This summer my self-esteem grew through my massage practice. I had never received so many compliments in my life.
First, my body weight turned out to be a real advantage in deep tissue massage. Many clients came to me saying immediately: “I like strong pressure.” Not once did anyone ask for a light touch or a standard relaxing massage. People want to feel individual attention, strength, and immediate results.
I often heard things like:
“You have the strongest hands I’ve ever experienced in massage.”
“I think I’m falling in love with your massage.”
One client even joked: “I’m ready to marry you.” 🙂
Tips were generous—often $50, with $20 being the usual tip. Payment for massage is the one type of income where I know with certainty that I have earned every dollar through real work. My clients almost always receive more than they expect, which is why both locals and tourists return. Travelers especially come back after long hikes and accumulated fatigue from their busy lives and countries.
During these six weeks of daily massage work, my understanding of massage therapy changed dramatically.
Working in a massage salon often feels like standing on an assembly line—and that isn’t my path. My work is about helping people feel alive again, the way they feel after a vacation. Sometimes it’s even more direct—for example, helping them stop severe muscle cramps.
One day a young man rushed into my room after running a marathon. His muscle cramps had lasted 45 minutes. After the session he ran out of the room saying:
“I can run again!”
Eventually I left the salon because I wanted to understand how I could help people in a more personal setting. For now, I work at home on the floor, using a mixed massage technique: Thai massage, Lomi-Lomi, classical massage, and deep tissue therapy. It has become something like my own signature method.
When you look at a person not as a technique but as a situation, you either know—or you discover—what approach is needed. The name of the technique becomes less important. The result is what matters.
I always speak with my clients about trust and tolerance levels. We work within their medium level of comfort. Sometimes we use safe words. If a person asks for strong pressure, I can provide it—not simply because they want pain, but because sometimes a muscle is so tense and neglected that even a light touch can feel overwhelming.
This is how I came into massage.
I don’t try to save people from everything that troubles them. I am honest about what I can and cannot do. I work with soft tissues and fascia, focusing on releasing tension and restoring balance. I do not perform medical massage or spinal manipulation.
My work is simply my own kind of massage—you could even call it amateur in the most honest sense of the word, because it comes from love for the craft. I immerse myself deeply in the process, and clients often feel results almost immediately. After about five minutes, nobody talks anymore. They simply drift into a state that feels almost like floating in space.
Very often pain disappears in several areas of the body at once. Why? Because everything in the body is connected. My work is to search for the underlying cause and help you explore it together with me. I am only a guide on your path back to yourself.
These are my first reflections about massage. Until now I hesitated to talk about it publicly. My massage therapist’s journal is already full of lessons and insights.
But now I feel I have reached a new stage:
I no longer serve my practice—my practice serves me.
If I continue to take clients, it will only be those I truly want to work with.
In the photo there is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, illustrating how hell can sound inside the human body. And it often begins exactly there—in the sacrum.