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Creating Safeguards for Modesty

Ben Benjamin, PhD, co-author of The Ethics of Touch, believes that communication is key to safeguarding modesty. He points to research saying that every third woman and every fifth man has had a sexually abusive experience.

Benjamin says, “This fact alone gives the therapist reason to pause.”

Part of establishing professional communication is setting good boundaries in the client-therapist relationship. For instance, if a client asks him out for coffee, Benjamin will reply, “I like to keep my personal life and my professional life separate. That’s a firm boundary in my practice.” If a client asks to be uncovered, he might say, “That’s not the way we work in our profession. Have you had experiences where that is different?”

Benjamin stresses that there is much to learn about setting proper boundaries in the client/therapist relationship. (See chart “Understanding Boundary Infringements,” page 49). He suggests a couple of starting guidelines that can make a big difference when it comes to modesty:

  • Ask clients to show you on a chart where they do or don’t want to be touched. Make sure you have a clear understanding before the massage.
  • Cover whatever part of the body you’re not working on and never reach beneath the sheet.
  • Don’t talk to your clients about personal matters or have a relationship outside of the professional one.
  • When you want to work on a sensitive area, raise the possibility for the next session, e.g., “If you’d like, next time we could consider working on this area. Please think about it, and let me know at the beginning of the next session.”

Then only pursue doing the work if the client brings it up again. In fact, Benjamin says that the amount of sexual impropriety in massage is incredibly lower than in the medical profession: “We have to deal with it, clearly since we touch people’s bodies in a private setting.” Benjamin says it’s important for all therapists to do some self-reflection. Some questions therapists to ask yourself may include:

  • Do I like to look at bodies and touch them?
  • Do I want to practice massage because I don't have intimacy in my own life?

"If you don’t have a healthy attitude toward sex and intimacy, it will come out,” Benjamin says. “Clients will sense it, and they won’t come back."

Modesty and Emotional Boundaries

Cherie Sohnen-Moe, co-author with Benjamin of The Ethics of Touch, believes that honoring a client’s modesty starts with understanding the inherent nature of massage. “When you are touching a body, whether for relaxation, rehabilitation work, sports massage, or whatever, you are touching them on a psychoemotional level,” she says. “You can’t touch someone and not know that there is an emotional response.” But she says that some therapists are too quick to assume that they understand that response, or even that they can read the client’s body language. And she says that often these assumptions are “incredibly inaccurate,” leading to inadequate communication that can violate clients emotionally. Being “an ambassador for massage,” Sohnen-Moe recommended massage therapy for a friend who was rather modest. When her friend went, the therapist (who Sohnen-Moe says is a great therapist) asked, “Have you always been this overweight?” What the therapist didn’t know is that this woman had just lost 100 pounds. The client barely made it through the massage, fighting back tears. If it weren’t for Sohnen-Moe’s intervention, she might have never had a massage again. “People have injuries, scars, weird body parts. We need to develop a reverence for the magnificence of the human form,” says Sohnen-Moe. She says she is appalled when she hears therapists talk disrespectfully about people’s bodies outside of the therapy room.

One of the most rewarding experiences of her career was working with an elderly client who had a double, radical mastectomy. The client was very uncomfortable with how she looked and was reluctant to get massage. Because the client knew Sohnen-Moe from a social setting, she was comfortable with her. As Sohnen-Moe worked on her, she explained what she was doing and why, saying, “OK, now we’re going to get a little more sensation in here.” She also acknowledged the emotional connection, giving voice to the client’s experience by saying things like, “It’s really a shame that they had to do that to your body.” The massage ended up being a deeply moving experience for both of them. During the last few years of her life, the client benefited greatly from massage therapy. Sound can also be a part of emotional healing. Sohnen-Moe says it’s important to let the client know that this is normal and important. “Whether they moan, laugh, sigh or even pass gas, I want them to know that the different sounds they make are fine.”

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