I’m Julie Onofrio, Licensed Massage Therapist in the State of WA. I started massage school in 1987 after reading about massage school on the back of a local weekly newspaper (Yes called The Weekly.) At the time, I had gotten one professional massage in my lifetime and really hated it. I was so bruised and sore afterwards that I wasn’t sure if I would ever go back. I had 2 more after that but I don’t really remember ever say “Wow, I need to become a massage therapist.”
I was working in the photography profession at a very stress processing lab that worked exclusively with professional photographers who needed everything yesterday. I think one of the turning points was dealing with an irate customer who made me go get the supervisor. The supervisor would not let me leave the counter because she feared for her life – well probably not her life – but the guy was irate to say the least (and not at me but about his order.) Anyways, I read about going to massage school in an ad. It said something like:
Go to Massage School! Learn about health and wellness! Helping others! Create a dynamic career.
So I made a few calls to massage therapists to find out how much they were making and if it was a good career. A few weeks later, I enrolled in massage school and the rest was history…except that in about 1998, I was experiencing some minor health issues after about 4 years of doing intensive training with a specific group of Structural Integrators (who’s name I will leave out). I had been doing about 100 hours of classes a year and the last year I was organizing the classes. In the middle of my last training, I experienced a severe case of vertigo which was to last me 10 years of on and off spinning and loss of work/income. At that time of not being able to do so much massage, I decided to help a friend out and start an apprenticeship program so that she could become a massage therapist without having to take all the formal training. I never ended up creating the apprenticeship program, but I took all of the material that I was gathering and put it into a website -www.thebodyworker.com. Back in 1999, websites were hardly websites at all. I remember I finally figured out how to upload a page to a server and I was so scared I would break the internet or something. Needless to say – that didn’t happen but I was hooked. I began a second site a year or so later -www.massagetherapycareers.com to talk about careers in massage and later sold that website in 2009. I started another site to replace it – Massage Career Guides .
My other website -www.massagepracticebuilder.com is my site that talks about building a massage business and getting the support you need in doing so.
I am now also working on a few non massage related websites which I won’t yet mention. They are just currently blogs that are holding space for my ideas and experiences on different topics.
I love creating and writing. Never in a million years would I have ever thought that I’d be writing or creating something for a living – well almost a living. But life has a way of taking you where you need to go. Honestly, if I was asked if I would become a massage therapist again, I would probably say no except for the fact that it got me to write. I can help many more people through writing and can make more money doing so – residual income at that.
But don’t let that discourage you from being a massage therapist. There are many wonderful things happening in the field. You can make much more than what I made in the beginning. Insurance companies are starting to recognize massage and we are being seen as a health professional. There are still many challenges such as getting better schools and educational systems set up. Massage can help so many different health issues and helps combat stress which is really the source of most disease processes. I hope to see massage therapists get paid what they are worth and have a massage office in every house!
Join me if you dare!
Julie Onofrio, LMP
Www.julieonofrio.com
www.thebodyworker.com
www.massage-career-guides.com
www.massagepracticebuilder.com
www.guidetomakingwebsites.com