I know things tend to go in cycles, but this is actually silly, yet not.
In the last couple of days, I’ve worked on two people that I haven’t worked on in three years. Interesting huh?
I was deciding what I was going to make for dinner Saturday, when a call came in from someone looking for a massage. Now at five minutes before 6:00, I normally would have told them that I was closed, but they sounded desperate, and I had nothing better to do, so I went in and met them at the shop. As it turns out, this person had just come from the gym, and was sore. They were driving down Third Street and saw this big sign for massage, so she decided that this is what she needed and turned in. This was at the shop up the street, and they were closing for the day. Since we have an unspoken agreement about sending each other customers we can’t see, the person there told her to call me. As she put it, they said I was highly recommended.
When I got to the shop, she told me that she had been to see me some time ago. When I looked through the inactive clients, I found her file. I had actually seen her about two months after I opened. I remember thinking she would be back, but I had expected the period to be a bit shorter. She told me that she does this sporadically, and just goes to what is there when she has the urge. I told her that I hope after working on her she didn’t sit there and say “now I know why I haven’t been here in three years.”
As it was, she liked the work I did (which has changed quite a bit in three years). I don’t know if I’ll see her back anytime soon, but at least she came back even if it was routed a unique way.
The other called me and told me she wanted to get a massage. I had seen her some six months or so after I had opened the shop, and had recently taken the first of two classes in Aunty Margaret’s style of Lomi Lomi. I wasn’t able to locate the folder until after she left, but once I did, I remembered her.
When she had initially come to me, she had been looking for someone that could work deeply, and hadn’t found anyone on her side of town (she lives almost an hour from the shop). I had given her all I had and had done the Lomi on her legs (I had not learned the back movements yet). Since I had not seen her, I felt that it simply wasn’t deep enough.
She told me that she had gotten a few massages over where she lives, but none have been as good as what I did. Basically it comes down to budget and distance. (Most people here won’t drive more than 15 minutes for a massage. At the same time, I have always felt that you go where you know the work is good, as long as it wasn’t so far that the drive undid everything that had been done. I used to drive to St. Augustine when I needed massage years ago because it was where I knew there was a good therapist.)
Although this time, I did not work as deeply, she did like what I did. Much of my stuff now utilizes some of both styles of Lomi Lomi and I can go fairly deep with that, enough so that I don’t have to kill my hands trying to match that pressure throughout the massage. The neat part is that she is coming back in a couple of weeks for a session in Temple Lomi Lomi.
Hopefully, she will continue to come now and then.