The Great Frame-Up

by | May 15, 2012 | Chair Massage, History

While dozens of massage chairs have been developed since the first one debuted in 1986, today there are only four basic designs that have survived the intense competition of the marketplace. What distinguishes each design is the unique metal frame to which all of the other cushioned parts that support the face, arms, knees and seat attach.

Patent drawing of the first massage chairDesigning and building a massage chair is far more complicated than creating a massage table. Massage chairs have four surfaces on four different planes that need to fit to the customer’s face, chest, shins and seat, rather than the one surface required for a massage table. Each surface must be adjustable enough to accommodate a wide range of lengths and weights and the chair itself should be adjustable for tall and short practitioners. Add to that the requirement that the chair must fold into a transportable package that is lighter and smaller than the typical massage table and you end up with a major engineering challenge.

In the spirit of acknowledging, for the first time, the unsung innovators of chair massage development, I will categorize each frame by name of its designer in descending order of popularity.

The Beyer Frame

Scott Beyer is the consummate tinkerer. In 1987, he attended a seminar I taught in Dallas where he saw the original massage chair-in-a-box I had developed with Living Earth Crafts. The next year Scott moved to San Francisco and began developing what has become the most popular massage chair design in the world.

The Beyer Frame on the Quicklite Massage ChairThe reason for its popularity is the simplicity of the design, which made it relatively easy to manufacture and eventually, easy to copy. Scott sold his design to a manufacturer in Montana called Golden Ratio which named the chair the QuickLite. Golden Ratio neglected to get any patent protection and by the mid 1990s multiple versions were being made throughout North America, Europe and Australia.

Golden Ratio went out of business about ten years ago, giving imitators even more leeway to copy the design. Today, with the advent of Chinese manufacturing, this design totally owns the sub-$200 massage chair market. Even the major manufacturers of the best massage chairs sell versions of this design as their low end or entry level chair.

The primary selling points of the Beyer frame are its light weight (as little as 14 pounds) and its ease of adjustability, which is to say, it had very little adjustability and thus is very easy. Some manufacturers have tried to add features that would increase the adjustability for the customer and/or practitioner but inevitably they also increased the chair weight. This design also has the shortest assembly and fold up time of any chair, about ten seconds each.

Besides limited adjustability, the Beyer frame has another drawback. Its defining characteristic is a support beam that runs next to the crotch of the customer. While some customers may actually enjoy the extra “massage” it provides, the message it telegraphs to our unconscious parts is less than desirable for professional massage.

There is one safety issue inherent in this frame design. A portion of the seat extends past the back legs of the chair, meaning if customers lower themselves to far back onto the seat, the whole chair will flip up into their face and they will land on the ground.

A low price also sometimes means low manufacturing standards. Welds have been known to break on the cheaper chairs creating serious liability issues for practitioners. My best advice is to buy only from a reputable company with a good warranty.

Unfortunately, Scott did not make a fortune off his creativity, but he deserves a top seat in the Massage Inventors Hall of Fame for his design.

The Riach Frame

The second most popular chair design was created on the back of a paper napkin by Linda Riach and welded into reality by her engineering husband, Jeff. The Riachs are legendary in their own right as the founders, owners and current operators of Oakworks, a 35-year old massage manufacturing company.

The Riach Frame on the Portal ProThe Portal Pro chair that Linda sketched was defined by the unique cable system that linked the front and back leg braces providing an entirely new level of support and independent adjustability for the face, leg, shin and seat pads.

While patent protection on their chair prevented exact duplicates, similar designs abound such as the Avila by EarthLite. Any time you see a chair that folds like an ironing board, you are looking at a relative of the Riach design.

However, every feature has a trade off. The compromise with the cable adjustment system is that moving the cable up or down a notch changes the relative relationship between the seat, chest pad and knee rest, which requires a second and sometimes, third, adjustment.

The Portal Pro weighs only 19 pounds and retails for $449 with a carry case included.

The Lloyd Frame

After Living Earth Crafts stopped production of my original massage chair in the late 1990s, I began scouting for a new manufacturer to work with. At that time, Stronglite owners, John and Laney Lloyd, were developing a second-generation massage chair and invited my participation.

While they were kind enough to give me co-design credit for the resulting chair, the truth is John had already come up with the basic frame design by the time I arrived on the scene. Since this article is defining chairs by their frames, it is the Lloyd name that goes on this design.

The Lloyd Frame on the Ergo ProThe great innovation of the Lloyd frame was the elimination of any cabling holding the legs together. That meant that the seat height/angle and chest pad height/angle could be adjusted independently. In addition, the back legs can be raised or lowered for the height of the seat and comfort of the practitioners without changing any angles or requiring adjustments for the customer.

The first version of the chair was made out of wood but that was retired a few years after the introduction of the current, metal version, called the Ergo Pro. The Ergo Pro weighs 19 pounds, currently retails for $379 and includes a carry case. [Available for a discount at the TouchPro store.]

Occasionally the Lloyd Frame has been copied, but its relative complexity has not made it an easy target for knock-off manufacturers. Also, like Oakworks, Stronglite has developed a robust international distribution network that has a vested interest in keeping a lid on copycats.

The Lloyds sold their company to EarthLite a few years back, which also owns the Living Earth Craft brand.

The Gillotti Frame

Michael Gillotti is a guy who knows how to think outside the box. His late 1990s design for a massage chair is still the most aesthetically pleasing chair on the market today. Michael was the founder and former owner of Pisces Productions, which he ran for over 30 years.

His chair, the Dolphin II, is the only massage chair in this group still manufactured and assembled in the United States, but retailing at $525 (carry case extra), it has effectively priced itself into niche status.

The Gillotti Frame on the Dolphin IIIf the Riach Design was based on an “X,” the Gillotti Design was based on an “O.” The frame is built on three curved, nesting tubes that telescope in and out of each other allowing the chest pad and face cradle attached to one end to move from a totally horizontal to a totally vertical position. On the other end of the frame the seat can perform the same maneuver.

One unique advantage of this design is that, unlike the other three frame designs,  the Gillotti frame allows the customer to step into the chair from the side, making it easy for people who have difficulty raising their legs to sit down, e.g. if the customer has a range of motion limitation or is wearing a tight skirt.

Structurally, the most glaring problem is lateral stability. With one long length of tubing and no struts supporting either end, the lateral flexion is unnerving for both the customer and the practitioner.

Michael also wanted to create a massage chair that could also function as a table. Unfortunately, when adjusted for the prone position all of the weight of the customer goes into the chest or the shins and virtually none into the seat making it uncomfortable for more than a few minutes.

As beautiful as it is, I have never seen a knock-off of the Gillotti design.

The Future

All of the manufacturers keep tweaking the designs of their portable chairs, but it is unlikely that we will see any true innovation in frame design, such as the four described in this article.

Where the real frontier exists is in designing stationary massage chairs. With the explosion of chair massage in retail settings, thanks to the current wave of mainland Chinese immigrant workers, there are now hundreds of fixed location chair massage studios where a stationary chair would be appropriate. When you remove the constrictions of weight and portability a whole new range of possibilities for comfort and functionality emerge.

Just as the original chair unleashed the first wave of the chair massage industry, a stationary massage chair will signal the arrival of the second wave. I am currently looking for a development partner, so if you have any interest…

The Fainting Phenomenon

by | Feb 27, 2012 | Chair Massage

This week I got an email from Katy who writes: “I was about 20 minutes into the chair massage when the massage therapist began to work in and around my right shoulder blade.  I began to feel clammy and tried to breathe deeply and out of nowhere, I began to black out.  I sat up and just said “water” and wasn’t really aware of anything around me.  I almost dropped the water he had handed to me.  I sat down on a different chair (with much help) and in about 5 minutes felt much better.  I declined the offer to finish the massage.”

In the mid-1980’s, when chair massage was shifting from an occasional massage tool to being a discrete bodywork specialty, practitioners began to notice a phenomenon almost never encountered in table massage: seated customers experiencing symptoms of fainting or even passing out completely.

While a rare occurrence, episodes happened often enough that those of us practicing and teaching chair massage became concerned about its cause, prevention, and management when it did occur.

Why on a chair?

The medical term for fainting is “syncope” [sing’kuh-pee] and is defined as a sudden, brief loss of consciousness. “Pre-syncope” is the experience of symptoms leading up to a loss of consciousness. All syncope is caused by a loss of adequate blood flowing to the brain.

If a person is upright when this happens, then oxygen no longer reaches the brain in sufficient quantities to maintain consciousness and the individual passes out. The cure for fainting is simple. Get the customer horizontal, preferably with his knees up to allow gravity to restore blood flow to the brain. If the person is only experiencing near syncope, then it may be enough for them, while in a seated position, to drop their head between their knees.

In one sense, fainting is nature’s way of telling us to lie down by falling down. This is the reason table massage practitioners rarely experience customers  fainting. They are already lying down and gravity is working in their favor.

The three most important things to know about syncope are:

  • Most episodes are transient; that is, they happen once and never again.
  • Fainting is rarely life threatening, unless someone hits their head on the way to the floor.
  • Everyone who faints revives spontaneously.

Etiology

There are literally dozens of possible causes of syncope but the ones that concern chair massage practitioners most are:

  1. Low blood volume is most often caused by stimulation of the vasovagal nerve reflex, which expands the blood vessels (vasodilation) causing a rapid drop in blood pressure. That reflex can be triggered by such factors as anxiety, pain and fatigue.  Dehydration also causes a drop in blood volume so recent exercise or overheating need to be considered.
  2. Reduced blood flow because of medical conditions that narrow the blood vessels (smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes) or mechanical restriction of blood flow to the brain. This last point has been highlighted by some practitioners who believe that the positioning of the customer’s head in the face cradle is key. Some lower edges of a face cradle may press in to the carotid artery and trigger a syncope reaction.
  3. Low blood sugar can also cause a sudden drop in blood pressure often times in combination with another risk factor. That means empty stomachs can actually be a hazard in this regard.
  4. Certain medications such as diuretics, beta blockers, calcium blockers, and other CNS depressants that might slow the heart rate, cause fainting symptoms to more likely to occur.
  5. Other conditions where syncope and pre-syncope have been seen include migraines, epileptic seizures, hyperventilation (extremely nervous customers), alcohol intoxication, and cardiac arrhythmia.

Given these known causes, a practitioner should be especially alert to nervousness, hot days, recent exertion and careful positioning of the neck in the face cradle of the massage chair.

Screening and monitoring

While the actual incidence is low, the single greatest determining factor for syncope is whether you screen before and monitor your customers during a massage. Thorough screening and monitoring can eliminate 100% of the episodes of customers passing out. With proper management, the occasional customer who does feel symptoms of fainting will not lose consciousness.

Before you seat customers in your massage chair, they should be screened just as you would for your table massage, preferably with a written card to save time. If the customer has any current or chronic medical conditions or is taking medications, pay particular attention to the ones discussed above in Etiology.

In addition, we recommend screening for the following:

Consumption of food or liquids (other than water) within the past five hours. Not having eaten may signal a hypoglycemic state. If convenient, suggest the customer get a glass of juice or a muffin before the massage.

A history of fainting. Carefully question a customer to determine if the recurrent syncope is related to a low blood pressure or other medical condition. What does their primary health care professional attribute these episodes to?

Just having an empty stomach, a history of fainting or a medical condition does not mean that a customer can’t receive the seated massage. But it does mean that, if you decide to give the massage, you will need to be extra alert.

If there are any yellow flags raised during screening, then it is a good idea to ask the customer to report any dizziness or queasiness during the massage.

Finally, as with all screening protocols, the ultimate rule is “when in doubt, don’t.” If you have any question in your mind about whether to work on a particular customer, then you should not proceed. Tell the customer that you are not certain whether the massage is appropriate for their condition and that they, or you, should check with their primary care provider. Never practice beyond the level of your training and experience.

During the massage

Since syncope can occur for so many reasons, during the massage you will also pay particular attention to syncope precursors in the customer’s body. The most common sign is a customer fidgeting in the chair or lifting the head slightly out of the face cradle as though to yawn or take a breath. These are involuntary reactions to not enough oxygen getting to the brain.

Less frequently you might feel the customer’s skin become hot and sweaty or cold and clammy. If you become aware of any of these symptoms, immediately stop the massage and ask the customer if he or she is feeling okay. If not, then you need to quickly either get him or her turned around in the massage chair or into another chair with the head dropped between the knees, or lying on the floor with the knees pulled up.

After an episode has occurred

Customers who have near syncope experiences will recover within a few minutes. Explain that they have had a temporary drop in blood pressure and reassure them that they will be fine as soon as normal circulation resumes. After the episode has subsided, you might spend a few minutes exploring the causes of the episode. If there were red flags raised during the screening, you probably already know the reason associated with the episode. If the initial screening brought nothing obvious to the surface, ask the customer if this has ever happened to them before and then go over the screening questions again. Perhaps you will discover they are diabetic or have low blood pressure and it didn’t come out in the initial screening.

In any case, let them know that most fainting spells are benign, but they should mention it to their primary care provider at the earliest opportunity. There are, in fact, some serious cardiac and neurological conditions that might underlie syncope and pre-syncope and this episode should become part of the customer’s medical history.

Summary

While the incidence of syncope or pre-syncope in a customer receiving a chair massage is slight, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Proper screening and awareness of symptoms during a massage will prevent virtually all syncope episodes. Knowledgeable management of syncope and near-syncope occurrences will prevent undue distress on the part of the customer and the practitioner. Being competent and knowing your limits will buy you the cheapest and most effective liability policy you can own.

If you have your own fainting experience, I would love to hear your stories.

An Outsider Analyzes Massage

by | Feb 27, 2012 | Bodywork, Business

David Palmer

The shy David Palmer

I was a mama’s boy. The youngest of four males born to my parents within five years, I was the baby of the family and spoiled rotten. There are a number of family stories dramatizing that fact, my favorite of which is how I bravely got on the school bus for my first day in kindergarten only to run screaming down the aisle for my mother the moment the doors closed. I did get chauffeured to school that day but still the teacher had to peel me off my mother’s leg while firmly assuring Mom that I would be all right.

And, eventually, I was. The next day, and every subsequent day, I couldn’t wait to get on the bus. However, I remained a sometimes painfully shy kid until I graduated from high school and was living on my own making my own way in the world. I managed my shy nature with loving support and (mostly) outgrew it with self-sufficiency and self-awareness.

Today shy kids are diagnosed with “social anxiety disorder” and given Paxil or other medication. Our contemporary culture has a well-documented tendency to turn every cursory personal quirk into a disease that needs treatment. While I am certain that there are a few shy folk, overweight people, fidgety kids and existentially troubled adults who could benefit from a prescription, I harbor the sneaking suspicion that: a) these are symptoms of a cultural disorder, not a personal one, and b) that it only benefits the pharmaceutical companies to encourage us to believe that the reverse is true.

Virginia PostrelI was thinking of this tendency to pathologize life as I was re-reading an article by Virginia Postrel analyzing the massage industry. Ms. Postrel is a journalist who focuses on the intersection of culture and commerce. She has been a reporter for Inc. and The Wall Street Journal as well as a columnist for The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly. She has also authored two books, The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style about how cultural trends become commercial enterprises.

One of her columns from The Atlantic Monthly contained an insightful outsider’s critique of the massage industry tracing its history from the strip club to the strip mall. Below is a lengthy excerpt from the original piece published in The Atlantic.

As a business, massage has two basic problems. The first is that prostitution is generally illegal. A brothel can’t openly advertise its services: no “Madame Julia’s House of Great Sex.” Instead, Madame Julia pretends she runs a “massage parlor,” which creates confusion, and sometimes legal obstacles, for people who want to buy and sell back rubs.

The second problem is that most potential customers consider massage a luxury—an optional indulgence, if not a slightly shameful extravagance. So they’re acutely sensitive to price. A massage business can’t pass high labor costs along to consumers without suffering a rapid drop in sales.

One way to attack these problems is to declare massage a medical service. Hence in 1983 the American Massage & Therapy Association dropped its ampersand to create a new profession: “massage therapy.” Customers and legal authorities can be pretty sure—though not 100 percent certain—that a massage therapist isn’t selling sex. A therapist not only will keep the client discreetly draped with a sheet but also will take a reassuringly clinical approach to kneading naked flesh. A masseuse, on the other hand, may well be a hooker in a skimpy disguise.

Calling massage a “therapy” also suggests that it’s good for you, which means you don’t have to feel guilty about spending money on it. You might even be able to pass the bill on to your insurance company (only rarely, so far). Massage therapists understandably want their clients to think of massage as a necessity. “At one point in my career I had to defend massage against the ‘prostitution attitude,’” says Brenda L. Griffith, a massage therapist in Richmond, Virginia, who has been practicing since 1988. “Now I have to defend massage against the ‘pampering attitude.’” Many of her clients do, in fact, have chronic ailments for which massage offers some relief.

But relentlessly touting the healing power of touch makes too many massage therapists sound like quacks. The medical strategy also treats clients as patients, eliminating potential customers who feel healthy. It attracts clients by turning everyday life into a disease. Who, after all, doesn’t suffer from stress? Like graphic and industrial designers who refuse to talk about aesthetics, massage therapists seem embarrassed to say they make people feel good.

As something of a massage addict, I don’t buy the medical line, and I don’t think it’s necessary. Assuming it’s not too vigorous, a massage not only feels good but also helps me think. It’s relaxing, but not so relaxing that I fall asleep. Like a nice glass of wine with dinner or an all-white Heavenly Bed in a hotel room, a massage break adds a little pleasure to everyday life. Even if the massage does nothing for my health, I consider the money well spent.

Humans are sensory beings. Massage doesn’t need to justify pleasing our muscles and skin any more than music has to justify pleasing our ears. Chefs don’t have to call themselves “nutritional therapists.” Hairstylists don’t have to pretend that gray hair is a disease. Enjoyment is a perfectly fine reason to get a massage.

I love that last line. Why is it that people feel they are not allowed to get a massage unless something is wrong? In our quest to distance ourselves from a shady past have we turned massage into purely a medical treatment? Have we trained the public to see massage as being required only when we have something amiss in our soul, psyche or somatic self?

When I ran a retail chair massage studio, I noticed that virtually all new customers felt obligated to justify their visit with a medical complaint such as a crick in their neck, a headache or a sore back or shoulders. At the end of their visit, either their problem is resolved, or not, so regardless of the outcome, there is little motivation for them to return unless we take the time to reeducate them away from the point of view that there has to be something wrong before they can get a massage.

Interestingly, at the time the article was published in 2006 it provoked a harsh reaction from the American Massage Therapy Association.  The president at the time, Mary Beth Braun, wrote a letter of complaint to the magazine accusing Postrel both of connecting massage to prostitution and implying that massage is only to make people feel good.

Setting aside the fact that both charges are a gross misreading of the article, what exactly is the problem with “feeling good” being the foundation of massage? Wouldn’t it be a major contribution to society if the primary focus of massage was to make people feel good? It just might even be a non-pharmaceutical solution to “social anxiety disorder.” [And, for more on why a strong mother-son bond is crucial, check out this great article.]

Do you think “feeling good” is a legitimate goal for massage? Have we overemphasized the need to define massage as “therapy?” Your comments below are welcome.

 

The Realms of Massage

by | Feb 27, 2012 | Business

The first professional massage I ever received was around 1970 in an old Russian Banya on the near-North Side of Chicago called the Luxor Baths. The clientele was a mix of the old Jewish expats who had moved to the suburbs (Nelson Algren used to hang out here) and the new Hispanic locals. Luxor was an artifact from an earlier time complete with swimming pool, wet and dry saunas, a steam room and metal tables where friends would beat and brush each other with soapy oak leaf brooms.

Luxor also had a massage room and, with some encouragement from my friends, I finally gave massage a try. It was a memorable experience and I have been hooked ever since.

Notably, I didn’t get my first massage because something was wrong with me. I got a massage because it made me feel great and that is the experience I have been seeking to share with the world ever since.

Traditionally, within most cultures, professional massage has operated in two very discreet economic realms: the personal care services industry and the health care industry.

  • As a personal care service, massage is found in saunas, spas, hair salons, in the foot massage services provided in the streets of near- and far-Eastern Asian countries as well as neighborhood bathhouses and as various forms of seated massage now throughout the world. This is the kind of massage I received at the Luxor Baths.
  • In the health care industry, massage evolved through a variety of healing modalities, such as osteopathy and chiropractic, orthopedic practice, nursing and physical therapy (called physiotherapy in many countries).

These two domains were easily distinguished from one another both by terminology (customers vs. patients) and by intention (relaxation vs. treatment) and there was generally little confusion or overlap.

That clarity started to dissolve in the 1970s as a new economic arena began to emerge. It was called “health promotion” or “wellness” and was a reaction to the dominant health care paradigm, which in fact did not focus on health care, but rather sickness care.

The counterculture that emerged from the sixties first manifested this new approach by embracing such practices as natural childbirth, organic and vegetarian diets, supplements and herbs, and varieties of personal growth dubbed the “human potential movement.” Books such as Our Bodies Ourselves began to advocate rejection of the cult of experts in favor of personal responsibility and control. The goal became prevention, not treatment, and creating a balance that integrated the mind, body and spirit into a unified whole.

Inevitably, business began to capitalize on this cultural trend and the fitness industry was born. Health clubs replaced gyms, Nike shoes replaced sneakers, wellness centers replaced spas and self-help programs replaced the confessional. Also about this time, corporate wellness programs started to get a foothold as companies began to suspect that the only way to reduce their ever-rising health care costs was by encouraging employees to maintain good health through proper exercise, diet, and emotional balance.

Massage slipped easily into this new and exciting economic domain. The Esalen Institute in California championed new approaches to massage that focused on mind/body integration as well as a new category called “bodywork” that included innovative modalities developed by Ida Rolf, Milton Trager  and Moshe Feldenkrais.

The advent of this new wellness arena, however, has muddied the once clear distinction between personal care services and health care services as both try to carve for themselves a slice of the wellness pie.

And where has that left the massage industry? Also very muddied. According to the massage schools, associations and regulators, massage is no longer a personal care service, it is a health care service. I can no longer get a massage like I did 40 years ago at the Luxor Baths. Now I have to get massage therapy. But I don’t want a health care massage. I don’t even want a wellness massage. I just want to lie down and bliss out in the hands of someone who makes me feel good. I don’t care if the practitioner has 50 or 500 hours of training. If I like the massage, I will go back. If I don’t, I won’t.

We need to bring back and validate the personal care massage realm. That is where the most growth is happening (chair massage and franchise table massage), that is where the jobs are, and that is where I want to get my massage.

Do you believe massage should reclaim its identity as a personal care service? Does defining massage exclusively as “therapy” confuse the public and needlessly restrict our growth?

Chair Massage: A foundation for fitness

by | Feb 5, 2012 | Chair Massage, Fitness

While I am a big believer in making every moment a fitness moment (see Creating a Fitness Lifestyle), the reality is many people don’t have even the most basic motivation to move to a healthier lifestyle. That’s where chair massage fits in because it not only requires minimal motivation, it actually provides motivation and support for getting off and staying off of the couch.

The reason why I consider chair massage foundational fitness is because, of all the activities that fall into the fitness/wellness category, chair massage is the one that requires the least time and effort, while offering the greatest value. The only motivation required for chair massage is to sit down and do nothing. The chair massage specialist does the rest.

This is one of the most unique and important features of chair massage. All other wellness modalities require high degrees of motivation, practice, support or cost, for example, dieting, exercise, smoking cessation, Yoga, meditation, table massage and Tai Chi.

The foundation of fitness is movement. It is movement that creates circulation in the body/mind and, as I am fond of saying, circulation is not optional. Without good circulation your body and your mind literally wither away and eventually die. Much of what we define as the “aging process” is simply a result of inhibited circulation/movement.

Exercise, which requires a high degree of motivation, is active movement, where you move yourself. Massage is passive movement, where someone else creates the movement/circulation within you and requires minimal motivation.

In addition, over time, as people experience regular massage, they reopen the communication links between their brains and their bodies. That is to say, massage heightens awareness of our internal sensations about what makes us feel good. As a result, recipients tend to become more motivated to lose weight, stop smoking, eat better and even develop a regular exercise program.

As lifestyle changes go, regular chair massage is a great place to start. It triggers the pleasure centers while enhancing circulation. On an ongoing basis it supports all other fitness/wellness activities and lifestyle changes. Each massage rebalances the body/mind by smoothing out the rough edges created by exercise, dieting or withdrawal from smoking and other addictive substances.

Best of all, you don’t have to be overweight or a smoker or in shape or out of shape to benefit from a chair massage. It is the most egalitarian of all wellness modalities and provides a solid foundation for fitness. Given its low cost, chair massage clearly provides the greatest value.