Our yoga teachers and massage therapists need to get their collective act together to stop sexual harassment

There are plenty of good folks who can be overcome by the intoxicating power that comes with helping someone heal. This intoxication is not gender-specific. It’s not age-specific. Misuse of this power is neglectful and toxic and risks ruining our yoga and massage community.

Our practices provide solidarity and a sense of community among students and clients, but there are many problems. The #MeToo and #TimesUp headlines have only confirmed this. We need to take a sincere look at ourselves as influencers of the health landscape, and how that power gets corrupted.

Many folks in our communities have made national news with sexual harassment and assault lawsuits. According to an article in Buzzfeed from last November, 180 clients have reported sexual assaults at Massage Envy. Another article from CBS last November states, “Massage Heights has also been accused in the past of failing to appropriately address sexual assault claims.”

Locally, the owner of Charlotte Yoga has been accused of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

As a clinical bodyworker, I want to make one thing clear: Our yoga studios and massage and bodywork therapists need to get their collective act together.

These yoga and massage communities are places of healing and guidance. Often, yoga students and massage therapy clients have been through the medical (or psychological) ringer and that is what has led them to the safe space that yoga and massage therapy should offer. Their bodies are dealing with trauma and trying to figure out how to heal. They haven’t been able to find help anywhere else they have looked, oftentimes including the traditional medical field.

Though the massage and yoga communities are separate, their members tend to overlap heavily. Massage therapists are bound by medical licenses in most states; yoga teachers go through a certification process that isn’t legally binding, at least not in North Carolina. Though yoga instructors don’t technically have medical licenses, their work in movement and understanding of the mind-body connection is an integral part of healing for many students.

Plus, there are local yoga studios that offer both yoga classes and spa/massage services.

In my work in the massage therapy realm, I use a combination of visceral manipulation, structural integration, cranial therapy and lymphatic techniques. I see an average of 28 clients a week for an average of 90 minutes apiece. I spend a lot of time with my clients. People come to me because they have problems they are trying to resolve–often complex, chronic or post-surgical.

A large number of my clients are referred to me from yoga studios, and historically it would be appropriate to view our modalities of the same ilk.

Unfortunately, there will always be creeps that shouldn’t be in healing fields. I am not talking about those people. They slip through the cracks during school and training. Creeps will happen everywhere, it doesn’t matter how much training they have or how much clout their license has. Just look at the recent scandal involving Dr. Larry Nassar, the former Olympic doctor who was sentenced to 175 years in prison. Locally, there is eye doctor Jonathan Christenbury.

But ethical abuse is systemic in the yoga and massage therapy communities. It separates us, causes conflict, discredits us and keeps us on the low end of the healthcare totem pole from traditional healthcare practitioners.

Therapists and yoga teachers, don’t forget what your job is.

Your job is to hold a healing space for someone. That is a sacred act. Much of modern medicine has forgotten how to hold that space, and that’s one of the reasons yoga and massage therapy are so popular. It is unusual for anyone to have as much contact with their doctor as they do with a massage therapist. The art of palpation and physical assessment is now done by sophisticated imaging divorced from the human that it represents. The time that a practitioner spends with clients is sacred. The healing space is sacred space. You are fulfilling a necessary part of someone’s life by just showing up and caring whether or not they are in pain.

Most of the folks that go to yoga or therapy are rediscovering what it means to be vulnerable both physically and mentally. In most cases they will be wearing skin-tight clothing that shows everything—or in massage therapy cases, they will be naked. This physical space could hardly be more vulnerable. Exposed bodies show scars, self-loathing and pain.

But bodies also show power, confidence and self love. A teacher and therapist should feel honored to be a part of that vulnerability. They are witnesses to and a facilitator of someone else’s ability to change into the best version of themselves. If that vulnerability is taken advantage of, it is a horrifying, unconscionable act. That teacher or therapist has become a predator.

We are practitioners of the body and mind. This is a special place we occupy. Emotions manifest the body as much as the body manifests emotion. Often in the yoga studio and on the therapy table, there is an emotional release that coincides with a physical release. To be part of someone else’s healing process in this way is an amazing experience. It can make you feel powerful as a practitioner, and with that power (I know, don’t say it) comes great responsibility.

Therapists and teachers should be proud of themselves for creating a space where this sort of healing can take place, but they should also be humbled by it. They are facilitators of a very personal experience. They are not the creators of it. That student on the mat or the client on the table has created that healing for themselves. It is personal; it is theirs. To take that accomplishment away from a client is neglect. It subjugates them and puts the practitioner on a pedestal with a false position of power.

And don’t forget why you started doing what you do.

Once, a long, long time ago a teacher or therapist picked you up, brushed you off and whispered in your ear some version of: “You are okay, I promise. I’m with you. Go heal yourself.” You became a yoga instructor or a therapist. To forget this is to confuse the reason most of us got into this business in the first place–we have the ability to create healing in ourselves.

Therapists and teachers are only human and need to remember to protect themselves. This is a tough point to understand: creating a healing space has its own level of vulnerability for the practitioner. First, we do our work, we offer a space for healing as a teacher or therapist. Then we need to detach from it, shake it off and help the next person who is waiting in the lobby or outside the studio door.

So know your boundaries. Boundaries are respectful. Keep them, let them bend, but don’t break them. Not having boundaries compromises the client relationship and invites inappropriate behavior. There’s a difference between having appropriate friendships with your clients and falling into a hairy situation. Know the difference, and if you don’t know if your relationship with a client is appropriate or not, it’s most likely not.

No matter what, it is important to maintain a sense of empathy and perspective with our clients. As soon as therapists and yoga teachers forget where their clients are coming from and shut off necessary perspective-taking skills, there will be trouble. We may know anatomy better than some doctors, but none of that matters if we are unable to have insight into the life experience of the people who come to us for help and healing.

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Our yoga teachers and massage therapists need to get their collective act together to stop sexual harassment."