition of the importance of getting corrective bodywork. And I think a certain amount of this is part probably down to social media. That the younger generation is much more fitness orientated. They're actually a lot more active even than my generation, which they might have played sport when they were in school. But by the time you finish school, you kind of get into a job and you're not really that active. Whereas I see now in the younger generation coming up from 35 years old down really, when I say younger generation, showing my age. That these guys are much more physically active. And as a result, I think they see the benefits of getting corrective body work to keep them pain free and keep them moving well.

Aubrey Gowing:

So, I've seen another quite a seismic shift in the last 10 years of people going for regular kind of maintenance work rather than just an occasional pampering relaxation treatment, which I think is a really good turnaround. I think in a lot of cases, people would nearly be better off, before they start an exercise regime, get some preemptive therapy that they're able to move well and then go out and exercise. Because it amazes me, you get some people like a 25, 30 years old, they say, I'm in a desk job and I feel like I'm getting a bit sedentary. I think I'll become a triathlete. They're going to go from zero to triathlon. You're going, you definitely need some treatment to get you ready for that, so you don't get early injury that puts you off that you stop, you don't actually get on and develop into a good triathlete.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. How would you say the acceptance has progressed from other healthcare professionals about massage, manual therapy, all the various different body work strategies. Is there greater acceptance from your other colleagues and other professions for it as well?

Aubrey Gowing:

To a certain extent. I suppose, going back to the previous question about healthcare, going back to, I think it was 2003, myself and Alison were involved in what they called the national working group. And this was a group set up to look at statutory regulation of complimentary therapies. Because people were saying, this field is unregulated, we need to do something about it. And it took them two years. They finally released the Garvy report in 2005. And they basically said, "Because therapy is really low risk, it didn't require statutory regulation." There wasn't enough fear of a poorly trained therapist creating significant harm for a client. So, they decided from that point on, it was just going to be self-regulation. Now, that's been both a good and a bad thing, because it basically put the onus onto the professional associations to set standards and regulate our profession.

Aubrey Gowing:

The difficulty is then it didn't quite allow for the same degree of integration into medical care and the medical system that would've happened if we'd gotten statutory regulation. But at the same time it has left the industry, I think, more room to grow, that it isn't too restricted by heavy regulation. So, there's been positives and negatives. On the association side, as you mentioned on the intro, I was president of the Irish Massage Therapist Association, served my full three terms and happily stepped down in March of this year. So, I'm no longer president. Really enjoyed my time. But a lot of work went in association, particularly going through COVID where therapists all over Ireland were going, what do we do? What are we supposed to do? How do we interpret government guidelines? How do we interpret health guidelines? So, we did a huge amount of work at that time reading literature from all different jurisdictions. What were the different associations in the US doing?

Aubrey Gowing:

What was happening in Australia? What were different bodies in Europe recommending? And setting out guidelines, not just for COVID response, but for our industry particularly. Because a lot of the advisory that was coming out was nearly like hospital ward care. And we had to say, okay, well, how do we look at what's relevant in a massage environment? And we found people like Ann Williams put out a great book, you guys are probably well familiar with it. We promoted that a lot. We looked at a lot of the concepts in it. And that amongst other documents and stuff obviously from our own health service executive, from the CDC, from the WHO, and we set out guidelines. So, a huge amount of work in that. It was really, really interesting work, really rewarding. But my gosh, I'm glad we were in lockdown that I didn't have a ton of other stuff I was trying to do at that time.

Til Luchau:

No kidding.

Aubrey Gowing:

But the associations have really done quite a good job in helping to regulate the massage therapy practice here, that you have to keep your professional indemnity insurance current, you have to have continuing education. You need to do some CPDs. I think you guys have referred to it as CEUs, continuing education units. So, from that point of view, it's been really positive. But on the downside I think because there isn't more government regulation, people don't necessarily have to be a member of an association. They can just work. But obviously most of the professionals are going to be association members, and that does give quite a bit of assurance about standards and things like that. In terms of acceptance from other healthcare professionals, it varies. Definitely there's the kind of the old school people, you hear anecdotal things of, one of our graduates was saying that she was getting a huge amount of referrals from a local doctor because she was getting great results.

Aubrey Gowing:

So, he started sending more and more people and she said, "Oh, I better get in touch with this doctor and introduced myself and say thank you, and all the rest and open dialogue." And when he realized she was not a physiotherapist, I think you guys called him a physical therapist. When he realized she wasn't part of the medical establishment, he instantly stopped referring clients.

Whitney Lowe:

Oh, wow. Huh.

Aubrey Gowing:

And he said, "Now that's unusual."

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

But it was because she wasn't part of the medical organization, there's the whole thing around insurance and referral procedures for the doctor as well. Like it's not necessarily just a bias, they have their own criteria that they have to follow and things like that. But within the broader context, like certainly with other healthcare professionals, I think there's good collaboration between things like osteopaths, chiropractors, the massage therapy industry. There's definitely a lot more of a cross-communication now than there used to be. Much more of a dialogue, much more cooperation.

Til Luchau:

Yeah. Very interesting. I'm just thinking of the recent kind of demographic survey that ABMP put out about American therapists. And then being a sponsor of today's episode, it's perfect. Let me read you a couple of American statistics and you can guess to see how they might compare to Irish.

Aubrey Gowing:

Okay.

Til Luchau:

All right. 87% of respondents to this American survey were female.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. I would say it's pretty much a female dominated industry. What's interesting though is, we have seen a demographic shift a lot over the years. And we see a lot more guys. Since we started offering what we would term here, sports massage, I think you guys would kind of call it medical massage or nearly more like Whitney's orthopedic work. That once we got more into corrective work, there's this weird gender bias and I guess from those statistics that it occurs in the States as well.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

That a lot of people, both male and female clients would oftentimes have a preference going to a female therapist for a relaxation treatment. But yet for corrective work, both male and female clients will oftentimes rather go to a male therapist for what they perceive as being deep tissue work, because they think a guy is going to be stronger. Now both of those biases, in my opinion, are unjustified. A guy can do a brilliant relaxation treatment. A woman can do an amazing corrective treatment. But these are preconceived ideas that people have in their heads. So, in terms of the working therapists, I would probably say it's about 80-20 here. 80% women, 20% guys.

Til Luchau:

Yeah. Some of those ideas you talked about are things we hear too.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

And I know Whitney, you and I are talking about really looking at gender questions in our field. So, this is just really rich ground to learn more and really look at some of the assumptions we have behind the whole thing.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

Okay. 59%, almost 60% independent business owners as opposed to being an employee or something like that. 60% in the US of these respondents. Similar in Ireland?

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. I would say similar. What's interesting here is a lot of the employers will be either a spa on its own, or more often a spa connected to a hotel or something like that. And what's really interesting is, because they have a largely female clientele, they're inclined to hire people with a beautician's qualification. Because here in Europe, when people do beauty training, they include some massage. Now my sister did it. She's had an excellent beauty training course. I think it was about 350 hours and she said eight of those were massage. So, what you generally see is-

Til Luchau:

How many muscles did they learn?

Aubrey Gowing:

I'm not sure how many muscles, I never asked. Well, actually a lot in the beauty part. So, they would've covered a very thorough atomy for their beauty training. So, not to take from beauticians and the work that they do, but a lot of spas will hire beauticians because they can do both beauty treatments and facials and things like that, and some massage. My issue with that is, if they don't have a separate massage qualification, it often means again, nothing against the profession and nothing against the individuals, but they haven't had very thorough training in massage. And I've found this when I go for treatment. The quality of the massage is oftentimes lacking simply because of a lack of training.

Aubrey Gowing:

Whereas when you go to somebody working on their own, a self-employed therapist, they usually will have a massage qualification because it is a massage clinic. They may have a beauty qualification as well. They may offer both, but I think they, how can I put this delicately without offending anybody? To make your own business work, the onus is on you to really offer high quality treatments. Whereas in a spa, the person is kind of going to the location. They're not necessarily booking in with a specific individual. So, I think there's much more demand on somebody being self-employed to provide really top quality treatments. If they're not, they don't have anything else to fall back on and I think they will have a difficulty succeeding. And soon as most of them succeed, I think they put the time into their education.

Whitney Lowe:

Right.

Aubrey Gowing:

If that makes sense.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

Nice. Is that your impression? Do most massage therapists or body workers, we should expand a little bit, in Ireland do they succeed? Do they do well?

Aubrey Gowing:

I think so. Because I certainly know from our own graduates and from talking to members of the association here, that most of them are in their career kind of 15, 20, 25 years. So, I think some people who do the training never quite get around to working at massage. Some people do the train training and they might do a little bit part-time, and that might fizzle in or out. I'm not sure. But for a lot of people, I think once you get to the point of, I've done my training and I've gone to the difficulty of actually setting up in business, I think those guys are pretty determined. And I think once you have that kind of determination, you have the passion for it, you will succeed.

Aubrey Gowing:

And I think they do really well. Like having talked to, as I said, a lot of our graduates, they're still in business for several decades. Their linic is going strong. If anything, I feel over time because you build a better word of mouth, you have more regular clients, you actually get busier and busier. Most of the guys that I talk to that are at 10 years plus waiting list. They have a waiting list of kind of a month, six weeks. I know when I was regularly in clinic, I was hugely booked out for six months ahead. So, I think your business does actually grow a lot as time goes by.

Til Luchau:

I don't have a good representative picture, but I know that people coming to our trainings who tend to have been practicing for a while, experienced practitioners, really trying to go to a higher level. I hear a lot of that. I hear a lot of the people are just really busy, really full. Don't have room. They're dealing with the opposite problem they had three, four years ago where it's, how do I get clients? Now how do I manage so much demand, is often the question that I'm hearing again. I don't know if that's across the board. The ABMP said 93% of respondents in July said they're back to work after COVID here in the US, which is really interesting. And that 40% work two or more jobs.

Aubrey Gowing:

Wow. That's interesting.

Whitney Lowe:

Do you see that a lot that people are doing this part-time in conjunction with other work as well? Is that also pretty common?

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. And I think again, particularly in the early stages of their career, because I know people that say, I love my job, I just don't want to do it Monday to Friday. I want a little bit of freedom. I want some creative expression in what I do, And they feel massage gives them that. So, I know quite a few people in probably the first maybe as many as five years. they will work Part-time in what was their existing employment before they started to train in massage. But I think a lot of them, once they get passed about five years, if they're still practicing and they're still really enjoying it, they're usually making the shift because they're getting that, I'm so busy now. I'm running out of available hours. Maybe I'll just do this full time.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

Was a recent graduate of ours returning for further training, I thought it was a really nice story. He said his son is recently trained in therapies. And he goes, "It's great now because I can kind of take a step back. I can refer clients onto him." He had the same problem. He was booked out so far ahead of time. They work a lot with athlete, cyclists in particular. And he said, "I can start to shift some of my client base across to my son." So, it's a great way of him getting that experience. They trust him because there's a family connection for some reason. it's an easier referral. He's working out of his clinic space. So he said, "I don't feel as I have to work as many hours to try and cover costs and still make a living." So, I thought that was a really nice kind of pairing that they kind of had, that benefits both parties. It'd be nice to see people do that a little bit more. Any other demographics for us, Til? But those are really interesting numbers.

Whitney Lowe:

Those are good ones.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

We're spread across the spectrum. Again, this is a massage therapist and body workers in general. But they found people working any 24% work 20 hours a week or under, 28% work around 30 hours, 29%, 40 hours. So, pretty even spread across the number of hours week spectrum.

Aubrey Gowing:

That's an interesting kind of statistic as well, because I've oftentimes said to guys who are at the point of doing exams, they're about to graduate. They'll say, "How much do I charge and how many hours can I do?" They're kind of working out like, how is this going to shape up as a career? And I'd oftentimes say, it's not like other careers. If you are aiming for longevity, you do kind of need to limit the number of hours that you're going to spend in the clinic. And I think really sustainable, 20 hours is nice. 25 is doable. I think once you get above 25, as a long term thing, you're kind of battling fatigue. Now again, I suppose it depends on the style of treatment you're doing and if there's a reasonable mix. I think what's interesting here is you'll see people do complimentary kind of things.

Aubrey Gowing:

Like you'll have somebody who is a yoga teacher and a massage therapist. So, they're still self-employed, they're doing stuff they like, but they're not doing their full-time job being just one thing. Or they'll be a gym's structure and a massage therapist. There's a lot of those kind of complimentary sort of things that tend to work out quite well. We get a lot of people coming from a fitness background to do our sports massage courses. And they'll go, "The clients who come to me for personal training will then come to me for treatment and vice versa." So, one business model feeds into the other and they find that works really well for them.

Til Luchau:

As somebody who was really focused on my body work practice for many years, I was surprised to learn how many people had second jobs. I remember first being aware of that, in the survey I mentioned a couple episodes ago with Diane Makowski, where I think it might have been similar. About 40% of people in that big survey had a second job. My assumption was, wow, they're not that serious about this. But then when I dug into the data and we started really looking at correlations, there was a much higher level of satisfaction with both this size and the quality of people's practice if they had two job

Aubrey Gowing:

Wow. And I remember I really thought about it because people have asked, if you weren't doing this, what would you do? And I'm like, I don't know. This is my life. This is what I live, sleep and breathe and think about 24/7.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

You don't do anything else.

Til Luchau:

Even like listen to podcasts about it.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. Imagine that. But I suppose in some ways I have had two jobs between being an educator and a therapist.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

For probably 20, 25 years of the time that I've been involved in a professional capacity, I've done both. And was a yoga teacher at times. So, like my day used to consist of, I might see four clients then get changed and teach a yoga class, and then get changed and teach a massage course. So, my day might start at like 12 o'clock and I'd see a few clients, do a yoga class 6:00 till 7:15. We used to do an hour 15 minutes, and then I'd be teaching massage course from 7:00 till 10:00 PM. And do that three, four days a week.

Til Luchau:

What were you saying about like 20, 25 hours a week? Like too much is like-

Aubrey Gowing:

I think 25 is sustainable. I think once you go over 25, just purely of hours in the clinic.

Til Luchau:

Yeah. Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

So, that's not taking into account all the other hours you have to do laundry, and contacting clients, and scheduling, and all that kind of stuff.

Til Luchau:

Yoga classes.

Whitney Lowe:

Giving yourself space to have a burnout schedule of teaching at the end your workday too.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. But I think, yeah, 25 hours is kind of a nice amount and the maths has got to work out. We talk to people about, if you're renting a room, what should that represent in terms of how many clients you need to see a day? Because I don't know what it's like in the states, but in Ireland, Dublin compared to rural Ireland is very different. So, costs of living are much lower. The cost of like renting a place is going to be much lower, but then what you can charge is much lower.

Whitney Lowe:

Right.

Aubrey Gowing:

So, it's kind of swings and roundabouts. I was listening to a thing they were saying it's very similar in Australia at the moment. Where they were trying to set standardized prices, you're going, but it's completely different. Cost of living somewhere more rural in Australia compared to living in one of the cities. You can't say, well, an hour of treatment should be this price, because it's so varied. I assume it's similar in the States. What do you guys find?

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. I think there's a firm amount of variation also between more populous areas, big cities and things like that, and more rural areas. I think we see a similar type of thing.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

Definitely.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

Definitely.

Aubrey Gowing:

That's an interesting change. And like some of our students, because Ireland's pretty small, so they don't travel too hard to study with us if they are rural. And I've heard therapists say, oh yeah, I can't charge more, the average, I suppose, here in Ireland at the moment is probably about €65 for an hour's treatment. And they're saying, we can't charge much more than €40. I was going, "Wow, €40 an hour?" And these are like our third year students. So, they were doing pretty complex stuff. High level advanced therapy that they were offering. And they were saying, yeah, we can't charge more than €40, but then when they started to go into what other costs where you're going, oh, okay, well that's probably similar. Just you've shifted the dials. The income is lower, but the costs are lower. You're probably coming out with about the same. Yeah. Interesting.

Whitney Lowe:

I'm Curious to know a little bit too, you've done quite a fair amount of teaching where you are there in Ireland, but also around the world. Traveling a good bit with Eric and doing some of your own things elsewhere. I'm curious, do you have any interesting perceptions, observations or experiences about massage in different locals that you you've seen either comparison wise or like, I can't believe they do this this way here. It's really different. Anything interesting that comes to mind for you?

Aubrey Gowing:

Well, one of the things I've really noticed is the commonality. The therapist will say, well, over here we have this terrible difficulty of, there's a lot of people out there that aren't well trained and they don't want to do training. They just do their basic work or the standard in schools isn't as good now. And you hear the same kind of stuff and I'm going, yeah, same back in Ireland. Same back in Ireland. What was really interesting for me was one of the first times I went to the US, and you kind of think, the way I described this is said, I thought there's all these leading lights, These great luminaries in our industry congregated in the states. And when I went over, guys in the us were saying, "oh, you're so lucky to be in Europe. There's so many leading lights within our industry." And I was going, you know what It is, those people are scattered around the place. And when you're far enough away, those lights look like they're really close together.

Whitney Lowe:

That's right.

Aubrey Gowing:

Because the US is huge, same as Europe, but you just think of it as this one land mass and you go, so many people over there are amazing, there's so many of the industry leaders that you hear of. and they're going, no, Europe is like, and I was going, there's not really anybody in Ireland. There might be one or two people in the UK. There's a few people dotted around Germany and France and Austria. And you go, there's not that many in your town or in your city. So, I thought that was an interesting perspective where they're going, "You're so lucky there's so many top notch people in your area."

Whitney Lowe:

It's kind of like that saying about an expert is an ordinary person from somewhere else.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yes.

Whitney Lowe:

That whole thing too, but it's difficult. And to sometimes be perceived as having that kind of value, if you're really close and convenient to people, it's got to be this mystery and mystique that surrounds the person that comes from somewhere else.

Aubrey Gowing:

Interesting that you mentioned that, the mystique of being far away and how things are convenient. We were running a seminar pre COVID. It was probably late 2019. And I had two phone calls on the same day. One person calling from Hawaii to say she was going to come over to Ireland, she really wanted to do our workshop. And she was making arrangements. Then we had somebody from Wicklow, which is just the county beside Dublin. So, it would've taken her maybe 50 minutes to an hour to get to us. And when I was talking to her, she goes, "Yeah, but you know, you're so far away. I don't know if I could make it." I'm going, "I've just talked to somebody who's coming from Hawaii. And you're going from an hour away in Wicklow, and you're not sure if..." Yeah, it's a bit far.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

It's amazing how perceptions change. Whereas for the lady in Hawaii, she's going, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I'm going to travel across the world to take this workshop. And for the person who was close by, it didn't seem that special because it's in her backyard.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. And you hear about him all the time. Yeah, he's the local guy here.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. Just another guy.

Til Luchau:

I don't think there's no one in this hometown and they say, the person is known in some place. His name is Whitney.

Whitney Lowe:

I had a similar situation like that one time. This is back in the early 2000s. I had a practitioner that was working at a clinic with about four practitioners working in there. And one of them had expressed interest in wanting to learn and study a little bit more of the stuff that I was focusing on. And I wasn't doing many courses locally here because they don't tend to do very well. They do a lot better when I go somewhere else for that same reason. I'm in Oregon and I was doing this course out in like upstate New York or something like that.

Whitney Lowe:

So again, geographically, that's a long way. It's like 2,500 miles away. So, I flew out there and she said, "Okay, well, I'm, I'm going to go see what this is all about." And she decided to go to this course, way out there. And she was talking to some of the other students when they found out that she worked in the clinic, but they were like, "Oh my God, you work in that clinic? What's it like, what did you do to be there?" And she goes like, "It's just kind of normal." She didn't get that whole scene that was around this whole flabbergasting thing about being able to do that. And I'm like, yeah, it's pretty normal but different too. Yeah. That's a funny.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. If it's too easy, I think our ability to appreciate it is reduced.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

That is true. There's some kind of specialness, I think, sometimes that needs to get you hooked into it to realize some of the value of those different kinds of things that are often close and local. I've spoken about this too, that geographically here in the states, we're a big geographic area when you look at the whole congregation. But in terms of the massage and manual therapy world, there's some really strong pockets of things that led to what I often refer to as talent vortexes, where a lot of people were drawn into a one particular area at a particular time for things to happen. So, for example, Til still lives there. I think Boulder is a talent vortex for a lot of people in the manual therapy world, mainly because the Ralph Institute and then people that congregated even from the-

Til Luchau:

The massage school here was going on in the counterculture in the sixties. Yeah. For some, it was between the coasts.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

Lots of things going on that made that the case. Yeah. That's one of those.

Whitney Lowe:

Interestingly too, Florida in the late eighties. When you look at the people who were in Florida, Paul St. John, Aaron Martens, Benny Vaughn, Judith Delaney, all of those people, John Upledger were all coming out of Florida like what was in the water down there. Something was going on. So, that creates again, a lot of interesting talent pools that I think spin off of those kinds of things when you have that kind of interactions with a lot of people that were going on.

Til Luchau:

I'm thinking in those places, at those particular times, there was an interest in health. There was a certain sense of the outdoors and nature. There's also a certain amount of financial prosperity in all those places.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Til Luchau:

And I know that's something that's come to Ireland over the last few decades as well.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. You wonder how much of that is a factor that people are just a little bit more affluent. They have money to spend on those things. Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

And California as well. I remember hearing about Boulder though, like back in the late eighties. So, it had even made itself known all the way across the pond here in Ireland. But then also like the Esalen Institute and of course all the people that you mentioned. I didn't realize they were all based in Florida around that time. Because I would've heard of, or have studied with most of those people some point or another.

Til Luchau:

Esalen would be in California, but yeah. All those long list you had, those are Floridians.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

It's amazing.

Aubrey Gowing:

Crazy. Yeah. There was more than just the Esalen. Wasn't there something else in California as well? Because I always think of California as a real Mecca for therapies as well.

Til Luchau:

The Bay Area, LA...

Aubrey Gowing:

Or it was in the kind of eighties and nineties.

Til Luchau:

Yeah. So, there was many, many schools that took the work further, but then the big cultural centers of both LA and the Bay Area were pushing the edges in all kinds of ways that-

Whitney Lowe:

And there was a fair amount of stuff that was also happening a little bit up in Northern California. Harbin Hot Springs and Harwood and some of those places that we're doing really far sort of cutting edge of early in the sort of alternative health communities of things with body work practices there. So, yeah, it's a big geographic place also. So, lots of diversity of things that are happening there.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:

Well, what else? Do we have anything else about the explorations with your experiences that you want to share with us?

Aubrey Gowing:

Yeah. Like I said, the big thing I noticed was actually more the commonalities than the differences both across Europe, down into Australia, the times I've spent in the US, that I think there's far more commonality. There's more that unites us than is different. You have different regulation in different places. You have different terminology slightly, you have different kind of competing industries and things like that. So, there are some things, but they've-

Til Luchau:

Different accents.

Aubrey Gowing:

Different accents. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I have no accent though, of course. You do know that. My accent is completely neutral. You guys have an accent.

Til Luchau:

Nice to finally have someone on the podcast who doesn't have an accent.

Whitney Lowe:

Yes. So, you are on the advantageous into this, because you can come to the States with this Irish accent and sound really exotic and intelligent. And me having a Southern accent has always been somewhat of a disadvantage in a lot of places.

Aubrey Gowing:

Interestingly in Australia, when I was over there were saying that, over there like say in advertising, if they wanted to be very authoritative, they will use somebody with an English accent. And if they wanted to be more light, but interesting, and like you said, sounding intelligent, they'll use somebody with an Irish accent. Which I thought, this isn't exotic. Why would people choose an actor with an Irish accent? I thought that was really interesting, bizarre. But he said the English accent was used much more for kind of like serious announcements.

Whitney Lowe:

Interesting.

Aubrey Gowing:

Government announcements and things. But if you wanted to sell something, you use an Irish accent.

Whitney Lowe:

I'm going to remember that. I might have to hire you for some sales pitches for our company then.

Aubrey Gowing:

Voiceover, AdWords.

Whitney Lowe:

That's right. There you go. Right. So Aubrey, how do people find out more about you and your work and what you're up to? Where can people connect with you?

Aubrey Gowing:

Sure. Well, our college website is hcd.ie. Like the letters for Holistic College Dublin.ie. All Irish kind of domains are .ie rather than.com. So, hcd.ie. And one of the things that I've gotten quite an interested in the last while, and I know we expected from having done virtual workshops and hybrid workshops. I love doing the hybrid stuff because you have people in the room and then you have people joining online, is guys we're coming out of the tail end of COVID. I think a lot of people are kind of Zoom adverse. They're not really into much on online training, but yet we've been doing these kind of short workshops where they're focused on a particular thing. They may be an hour and 15 minutes long and those are still really popular.

Aubrey Gowing:

People are really enjoying those. So, we have a few more of those coming up over this coming year. People can find those on our website. We're obviously doing a lot of in-person training now as things are starting to open back up. So, they can find out more about that. Of course we have our own range of books and DVDs. I wrote my second book during lockdown, still working on the third one. Hope to have that maybe by summertime. So, there's a lot of different kind of mediums and stuff that people can find out a bit more. We obviously have our own Facebook, YouTube channel, all those kind of things. So, if they Google Holistic College Dublin-

Til Luchau:

Yeah, I'll put all those links in the-

Aubrey Gowing:

.... lots of stuff will come up.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. Great. And for those that aren't aware, Aubrey, what are your books that you have published?

Aubrey Gowing:

So, my first book was Sports and Myoskeletal Therapy for the lower body, and upper body is the one I'm working on. And then another subject that I'm really passionate about is the use of kinesiology tape. So, the book that I wrote is part of an online course. So, there's a whole video for every taping. But what I was really interested in including in that was the assessments to go with the taping, because I think I'd always talk about in corrective therapy. The ideal is to have kind of an unbroken chain. That when the person comes in, you're able to do a good intake so that you have an idea of, what is this person presenting with? What are they looking to have dealt with and where do they want to get to? What do they see as their goal? Once you have that in mind, it kind of helps you to establish what kind of tests you need to do.

Aubrey Gowing:

If you're doing the appropriate tests, particularly like doing cluster testing and things like that, then you've got a good chance of figuring out what's going on, or at least getting a first perspective on it. Because I'd always say, nothing is definitive. And most people are pretty good at that point. So, knowing what tests to do, being able to do them properly, the next step is one that people struggle with sometimes I think is interpreting the results. They'll perform the test, but they maybe aren't quite sure like, oh, well that was sore. I'm talking about people in the early stages of their practice. I think experienced therapists don't tend to struggle with this. But oftentimes they don't quite know how to interpret say a false positive, what that's going to mean or even a positive sometimes.

Aubrey Gowing:

How do you distinguish what is the nature of that dysfunction? Really clearly understanding what each test is doing and what it's telling you. And then I think the last step is, once you have interpreted the results, you should have something to do about it. Because each response really has a specific technique or tool or a approach that will best help to address that situation. And I find when you get that unbroken chain, you get amazing results. A lot of people, when they go taping, they learn taping patterns, but not necessarily why you should tape, when you shouldn't tape. A lot of the deeper understanding rather than just a wrote learning of you do this application for this condition. So, that's why we included both assessment videos in the online course, but there's also assessments included at the book as well. So, if you think the person needs at particular taping application, do the test and see. So, again, it's kind of guiding people through what is hopefully an unbroken chain to successful results.

Whitney Lowe:

That sounds excellent. Well, thank you again so much for sharing your time with us today and diving into some of these fascinating topics. It's always great to help us all broaden our perspectives and look around us and see what else is happening in other locations. So, this has been a great exploration of those things.

Aubrey Gowing:

Well, Whitney, I'd like to say big thank you to you and to Til for inviting me on. It's a great opportunity and I'm delighted to have a chance to chat to your audience, and hopefully they found some of that interesting.

Whitney Lowe:

All right.

Til Luchau:

Nice to catch up with you. It's great to hear what's going on with you. Interesting guy that you are, but also an the amazing place that you live, Ireland.

Aubrey Gowing:

Thanks guys.

Til Luchau:

So, on the way out, our closing sponsor Handspring Publishing. When I, Til, was looking for a publisher for a book I wanted to write, I was fortunate enough to end up with two offers. One from a large international media conglomerate and the other from Handspring, a small publisher in Scotland run by four per great people who love great books, and who love our field. To this day, I'm glad I chose to go with Handspring as not only did they help me make the books I wanted to share with you, the Advanced Myofascial Technique series, but their catalog has emerged as one of the leading collections of professional level books written, especially for body workers, movement teachers, and all professionals who use movement or attached to help patients achieve wellness.

Whitney Lowe:

And Handspring's move to learn webinars are free 45 minute broadcast featuring their authors, including one with you, Til. So, head on over to their website at handspringpublishing.com to check those out. And do be sure to use the code TTP at checkout for a discount. And thanks again so much Handspring. And we would like to say a thank you to all of our sponsors and also to all of our listeners. Thank you all for hanging out with us here and hope you got some good insights out of our chat today. You can stop by our sites for links, show notes, transcripts, and all kinds of other extras. You can find that from my site at academyofclinicalmassage.com. And, Til, where can people find that from you?

Til Luchau:

Our site advanced-trainings.com. If there are questions, guests or things you'd like to hear us talk about, email us at info@thethinkingpractitioner.com or look for us on social media at our names. And my name remains Til Luchau. How about you?

Whitney Lowe:

My name today also does remain Whitney Lowe. You can rate us on Apple podcasts. That's also very helpful because it does help people find the show, and you can hear us on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcast, or wherever else you happen to listen. Please do be sure to share the word and tell a friend. And of course, if you're unable to find in any of those locations, you can always play a Frank Zappa guitar solo at triple speed on your 8 Track tape deck and you can hear us there. Thanks again, Aubrey. Thank you, Till.

Til Luchau:

Yeah.

Aubrey Gowing:

Thanks guys.

Whitney Lowe:

All right, we'll see you all again in two weeks,

Til Luchau:

I'm going to go look for my Frank Zappa. I'm give that a try.

Whitney Lowe:

That's right. The harder thing's going to be finding your 8 Track tape deck.

Til Luchau:

Oh bye for now.

Whitney Lowe:

Yeah. All right.