Mythbusting, Clinic Ownership and Teaching Continuing Education with Jessica Villeneuve

Jessica Villeneuve is an RMT in Calgary Alberta. She is the owner of Samestarswellness and also teaches continuing education courses on migraines.  In this episode we discuss the challenges of owning a clinic and marketing it to the public in Alberta.  Reframing the clinical interview into an exploratory conversation with clients. The negative impacts and risk of harm with misinformation that is perpetuated by RMTs and the stakeholders.

We also had a great conversation about the pros and cons of being a CE instructor. 

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Transcript

0:06

All right everybody. Thank you for being here today. I'm excited to wonder, uh, welcome the wonderful Jessica Villa. I hope I said your last name correctly. Uh, she's an r m t, an educator and the owner of Same Star Wellness in Calgary, Alberta. And, uh, Jessica is, was educated in BC and Ontario. And like me, she is an advocate for more science-based education and she would love to see our profession evolve and adapt to realize how amazing we could be. So thank you Jessica, for being here. Welcome. And just tell everybody a little bit about you. Hey, thanks Eric. Um, so yeah, as you mentioned, I started my education in BC and actually transferred to Ontario when they lowered down from the 3000 hours and came right back out to Alberta. Pretty much the day after I wrote my boards. It was always a plan to come back out to Alberta, but it was quite a shocker because I didn't really know much about massage therapy in Alberta versus a regulated province. So I bumped around from some spas out in Banff and then realized quickly that that's not what I was trained for, and I was really hoping to help people. So I relocated to Calgary a couple years later and then opened my own practice because yeah, even the clinics out here, there wasn't a place for people with disabilities or with. Complex conditions or pediatrics to access care. And to me that was pretty mind blowing because I had it ingrained in me. In school, we provide care to everyone, so when there wasn't a place for me to work out of, I decided to create my own. That's, I think, a thing that a lot of us often do. Hey, we, we have a, this mindset of what we wanna do, and then we go and we can't find it. So we just created ourselves. So, good for you. Yeah. I guess one of the questions I, I have for you is why Alberta, not nothing against Alberta, but why were you like, I'm gonna get educated in BC then Ontario, and then I'm gonna plant my roots? Ona, what, what, what brought you there? So I was in Alberta when I, so when I did my undergrad at Western and then I came out and I was like, oh, I'm gonna go snowboarding for a season and a season. Quickly turned into a couple seasons and then I realized, no, I needed to have an actual profession. So I chose massage therapy because I was a sick kid and then a child athlete who ended up fracturing quite a few vertebrae in her lumbar spine. So I had access to paramedical care as a kid and I knew when I was thinking going back to school, okay, that's it. Like I'll do massage therapy. But I researched about massage therapy in Canada before I chose a school, and I became aware that Alberta wasn't regulated. And I'm also a stickler for always wanting to, like if I'm gonna go back to school for something, or I'm gonna take a course for something, I want to take the best available education. So that's how I ended up in BC and then Ontario because. It gave me the freedom too of like, of course I want to go challenge a certification board exam. Why wouldn't I? So off I went. But then back to Alberta because of the mountains. Perfect. You ski. Believe me. There's a lot of days I'm like, man, it would've been easier if I just stayed in Ontario or bc. Do you ski or snowboard or is that snowboard? Snowboard, yeah. Okay. Nice. Totally. That's something I didn't know. Um, you, you said you fractured some vertebra. What sport, what, what were you, what were you competitive in as a youth athlete? Gymnastics? Oh, I wouldn't guess. Four hours a day. Um, yeah, so it was a, it was about when I turned 14, I was having, you have chronic pain as a gymnast no matter what. Like you're putting so much stress on the joints and then also contorting yourself into such odd positions like the extreme flexion, the extreme extensions. So your vertebrae just don't take it very well. And yeah, it was actually my chiropractor at the time. After a few months, I kept saying like, my back hurt, my back hurt. And finally back then they sent me for a CT scan and they were like, uh, yeah, no, you've got some major issues going on. So I was given the choice for surgery, but back then it would've been placing rods in complete fusion. So I politely declined that. But where they are, they said they probably won't heal. So I just live with it. But it makes me a better advocate for teaching children to talk about their pain in clinic. So when they come and see us, I'm a. Big advocate for them actually discussing where their pain levels are at. That's such a wonderful thing too, because you don't hear that too often about childhood, uh, pain and or pediatric, you know, chronic, uh, pain at all. So that's great that you have that environment. Well, plus you're in Calgary, uh, Dr. Dr. Melanie Noel is there. So you already have somebody who's doing some world leading research on pediatric pain. So, and it, it needs to be talked about more. And I think it's, it's especially, it's especially important because our job as healthcare providers, if we are gonna teach or treat pediatrics, we have to have a handle on how to talk to the kids and how to be advocates for them. Because a lot of times what I've noticed is if there's a parent that does, has not experienced pain, but their child has a condition or an injury that is causing them pain, it's really hard for that parent to relate. And it's not their fault. But as somebody with lived experience in it, it's really easy for me to help advocate for them. So, I love what I do. Yeah, it sounds like it. No, it sounds, it sounds, that sounds really like, uh, it's really exciting and you know, the fact that you've created an environment for the populations that you wanna, you wanna serve, which is pretty much everybody, right? I think so many, so many of us in our, our profession, we, you know, we, we go to school like we're, maybe we're involved in athletics and we wanna treat athletes and we wanna get involved in these, like, active populations. But then you realize, at least for a lot of us, I know, have myself included, you realize that, that, that that's the population that actually probably doesn't need your services or your expertise as much as some of these, these populations that are really, really suffering. Now, obviously athletes can suffer too, but, you know, usually the athletes are, are active. They're, they're, they're okay. They, they get injured, they're gonna recover, and it's, and, and you're there to kind of facilitate their, their training and their recovery, uh, or help them rehab. But yeah, the, those other populations, uh, are the ones that probably need what we do more. They don't, they're not heard as much. So when we're treating chronic pain, like. With the migraine disease population or with MS. Or, um, we have a lot of fibro patients as well. Um, with those more invisible diseases, they're completely kind of ignored by a lot of healthcare practitioners and by friends and families and their communities. So that's something that we really focus on as well. But yeah, no, I worked with the Nurse Sports Canada when I came out to Calgary at the beginning and worked with the bobsled and skeleton and worked with some of the flames, and I was like, man, I'll treat you. You feel better. And then you go and do it again to yourself. Where I learned, yeah, no, my passion was less self-inflicted pain and more people that were having to deal with conditions and they just didn't have access to care, so. Well, that's good. That's exciting. That's exciting for you. One thing I, I wanted to ask you too, about your clinic is because you are in Alberta and things are. Different there. I mean, I dunno if, what's the right word to say? Challenging. Challenging. Maybe it's unregulated province. How do you find the, the process of finding people that kind of fit your ethos, so to speak? Do you find that a challenge staffing wise, therapist wise? Staffing-wise, therapist wise, yes. Oh, it's, it's by far, hands down the most challenging part of my job as a clinic owner. Like, hands down, because of what we do, it can be challenging to market to patients because I have to take a, it's almost like there's a three step approach to marketing in Alberta. So I have to probably first apologize if they've had a not great treatment before. Um, and then also then there's the education piece of explaining that massage therapy is a healthcare profession, and we do have the tools and knowledge to treat complex conditions or conditions in general because the, the population in Alberta, the general public isn't aware of that compared to BC or Ontario. And then we have to, you know, really focus on, okay. No, but like my therapists do have tons of advanced training because it is part of our onboarding process if they go through all the ConEd with me. So we do a pediatric portion, we do a tortola portion, we do migraine day, we do an SM a day, we do a CP day. So when, when we do bring on staff, it's a lot. But the ones that, that come to us and apply their, their head over heels, like, let's do this. But compared to, I'd say I'm like my former classmates in a regulated province. The, I feel like people get into this profession more so in Alberta, and maybe it is all across Canada for, from what I've heard, the money, which is interesting to me, not first putting patient care first and then the flexibility, which is also interesting to me because those, that's not how this career was marketed to me or why I went into it. So it's hard. It is. I know there's tons of great therapists out there, and if anybody's listening, please apply. We're always hiring because we need those people that put patient care first, and that's how you set yourself up for success as a massage surface. That's how you're going to grow your patient base if you're dedicated to your patient's wellbeing and letting them feel heard. But yeah, it is, it is really hard here. It's funny that the, you see that a lot now, the, the marketing for massage therapy in terms of like going to school and it's become, I think, such a big business. Like when I went to massage school in N B C, uh, 2003 is when I started, there was, I think at that time there was three schools. There was, uh, W C C M T, which had a campus in New West wcc, MT. In Victoria, which is like a sister campus to it. Yep. Um, uh, and that's where I went. And then there was, uh, Okanagan. So there's only three schools. I think now there might be 10. And a lot of the other schools you see like ads for earn a hundred thousand dollars in your first year, like it's all about the money. Or, you know, go to school for 18 months and earn a hundred thousand dollars a year. It, it has nothing to do with, uh, why I think a lot of us originally went into it that have been in, been around for a while because, I mean, I know when I went to massage school, like, and, and massage purposes didn't make a lot of money. No, like not much at all. And if you did, you had to bust your, bust your ass because I, when I first went to massage school, or when we first started practicing, we were billing $60 an hour plus G S T. And now, I dunno, it's like Alberta, but now it's like $125 an hour. So in like 16, 17 years, the, the, the fee is doubled. And back then too, there wasn't a lot, not nearly the same amount of insurance coverage, so a lot of people were paying out of pocket. And so now with the insurance plan, a lot of our patients still pay in pocket, like our H patients and that they don't have coverage. Yeah. So it, it's a funny thing. It's a, it's a, it's a different, a different, uh, mindset. And uh, anyway, it's whatever teaches their own, I guess you can make good money in job, but it's not as flexible, I think, as people think. It's, oh God. No. That's the one thing, like when they come out, they're like, well, I'm going on this holiday, or I'm going on that holiday and I want to work only nine to four, and I'm like, I am the biggest advocate for people treating massage therapy as a healthcare, um, appointment. And yeah, if you have to take an hour off work. But the thing is like if these are chronic cases and they need to see us more than once a month, this is not like a dentist appointment or just a checkup where they're coming once, once a year. Right. Like the average patient can't take that much time off. So you do have to be a little bit flexible. It's just not our profession. It's lots and like, I don't, I don't know, the first time I took a holiday when I came outta school, like every time you take a holiday, you're, you're pretty much putting at risk. Like you might lose some of those patients because of convenience for them, or That's fine. And I, I want them to have like full access to care. But when you come outta school and they only wanna work like 15 hours a week, they wanna be fully booked on those times and don't wanna advocate for themselves and go market themselves, but wanna be contractors. It's a fun ball game. It's, it's hard. I didn't, I probably didn't take a, a vacation probably for over 10 years before I actually took like a real vacation after practice, because the same thing. Right? So you, I found that you were kind of stuck between certain hours that you wanted to work or be, be that you could work because you had to, you had people that came, wanted to come morning and people that wanted to come evening. So you had to have some flexibility in your schedule. So I would do like a morning and evening and morning and evening and kind of alternate those. Yeah. But then things too is for, for a lot of us, once you've been practice for a while, you're, you're booked pretty far in advance. Usually maybe not fully booked, but you're gonna have people booking down the road, particularly these people with, with, uh, these persistent kind of things. And you're, you become part of their management plan. And so they'll, they'll book long in advance. Well, if you were, if you didn't decide like six months to a year before when you were gonna take a vacation, you know, you'd have to be like, oh, I gotta these people and you'd have to cancel 'em. And you always felt bad. And it was, it was, it was, I dunno, it was, it was hard. It wasn't as flexible as I thought it was gonna be for sure. No, no. Like I remember sitting down two years ago with my husband, like before even January 1st, like it was the end of the year before, and I was like, Hey, where are we going this year? Like, where are we taking weekends? Like when should I block them off? And he's staring at me like, I'm crazy. And I was like, Hey, if I open up my schedule, I'm gonna be booked out like eight months in advance. And it's not like I'm a super therapist, but it was because I sat down and listened to my patients and I'm an advocate for them. So it's interesting, like if they, if, if people would come into this profession more with the mindset of I'm here to serve my community and to really help my patients and to sit down, listen to them, support them in their pain journeys or whatever they're dealing with, they will be very, very, very successful. Especially when we live in a world where healthcare is always busy. You don't get that like 45 minutes with your doctor. Sometimes other healthcare professionals may not be as like personable or like bedside manner wise. They're not going to, they might dismiss concerns. So if you sit down and you are dedicated to your patient's wellbeing and you're dedicated to listening to them, making them feel heard, yeah, you're gonna be busy, but you've gotta put that first. Not the whole, I wanna make $110 an hour and take weekends off. Well that's, I mean, that's another conversation too that, you know, uh, I dunno how much we wanna dive into it, but the really, the best way to build a market, a practice is to be a good human. Mm-hmm. Be a good person and you'll get good quality referrals. And this, this is kind of, kind of a lead into kind of some of the other discussions hopefully we can have, uh, today. Um, but the. People ask us all the time, right? And you've probably had these conversations, I've had many of these conversations over the years. What's the best way to to, to market your practice? What are the best things I need to learn? What modalities do I need to learn? And I always say, you don't need more modalities to be successful. To be a better therapist, you need to learn how to be a, a, a better person, uh, to be a, a better listener and how to support people on their journey. And you don't need all these fancy modalities to do that. If you are, you take your time to listen and you ask good questions and you validate how people feel and you make them feel heard and welcome, and you provide a treatment that meets their expectations and and their needs on that day, you will be full. Yeah. Because you are being a, a person-centered kind of therapist and you're delivering something that's really valuable to these people. So anyway, that just, I just, you know, you don't see that enough in our profession, unfortunately. And that's one thing I like to talk about a lot is that, yeah, don't worry about all the fancy stuff, all the, the bright shiny things over there. Don't look at those. Like a cop isn't going to heal somebody. But sitting down and having an exploratory conversation, like, that's what I like to use instead of the term interview even, because interview is, it's, it's kind of putting this idea out there that I am, I'm interviewing a patient and there's that power differential where it's like, well, this is just an exploratory conversation. Then they feel like they can open up to us and like, we have way more time than any other healthcare provider with our patients. It's cool. So why aren't we using it like, And you, you have to, and like as a patient myself, like I was diagnosed with migraine disease when I was five, so my mom had to advocate a lot for me, and I'm lucky she did. But that's because she was a migraine except for herself, where we see tons of kids not having, not being diagnosed because no one knows how to ask them questions or no one does. And I, I felt that, I felt that for my entire life, like not being heard, having my issues dismissed, not being sent for imaging when I asked. And then you, you feel really brushed aside. So if we could harness that as therapists and, and say like, this is a place where I want you to feel heard. Patients will be coming back frequently, but we've gotta walk in that door and gesture to that chair and say, take a seat. Let's have a chat. The amount of people that have never seen that in, I don't know if it's Alberta or if it's Canada in general, they, they walk into the treatment room and they're half undressed. And I'm like, no, no. We need to have a conversation about how you're doing. And then you instantly see them kind of like the light bulb goes off in their head like, oh my God, they're gonna listen to me. And it's like, yeah, that's my job. That's my job. It's not throwing some random modality at you and telling you it's going to heal you. It's asking you how I can support you. And I, I love that. And I love, I've never heard that bef term before. And I'm gonna, I, I will use this, but I will always give you credit if I can exploratory conversation rather than interview. I love that. That's so true. So true. I, I think that's great. So you should, you should market a course on that. Well, we do. Part of the migraine course that I teach, we. We have like five slides on it. And it's funny because even when I'm teaching and I'm, I'm promoting this, you still get the questions like, well, what about if we use Gratin on their CS spine? Or what if we use reflexology that's gonna heal 'em? And I'm half banging my head off the wall and I'm like, no, I'm here to teach you how to ask people how they're doing. And then you can tell 'em like, they wanna leave, go. Please. It's true. The, well, we'll, we'll, I, I, I, you know, when I, when I originally asked you to, to be on, on, on this, uh, this, this episode, I was thinking, oh, well we can talk about some of the myth busting and kind of skepticism stuff that you do, but also I'm also doing like a, a series on like ConEd instructors. So I think we're gonna kind of blend both of, both of these in into there. So, uh, I think it's this kind of, kind of, Segues nicely into, into why therapists are asking those kind of questions. But what about Grafton on here? What about this technique there? Um, and I just wanted to kind of just kind of you to reflect back onto your time as a massage student. What was your experience like in R M T education in BC and Ontario regarding things like evidence-based practice? So, as a therapist here and as, um, I'm fairly well versed on the education aspect of Alberta, especially with hiring therapists, just seeing where their baseline education's at because of what we, what we treat in my practice. Um, and I almost, I'll, I'll take the stance of like, I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so lucky for at least what I had. And I know that we're still fighting for better standards in PC c, sorry, PC in Ontario. But to compare that what I had at W C C M H versus some of the private, or yeah, I guess private. The thousands of different education aspects you can have in Alberta. It's, I was lucky. Um, but I was lucky in the fact that I had instructors that had top-notch education as it was like, as a, when we were chatting before, like my pathology instructor was a pathologist. My neurology instructor was an md, um, one of my manual skills instructors, systemic treatments especially. He was very, very involved in the disability community. So I was really lucky that way were, I had passionate instructors and also like a decent curriculum to follow for back then versus schools that aren't offering those special pops, the education on it, the proper education on it, versus even hands on and meeting patients with different conditions. So, I'm lucky for what I received and we didn't touch on those modalities. Like back then cupping wasn't really a thing. Um, or if it was, I wasn't aware of it and neither was grass in. Like I remember we had a couple friends go do hot stone courses after, but that wasn't up my alley. So we, it wasn't a thing when we went to school, like it was like, you learn what you learn, you learn how to treat these conditions, which was amazing. And then you go and you write your board exams. But now it's like when I get resumes sometimes where we go to hiring fairs, it's like, oh, well I already have my copying and I already do grass, and I had a neural fascial reset. And I'm like, you don't know how to talk to a patient. I don't care that you throw these things on people. And, and that's such a, that's really encouraging. And I've talked to a few other people too about their R M T experience in school and, and for most often, you know, people depends on where they went to school. They, they have pretty good things to say, but there is some people I've talked to that were, it, it, the, the general focus is on this kind of like structural path, anatomical modality focus rather than these population focused. And so, sounds like you actually, your education seems to sound pretty good. You learned about populations, how to treat people, whereas Yes, you're finding when you're trying to hire people for your clinic in Alberta is that you're finding people are, they're more focused on all the things they can do to somebody. Yeah, like, it's like they, um, a lot of therapists take like a cookie cutter approach. It's like, okay, well you have this, so I'm gonna treat you this way. And I'm like, whoa, no. Like, let's just chat with the person, see how we can accommodate them. And yeah, I don't, it's, it's just very different to me. Like I, I was lucky. I'm sure there, there is, there was lots that we didn't have in terms of education on chronic pain, in terms of pain in general. But we were always taught to a, like to talk to our patients, which was so beneficial. And I might have had a bit more experience and the personal approach of having lived with chronic conditions. But like, I got to do my last two semesters for outreach in hospice. Meanwhile, they won't even let me in here to hospice to volunteer because we're not a regulated profession in Alberta. And do you feel that the, that the lack of regulation in Alberta is a problem? Uh, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. Um, I've fought for it since I, since the day I came out here, and I've sat on multiple of the committees and boards and that for it. Um, but I, I also don't think it's a magical solution. I think there's this idea that yeah, all of a sudden they'll say, we're regulated and then everyone's gonna respect our profession. But unfortunately, that's not how it works. It is, we need to be respectful healthcare providers first and gain that respect. And it would be interesting to see how it plays out here, because there's rules, right? And I was trained that way, and that's very much how my brain works. The little boxes of stay within your box, stay within your scope. And it would be interesting to see how that worked out here. So we'll see. But yeah, respect, respect wise, referral wise. Um, Yes, it would be easier for me personally than to market my company, market. My therapists, um, have access to say hospices or working with callo, like the backend student app. But in, in the end, it needs to be a full fledged effort by all the therapists to really pick up the game and act like healthcare professionals. And that's a, that's a really good point too, because a few Great, a few great points. There is, one is I feel that from the, the, the communications I have, the advocacy works, I, I do. And, and the, the groups that I've, uh, associate with across Canada, and I spend a lot of time, particularly in the last year, um, getting to know associations and schools and people and, and non ro and unregulated provinces. So Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba particular. And they, I, the feeling I get is that they feel that once we're regulated, things are gonna be different. And I would say that it's actually being in BC and only having worked in BC here, it's actually not that different. And in a lot of ways, and I'm not gonna say this is a negative or a positive in a lot of ways it's restrictive. Yeah. Yeah. Cause when you're regulated, there's a lot of stuff you cannot do. Like we, in BC we can't do cupping. You can't do needling. You, um, even we, you, there's no, I shouldn't say no because there's probably a couple, but I can't think of, or I don't know of any RMTs that work in any publicly funded, uh, healthcare positions. So there's no hospital jobs, there's no hospice jobs, there's no, uh, long-term care jobs for RMTs. So it, it's, it's kind if you, if people are expecting that, all of a sudden they're gonna be accepted into this public healthcare, envi healthcare environment. That's not the case in in, in bc maybe in Ontario. I've heard some, there's a bit more there, but I would say if you're, if you're in an Unregulate province and you think that being regulated is gonna change things dramatically, I would say probably not. Now, it doesn't mean regulated. It just meet cuz it's good cuz that way there's, there's recourse and there's uh, it's probably in the public's best interest to have some over public oversight over what we say and do. And, um, but it's, it's not the be all, end all magic solution to a profession. It's not holding us back as much I think as some people think it is. I think that's like, that's what I've learned over the years is they think all of a sudden it's gonna flip a switch and they're gonna get a gold star saying, you're regulated, you're gonna make more money or something, or you're gonna be respected. And it's like, well, no respect is earned. And you can be not respected in a regulated province depending on what you're touting. Like n no MD's going to refer to you if you're sitting there telling them, throwing crystals at them, and essential oils gonna heal the person. It's what your beliefs are. It's what you are telling your patients, and it's the quality of care you're providing that earns you respect. Granted, it takes a little bit longer, so it's a little bit more of a public education aspect that I have to throw into our marketing. But at the same time, it's like we, I, I do know from conversations with therapists over the years, especially with teaching con ed, um, there is almost this very skewed idea that regulation is for the therapists. And it's like, uh, no regulations for the public, number one, first and foremost. And it may one day down the road benefit the therapist, but it is not for the therapist. It's to protect the public. And yeah, you, you guys, especially in BC, have your hands tied quite a bit. Where in Ontario, I used to be able to needle. So that was a nice treat with a lot of our chronic pain patients. But what I think would be the most beneficial that I think this is in every province is if there was more oversight on the myths, on the misinformation, on the false promises. Care providers are giving the public in general, not just massage therapists, but chiropractors, some physios like, don't tell me five appointments are gonna cure my migraine disease. And I think that is so incredibly harmful, but we can change that as a profession without being regulated. It just takes people putting their ego aside, being open to actually looking at evidence-based care. And, uh, yeah, calming down on the whole, we're, we're gonna heal people. Those public myths. I'm so glad you brought that up because the, I can speak for bc um, and, and I'm sure it's probably the same in all the regulated provinces, is they're there to protect the public, right? So, and they're, they're kind of motto is safe, effective, and ethical care, and the fact that there are so many of these public myths that, and this, this BS that people put out there, right? They make these promises or they say, you know, you put it on your website. This is, I do this technique and this is how it works. I'm like, that's not true and not true at all. There's so much unru truths out there, but we're, as you're saying, off air, if you keep, if people keep saying the same thing again and again and again, it becomes truth, belief. To the therapist at least, right? And I'm like, put yourself in the patient's shoes. Like, and I, I can speak to this as the patient of how many times do you think people have approached me? Like, have you tried this? It's gonna cure your migraines. Have you tried this? It's gonna, and I get it all the time. And it, it grinds my gears so badly because there is more risk of harm with these, this misinformation than actually physically hurting somebody on the table. Because after a while, especially with chronic pain patients, they stop accessing care because they've had these false promises given to them over and over and over. So they, they lose trust in the healthcare system and we are part of that system. So the more that we tout like, oh, we're gonna cure this, it's absolutely bananas. And I think that should. Be regulated a lot more than it is. That's one thing that I ca I don't have control of here in Alberta. Like if I sent in a complaint saying somebody was claiming to cure migraine disease or reflexology, nothing, like maybe somebody would investigate it, but like there's no grounds to stand on. We, we have dual responsibility associations and at the same time it's like, well, are the people in charge of policing this? Do they believe those things? Right. Do they think that crystals and the feed are what, what are causing migraine disease? But yeah, it really, like, that kills me as a patient and, and as a provider of, of people with chronic pain as somebody who treats a lot of them when you come in and, and they're really hesitant to access care because they've been, it's straight up lying to people. It's a hundred percent it's, yeah. And I always wonder with that too, is that, you know, Is somebody actually lying or are they just, are, are so many therapists just uninformed and are just kind of saying what they believe or want to be true? Because like you said too, we need to start acting like healthcare professionals, which means, you know, if we look at all the competency documents, everything, you're supposed to follow evidence-based practice. You're supposed to be familiar with the current evidence for the populations that you're treating. And by not doing that, you're actually not following your kind of ethical guidelines. It's your responsibility. It's your responsibility as a, as a clinician to do that. Now, the problem we have too is we have schools that aren't delivering that. We have a CE industry, which is not delivering that evidence space and. It actually furthers that, that that perpetuates these, these, these myths that are, that are so problematic. And, you know, I've been doing this, I've been at this kind of myth busting stuff and, and, uh, calling shit out for years now. And, you know, it is encouraging. There's more people having these types of conversations than there was say, seven, eight years ago. And I've had a lot of people be like, oh, you know, we, we, you know, you spend so much time myth by saying, I'm like, because it still needs to happen. Yeah. I, I've been fortunate enough to teach courses all across North America and few, uh, overseas. And I often ha I, I often have the same conversations with people and it's, the majority of the conversations that we have are myths that are these, uh, myths that are perpetuated by the education, by the industry, but they're also not in a regulated province. They're also not, um, They're often not dismissed by our, the, the, the, the stakeholders, whether that's the college or the associations in Ontario, I think they're doing a really good job of, of, of doing some kind of public education as well as therapist education. Yeah. About like, oh, like this is, you know, they're trying to change the, the narrative and the ideas, but it's, it's gonna, it takes a, it's gonna take a, a collective from all of us in the, in the industry to try to bring us to that level where we can start acting like healthcare professionals. All of us. Now, some people might be listening and be like, what, Eric, you know, you're calling, you're calling out, calling people out, and I don't act that way. I'm not saying everybody does, but my experience, which I know is a dangerous word, my experience being an educator, having the conversations I have, the stuff that we are talking about is, is, is not known by most people. That's, I think, the hard thing. Like you, you say, I feel like the people that will be listening to this podcast do wanna know about evidence-based treatment. So they already probably are the people that aren't saying crystals and your feet are gonna heal migraine disease, as I'm literally begging my head off the wall. But yeah, like take it from us. It's not fun standing at the front of a classroom, borderline being put on like crucified for saying no, like that's not correct or that's not evidence-based. And I think a lot of it comes from lack of access to proper education in terms of CCEs, um, CCEs being approved that shouldn't be approved, that are perpetuating those myths. That's kind of crazy. But then also it's ego, right? Like you have therapists that have been practicing for 12 or 15 years and that's what I hear the most too, is like, well I've been doing this for 15 years, you can't tell me the X, Y, Z doesn't work. And I'm like, Yeah, no, I can, sorry. And yeah, we end up standing there almost sometimes flabbergasted because you're being attacked for, for trying to promote more ethical care by just saying like, okay, why don't we all step, take a step back, reflect on what we're telling our patients, or reflect on how we're approaching cases. And it's, it's instead of like, yeah, let's like do some, you know, communication and let's have a really nice discussion about this. It's, how dare you tell me I'm not doing it right. I'm like, that is an interesting way to take that. A lot of it I assume comes from people's identities. They identify by how they treat or they identify by their modality or they identify by, um, how, how they think or, or how they view the human in front of them, or how they view the human body. And that is, that is a problem because. It's, it's not a personal attack, but people often will feel, oh, it's a personal attack. And, and the thing is, is is when I first started, and maybe it's cause I've softened my message a little bit, uh, in how I communicate is, is when you were advocating for science and say, and basically calling out stuff and say this, you know, we, this is what people might do, and you might get outcomes from that, that are favorable, but they're can, I can guarantee you they're not for the reasons you think they are. This is what the science is suggesting. People will often hear not what you just said, which is, I'm validating that you're doing something that's working, but this is the problem with that way of thinking, and this is a better explanation for it. People often hear, well, you're telling me I'm wrong. Yes. Yes, and I, I tr I have, I wouldn't say I've softened my message over time, but I've tried to use, not a lighter approach, but kind of the same approach of like, well, yes, your patient may be feeling better, but why? It could be because of X, Y, Z, and, and I'm all four. Even if it is placebo. Placebo is valid. If your patient feels better. Okay. Right? Like at least there is there. It is encouraging for the patient, but. It isn't because again, like it's the flipping crystals in the feet for me. Like I'm sorry, but to tell me that there's some crystals in my feet that are gonna, that are causing my migraine attacks. It just blows my mind. But that's the thing. Like I was literally saying to two of my new staff members yesterday, we were doing a tour to call US training, and we got off. We always get off topic because I'm happy to talk about education and I'm happy to talk about evidence-based Care one, especially when I'm onboarding new therapists. And I said, I was like, honestly, I think part of the problem in our profession is that we have so many different identities, like therapists identifies, you said with specific types of massage therapy. We have the. I don't even know if holistic is the proper term to use it, but the therapists who incorporate energy work, then we have the therapists who incorporate a spa approach and then we have like the sports therapists and they've all given themselves these very specific identities. And that to me is bizarre. Like shouldn't the identity first be treating the entire population in an ethical practice and being competent in treating different conditions instead of, I treat everyone with Ray here, I treat everyone with a r t and I only do grasped in like the amount of times I hear that I'm like, our profession is very confused as to what its identity is. And it would be great to kind of bring that all back to we are healthcare providers and then maybe you can have a little spin after that, but it's. It's, it's, that's so confusing for the public. Like I wouldn't trust if I wasn't a massage therapist. Like you book in with somebody random and you might have somebody Yeah. Doing reiki on you and then the next one might be treating you more like a chiropractor. It's very bizarre. Well, the thing is, is massage therapy, it's a profession. But the name, and this is, this is the thing that I find interesting is, but the name of our profession is, is, is is a verb. It's a doing I massage. So I think it creates, no, I'm not saying that I'm not advocating we need to change our name, but I think because of the, the public probably thinks that all we do is massage because that's what we're called massage therapy. Yeah. Even though some massage servers are like, yeah, I don't really do a lot of massage. I do more maybe joint mobs and exercise and stuff. And some people might do more energy healing. Some people might just deliver a really delicious Swedish massage for an hour. There's whole, all kinds of different things that we do. But yeah, you are gonna get a, a totally different approach across the profession. And I think because, because of, um, our education, because of how we're our, our scope of practices quite varied. Um, people will often tend to, I find, jump towards something that fits their desire or their niche, rather than being like, no, I'm a healthcare professional first, and then I can apply these other types of treatments based on this person. Rather than be like, oh, no, I only do energy healing. Okay, but you're a healthcare professional, so maybe you can do that on somebody if they want it, but maybe should you just see what this person wants first and try and find a, a, a, a match in what they're looking for versus what you wanna offer, rather than just like, I shouldn't say subjecting them to, but I can use that word, subject them to what you want to do to them. And that's totally not what, what you learn in, well, I don't know. What I learned in school was like, okay, we, we chat with our patient, we figure out what's going on, and then we make a treatment plan that suits them instead of suits us. Mm-hmm. And it is very odd. Like I, I know like, obviously like with physios and that, we do have more sports-based physios. You do have ones that focus on chronic pain. You do have say, pelvic floor physios, but at the end of the day, they're all healthcare providers that are providing physiotherapy where we see massage therapists come outta school and it's, it's a totally different ballgame. Like some will go work in a spa where they're doing body scrubs or whatever, and then some will go work in sports clinics. And it's, it's just, it's very varied with our profession. And I feel like our profession has, has been bent to bend into a lot of other places, unfortunately. And we see that a lot with. I don't know if it's the same in bc, but you see that a lot in Alberta. Like you have therapists working out of a hair salon because we're this cute addition and this cute money maker to all these different kind of companies. And it's like you lose that identity of like, we are a healthcare provider. We can actually assess and figure out what's going on with the patient instead of just being squished into other jobs. It's weird. It's very weird. It, it is a strange thing. And when I first started practicing in BC it was very unusual at that time to have a large kinda multidisciplinary clinic. Most massage service. Really? Yeah. Well this was 2006, I guess when I first started practicing. Uh, there, most of the clinics at the time were, if you're a massage therapist, you worked kind of with or underneath a Cairo or physio. And there was a couple very small massage only clinics, like a couple people would rent out a room. But what you see now, at least in, so in Victoria, anywhere where I live, almost all of the. There's a lot of big multidisciplinary clinics here now. Like a lot of them, and most of them are massage therapy dominant. I mean, massage therapy is the, the main, uh, profession that's there. And a lot of them now are owned by massage therapists and, and we have the exact opposite years ago. Yeah. Ours is the exact opposite. Like in Alberta still, it's, it's, uh, there's not very many, like I, there's a couple of us that own the clinics, and other than that, we are the, we're at the whim of the chiropractors, the physiotherapists, or even what I see a lot of, and I take, I find it's very challenging is not healthcare providers owning clinics because it's a money maker. Right? So you're seeing like big corporations buying them and. Corporations. So like, yeah, you're massage addicts or your massage envys or whatever they're called, and then like, I call them drive through massage therapy. Be like, you're just going in for your$79 treatment, you're never gonna go back. Or, and they're burning turns and like the therapists are just burning out. But no, like, like even just smaller kind of chain. They could turn into chains or even just one off clinics of people think, yeah, you know, I'm gonna open a, a massage therapy clinic because it makes money. It's very odd because then if you work there and I, I have worked at a couple of them before I went out on my own and they could care less about the standards practice, the scope of practice, the actual ethics of it. And I, I feel bad for the therapist, but at the end of the day, like when we're having conversations in ConEd, it's like, well, it's your duty as the therapist to follow your scope practice and your standards. The owner of that clinic is not being policed. You are. Yeah. But they just, it's a money maker. We're like, hopefully one day we get to where Victoria is, because that sounds glorious. Yeah, I mean, in full disclosure, I mean, I used to own a, I owned a clinic for a lot of years and I've recently sold my shares in it. And we had a big clinic and I, my business partner was a Cairo. But, uh, we were very much the same mindset. Like he was not a rachman KRA kind of guy. Like he was all about evidence-based care and, um, you know, wouldn't adjust people unless it was kind of needed or wanted. Uh, and we had a, we had a great, uh, it was a great clinic that we had built, but it was, it was hard to. Um, when you, the bigger your clinic is, the more expensive it gets and the harder it is for to money. So it's, it's hard to make a lot of money as a, as a clinic owner, despite what some people think you can, but it's, it's, it's not like a, oh, all of a sudden you just open up your doors and no, you need a lot of people, you need a lot of volume and, you know, um, requires staffing, which is expensive and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Very expensive. It's very expensive. Yeah. Which I'm sure you're aware of. So, uh, yeah, it, it's good. I think here, I mean, in, in some ways, but I think also too, what can happen is if your clinic gets too big and there's a few of these, you see, then you, you lose that sense of community when a lot of people really enjoy that sense of community in the clinic where they kind of know everybody. The reception knows who you are. So I, I, I think if I could go back and do it again, I wouldn't do much different, um, in terms of our clinic. But I, uh, I did enjoy, I enjoyed it for the most part. It was nice to build a community. I think that's it. Like people asked why, because we were predominantly mobile due to our patient base. A lot of our patients have mobility concerns or chronic chronic conditions that, um, really impacted their immune systems. But it, it's incredibly ha hard to hire for mobile. It's hard on the therapist, but that was always our goal was to create community and to have somewhere for our patients to go and feel welcome and it be accessible. But yeah, I probably yelled at for this one by somebody, but I think that's one thing therapists have no clue about and it's how much it costs to run a clinic. Like 0% clue unless they've ran a clinic, like it is flipping expensive. Like, I'm sorry, but I made way more money when it was just me practicing on my own. Right. Wow. You do, like, you do, you just rented a little room like you and you had a full patient base, like you can make some serious bank, but I. Got to the point with my migraine disease that like I couldn't treat, I, it's not, my brain's not reliable enough to treat. And also I got to the point where I had maxed out on my patient base and the whole point of my company was to, for it to be accessible to everyone. Well, it's not when you are one person, but it's so interesting. That's the other thing I hear coming outta schools. Like they're told that they should make 75% or whatnot, and I'm like, really? Wow. With no patience and no form, no extra education in any of these conditions or actual like education in any of the conditions that we're treating. And I'm like, I don't recall being told that. Yeah. When I first graduated, the common percentage was a 60 40. Yeah, with, with no cap. And then that changed. There was a cap and then it moved back, and now you get a, there's a bunch of different models you can, you can go through, but the, it's, it's, yeah. If someone, as a business owner, it is very, almost impossible for you to make, to cover your cost at 25%. Seriously. And, and my question is like, well, when were the last time these instructors that are saying this, when was the last time they owned a clinic or even knew what the rent on a space cost and then taxes and then the, the support staff and all that. I'm like, you have no clue. And like, I get it totally, like it's hard on the body. It can be really challenging, but like if I'm, if I'm the one who's responsible for growing your entire patient base and it's marketing in that like, I don't know. It is, to me it's crazy cause I, I never made that, I never asked for that. But, and physios and cairos and that. Don't ask ever, ever ask for that. So, I don't know. It's very interesting. A lot of the, yeah, a lot of the other MSK professions are 50 50 or, or are 45, 55. Know a lot of people that work on those, uh, those models. And so Yeah. It or our industry is interesting. We should actually, we should have another podcast so we could talk, we could unpack that some more about that. That was actually one I, no, they would never be, never apply then Eric. Like, still need therapist. I'm just one, one of the things, actually, one of my other, my other kind of themes I was looking at doing was I was wanting to do one on like talking to clinical owners about just their successes and struggles. So anyway, we'll plant that seed there. We don't have to talk about Right. Just an FYI to that, nobody that's like, we haven't ran a clinic before. Like, it's not cheap. It's not cheap. No, it's, it's, it's very expensive and it, you know, until you do it, you realize, oh crap, this is, this is not what I thought it was gonna be. So you can believe I love it. Like I, a lot of money. You do bleed a lot of money and like a lot of time, like even though my schedule may not be booked anymore fully with patients, like, believe me,

I'm still up at 6: 50:20

00 AM and I'm still working till 8:00 PM Is that healthy? No, no, no. I'm, no, it's not good. For your physical or mental health, what did you find the hardest? Like for, in terms of when you owned a clinic, did you ever have to do any patient reeducation in terms of myths in that when you had a patient step through your doors? All the time. All the time. Yeah. Still all the time. Now it would depend. So we were lucky that the clinic that we had was that everybody that worked in the clinic basically had to you, you had to kind of subscribe to what we were doing, right? So everybody had to be kinda evidence-based. There was no BS allowed. Uh, we didn't put any modalities or any, um, kind of technique stuff on any, any of our marketing. At all. So people and, and in our clinic there was no pictures of, of skeletons or muscles, and the clinic treatment rooms didn't have trigger point posters. It was all like, just a place. And so we wanted to remove all of that kind of traditional, what you would expect in a, in a, in an M S K treatment environment. We wanted to get rid of all that stuff. We didn't, I mean, we didn't, we, we felt that, you know what, this is a place we wanted to be comfortable. We want it to be a place where people want to go. And it's like, oh, there's nice arc on the wall and nice lighting and, you know, there's not like a, a model of a spine here with a disc pushing out of it. And there's not like a, a picture on the wall of like an arthritic knee. Emma. We had that stuff that we could bring out if it was relevant. We didn't want that to be the first, we wanted people to feel comfortable. Right. So that was just our, our, our mindset. Uh, so, but if people came in that were new to the clinic or they were referred from somewhere else, there was oftentimes a lot of kind of patient education that had to happen. Now in, in my experience, you know, when you, when you, like a lot of us, when you get into this. Uh, all this kind of evidence and pain sign stuff. You, you tend to overshare and you tend to pain splain a lot and you try to, you know, cha change people's minds. And that, I realize, I wish I could say I realized quickly, but it, it, uh, probably not as quick as I wanted to, that it took, that didn't work. Fair. Well, so, and it takes a lot of your time. You, it takes a lot of your time and a lot of times you lose people and people take the wrong messaging from it. So what I started doing in, in, in the last number of years was I was just like, what do you think about that? What's that mean to you? Do you want a different opinion? You know, and then I would never ever give them the full neuro splain thing. I would just, you know, I would ask 'em, well, what do you wanna know about that? And then we would talk about, you know, um, maybe just how like their, their system is, can become sensitized due to the, the stimuli that you're, that you're receiving or the, you know, what else is going on in your life that might be making it better or worse. And we just kinda have these conversations about it. Um, if people were like, well, my, my fascia's really, really stuck, and I would be like, can I just tell you something about that and it's not true? Usually they'd be like, sure. I'm like, I can promise you, it's not that it might feel like that, but I can promise you that it's not because there's something in there that we need to manually tear apart, but we're gonna do some things to make it feel better. And how do you feel about that? Oh, I don't care. I just wanted to feel better. That's just what my as therapist told me it was. And I found that if you listened to people, you validated their experience, and if you gave them a different story, if they wanted it, They jumped on board a hundred percent. And what was great too is over time is those people would start coming in and they would start using the language that you were using, which hopefully was less noce. Bic, yes. I think that's one of my favorite parts about treating pain like chronic pain patients, especially like my, my crew and the neurological condition people is when I can explain things to them, but it also gives 'em a sense of hope at the same time. Because a couple years ago when I finally met my current neurologist, who literally is like, uh, Top notch, best neurologist I've ever met. She listened to me and I fully balled during that appointment. And I'm so desensitized and I, I use sarcasm to deal with my pain. Like I'm 100% of that patient. But she listened to me and I was, I was crying because she listened to me. And now when I can share some of her knowledge, and, and I, I talked to her about like, I'd really like to use your approach because she said like, I'm not gonna give you any promises, but I just wanna let you know there still is hope. And I was like, oh, like I don't remember the last time somebody told me there was hope. I don't think anybody ever did tell me there was hope. My condition just got worse and worse and worse. Right. And I think that's a, you see, like I know from reading some of your stuff with like the bio psychosocial approach, like I have seen patients go down that road and it is so sad. It is so incredibly, it, it, it's very challenging to deal with as a therapist to dissociate yourself from it because you see it and you're like, and I. It just kills me though, because they're, how many practitioners are actually leading them down that road being like, oh, well no, it's because you have arthritis in your spine. Oh no, it's because you have this going on. And I'm like, you're literally giving somebody an identity to attach onto, but you're not giving them a solution that is reasonable. But what if we help them and say like, well, no, we have hope. Right? Like they're, what if we make some small adjustments in the lifestyle instead? But do you want, the funny thing is, I've had therapists tell me that I'm practicing outta my scope of practice by suggesting that that is the craziest thing too. I've heard that before and when in the courses I teach have, people often ask, well, isn't that outta scope of practice? I'm like, what? We're helping people. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, the argument I always use is, we're not counseling, we're not doing psychotherapy. But if we look at, uh, at what our, our competencies are and what our scope of practice is, is we're supposed to follow evidence. Best available, most relevant evidence to the people in front of you. So if that best evidence is suggesting that you have a discussion with 'em about lifestyle factors, or maybe you have discussion with 'em about like, oh, maybe, you know, have you considered, maybe this is, might be something that's involved, you know, you're not counseling, you're having a conversation with somebody, and in a lot of cases that can be the most powerful thing that you do, rather than whate more powerful than what you do with your hands, right? Like what's the difference When we're talking about like therapeutic exercises in home care per se, if we're saying, well, have you considered, maybe re like, sounds bad, but like rejoining society, getting out there a little bit as much as you can, maybe not on a basis where it's a scheduled thing, but more of a drop in thing in doing what you can do. We're promoting them taking control of their lifestyle versus you need to stretch your traps three times a day and drink water to flush toxins. I'm like, sorry, what you're saying. What I'm doing is out of scope, like great. Yeah, because what you've just said is completely, there's no valid, there's no validity to what, what that's what was being said. Yeah. And that, and that goes back to, you know, this, uh, like we said earlier about, uh, we start need to start acting like, like healthcare providers and making stuff up. And even things like the drinking water thing is, is crazy. There's not one shred of evidence. But for some reason that myth is perpetuated throughout our profession and through the public. And I think it, that stuff gets into the public because of the messaging that comes from, from professions like ours. We literally have an entire hour, at least an hour discussion in my course for migraine on busting the myths because unfortunately, my, my personal condition is one of the most. Riddled with myths in all of the conditions that somebody can have determining on healthcare like migraine, like it's, my course is literally called migraine more than just a headache because people, even when I am in a merge, they'll be like, how's your headache? I'm like, oh my God. It's not just a headache. Um, but we talk about how it is once my students leave that classroom, it is now their ethical responsibility to correct myths. They hear whether it's with their family and friends, whether it's with their fellow healthcare providers in the clinic, or even if it's with their own patients. And yes, we have to be gentle when it comes to the patients, but it's your duty to promote an evidence-based practice, I believe, as a massage therapist. So I set them up with the tools of how are they going to handle having these myths. Being spread throughout the clinic or when they see them on social media. Like social media is an absolute beast for myths. We know this. Oh yeah. But if we can have more people pipe up and, and yeah, like correcting it with the patients as well, because they've been told something and they might attach to that belief, and that might be what's standing in their way to having more success with their condition. I love that you do that. Sorry, Jessica, I didn't mean to interrupt. I, I just, I love that you do that, that the, that you, you kind of challenge the people after they've taken your course to, you know, go, go and, you know, talk to people about this stuff. And, and so I do the same thing in my chronic pain course that I, or actually all my courses, I, I do that. I'm like, go tell somebody. Right. Pursue your education should be pursued on, uh, expanding on the stuff that we've learned here, whether that's with me or with other people. Don't go chasing all the fancy, all the, the sexy technique stuff is the bright, shiny things. Right? So, and, and, and go and share this information with, with your colleagues. Go share it with your patients, you know, and, and I think that that's, that is the, the best way for that I see, um, is for us to change is through the CE industry. Uh, unfortunately there's a lot of stuff that's not good in there. More stuff that's not good than is good. Uh, but because changing the, the schools, changing the associations, changing the colleges, the big stakeholders is, is impossible. Almost, I should say it, it's, it, it's very difficult. But we can, if we can provide good quality education to the people that come take our courses, then hopefully we can build a ground swell of support for people like that. And um, and that's one reason why I wanted to get you on here was, cuz I know you, you teach some CE stuff, so just, I know you teach a course on, on migraines, you teach any other CE stuff. Yeah, so this one's a funny one. So back in the day when we were redoing the scope of practice for the MTA and, and reviewing scope in, in Alberta in general, like just looking at things I learned and it was, when I first came out, I was like, why are people throwing oils on people? Like, I'm so confused. Like it was normal. Like everyone had this bottle of mint oil and everybody got mint oil, their massages. I'm like, what is this stuff? And I saw that there was a huge problem with people incorporating essential oils into their practices and using them. To say they're healing things. So I actually created a course on the use of what I like to call active ingredients because even like bio, all those kind of things, like anytime they have any sort of active ingredient. But it's, it's hilarious because it's not what people think, like people think they're gonna get this course where I'm gonna show 'em how to drop oil on and we're gonna rub lavender and we're going to do it in a routine. And I get so many complaints, it's hilarious. Cause really I'm teaching them stop spreading myths. How to safely use things like peppermint oil on that because it does have an actual effect in your nervous system, but how to stay within your scope of practice and yeah, it's, I honestly, I find it very entertaining teaching the course People give you, people don't do people, you say you get a lot complaints. Is there some people that are like, so thank, thank you so much for doing this. Do you positive as well? A lot of times I get the, oh wow, I didn't know that. Because technically with most associations, even here, you're supposed to have some sort of advance like certification on how to prove you can use it safely, but nobody does. So I get like that a lot. Like, oh my God, I didn't know that when we're looking at the legalities and the scope. But no, for the most part, people are very concerned that they did not get taught a routine. Oh. I'm like, well, there should not be a routine in massage therapy. We should be providing a treatment based on what our patient presents with and discusses. So it's, it turns into almost more of that kind of a course, but yeah, like, just to clarify, because Yeah, yeah. People look it up, they will see it. It's not, I am not teaching people that they are gonna get rich by diffusing essential oils in the treatment room. Very much against that. Yeah. Um, yeah. But hopefully, like I'll be going on like a very short mat leap here and, There's always a million courses. Like I really wanna actually sit down and finish writing one on oncology because I feel like that's, um, something that is very, there's a lot of myths on in terms of massage therapy. And then we, like I teach internally for my clinical, I teach CP and SMA and all that kind of stuff. So it's always, it's always like, yeah, I'll get to that when I get to that. And yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of stuff to teach, I mean, and out there, and I'm always kind of tweaking and developing new content as well, because you, you learn something and you're like, people should know more about this. Um, but it's a lot of work too. We think they should, but we think they should. We've talked about it before, like it's not, because we're not throwing a gimmick at people, it's actually, it can be challenging to promote courses on conditions. Totally. It breaks my heart. Yeah. Yeah. Well, how about your, your, your migraine course? Like, how often do you teach that? Um, I wa I usually teach about two times, three times a year. I was planning on going to Saskatchewan and teaching it last year. We're gonna have to, we're, we'll have a hiccup in the whole like with baby coming, but I will, I get a lot of like, will you put it online? Mm. Mm-hmm. And I think that's something like I need to look into eventually is yes, hosting it online, but I'm a huge advocate for open discussions and promoting critical thinking in my courses. I don't like the whole pre-recorded. Yeah. I feel like if you are going to be educating somebody and you're gonna be quote, maybe changing their mind or opening them up to a different option, then you need to have a conversation about it. So maybe. Like recorded, but then some sort of a online zoom call just so that they still have the idea to ask questions. Right? Yeah. Because I would hate to provide Yeah. Like here's what we're learning, but then they don't get that option. Yeah. I just, from my own experience, I launched a online recorded pain management course in 2020 and, uh, it's a lot of content, but people get lifetime access to it, which is, which is nice. Um, but I, what I do is certain times of the year I will do a series of, of Zoom calls for people. I'm like, Hey, you know, if you've, this is the time, here's a Zoom link you want to jump on and have a conversation. Um, and it, you get variety of different attendance. Sometimes you get lost, sometimes you get hardly any, uh, it really depends what, where people are at because, and that's the issue with, with the self-directed stuff, the online stuff, is that people go at their own pace. So somebody might buy your course. And they may not look at it for a year. Right. I do that all the time. Like I'm always the, I'm that person that is like, oh yeah, I totally have time to do this. No, I don't. So then I'm like, oh yeah, I have, I think I have like four courses right now that I could be taking, but I'm like, I just wanna make sure that if somebody's gonna take the course and they have that they get the most out of it, that they, they can, right? Mm-hmm. Like, it's not, it's not just this whole burn and turn, let's make money type of thing. It's like, well, at the end of the day, I made, I made the course for the therapist, but I made the course with the intent of providing the public with better treatments. Yeah. And that's, that's my, yeah. And that, and that's the thing that I found too, and that was a bit of a hard, uh, thing for me to reconcile my mind about. It was, you know, when you're a course in person, you can get instant feedback or you can read the room, or you can tell whether people are. Liking it or not with the pandemic stuff and things started moving to the zoom and this re and recorded things, it opened up the door to way more opportunities like your market now became not just your region, it became the world as, which is, which is crazy. But the, the, the downside to, so plus side money exposure downside is I have no idea if people are actually engaging with this content. So I don't know if people are, are they getting this? And, and when you go through and you can, and people listening, if you're, if you're taking out my online stuff, I can tell how much work they've done. Right. You like, you can go and look and see like what they've completed, right? I mean, and, and so if I'm like, okay, well you signed up for this two years ago and you know, you've done 5%, you know, and it's like, okay, well if you hate, like, that would be me. I'd be like, they hate it. They hate it. I, that's it. Well, that's the thing that's hard sometimes you're like, oh my God. Like is it terrible? Like you watch the intro in the first video and then, oh my god, that's it. I think it's just, it's life. And I, and I know myself, like I've purchased online stuff before and I'm kind of probably the same way. Like I will go through it and then I'll leave it, and then I'll go through it again and I'll leave it and I'll go through it and I'll leave it just the way, the way it is when it's always available, it's, it's almost too easy. It's, that's the thing, right? And I don't want people like, it's, it's a half and half. Like, I wanna make sure people get everything out of it that they can, because they're going to then tell this patient base that they took this extra training on a condition. So like, please get the most out of it that you can. But at the same time, I know I have to like, go of control eventually and be like, Hey, I have no Jess. Like, that's not your duty anymore. Like, you put it out there. But I, I love having critical thinking conversations with students and with like, my own therapist and that, like, I find that so interesting. So yeah, like, I'll, I'll, I'll. Maybe we'll do that. We'll do like a Zoom call, but at the same time, even then, I'm like, if I can't see all of their faces, I did a webinar for the MTA once talking about my course. And, uh, you've, you've done them, you can't see who's responding or where the questions are coming from. And I fully had somebody get very upset with some of the information I provided it, I wasn't, my research, it was breached by the American, my Grandpa Foundation. And I was like, I don't even know who this person is. Like, it's hard when you can't even have like a Zoom conversation to defend or to chat and it's like, okay. Yeah, it is a weird thing, isn't it? I did a presentation last year for m a in Alberta and it was an online thing and I dunno, there was like a, it was a lot of people, it was like 130 people that were there, but I couldn't see any of them cuz they, they. I don't know if they used Zoom. I can't remember what platform they used, but I couldn't see. Maybe they did, but I couldn't see anybody. And there was questions coming in, but the questions were all read to me by the facilitator at the end. That's why I had, yeah, that's from ta. Yeah. And it was, it was, I mean, it, it's good to to, to get that information out to so many people, but it was also a little bit weird because you're like, I don't, like, I, I felt like I'm staring at a screen and, and people are like reading questions over here when it's done. Yeah. It's, it's a weird, it's a weird thing that, uh, that we've kind of come into. Um, and I'm it, like I said, you on the hot seat and I guess as the educator, sure, we should be prepared for that. Yeah. But it's interesting when you can't look at somebody and say like, oh, well, why would you think that? About that research, or, mm-hmm. Yeah. It was just, it was, it was interesting to say the least. I was like, okay, it's a, it's a different way of educating. So anyway, long story short, I think you should put out a recorded mm-hmm. One, because I think that would be, I dunno. I think it, it sounds like it's great content, um, that is desperately needed, you know, like I imagined. So you kind of hinted on this before about, you know, the, the kind of, some of the things people would say in your course. Uh, have you ever taught your course outside of Alberta? No. No. So I retire, quote, retired from Ontario, so Okay. For me to teach in, I have to go Unretired from Ontario. Oh, I see. Okay. I got it. But it got a little, yeah, it got a little irritated paying for an inactive fee, but then also providing so much of my time working towards regulation in Alberta. I was like, hey, like one or the other, like, we'll either give away the money or we'll give away the time. Um, so no BC No. And then Saskatchewan and that? Yeah, I totally can, but no, it was more of just. Doing it. I think it would be far more popular in a place like BC or Ontario where there is a little bit more of a focus on conditions. Right. Um, like, yeah, I, I don't know though, but it would be, it would be fun. It would be definitely fun teaching it outside of like, do you enjoy, do you ever, but then again, like you have to take into consideration. I think therapists don't realize too, is like why they, they question why courses are so expensive. A courses are not cheap to make courses take a long time to make. And then course materials are expensive, but traveling is really expensive for courses. Yeah. I mean the, the, if you and you think about it too. I know, cause I, I get this, I get this question often is why are courses expensive? Why are you charging recharge? Well, first off to put together just a two day workshop is hundreds of hours. Yes. Hundreds. Hundreds, maybe more, I'm gonna say many, many hundreds of hours. And that just putting the content together, that's not reading the research and, and like going through dozens of papers and trying to pull out the information that is good and that you can use, then you gotta put that into some type of format and structure. And then you, you wanna, you know, we, people like to have something to look at. So you put it in a PowerPoint or a keynote and you do that, and then you gotta, then you have to like, rehearse it and practice it and make sure you know how to deliver it. And then you gotta come up with different, uh, like things to do so you're not just delivering content, which is um, can be difficult, right. Um, and then, yeah, and then there's a travel, and then there's the, you know, and the thing is too, is oftentimes, and what a lot of people don't realize is that when you are teaching courses of saag, I'm gonna go teach in Calgary, which I am in June, I think I'm gonna be in Calgary. Nope. I think I'm in Calgary in June, I can't remember. I'm in a Cal Calgary in Alberta and Edmonton twice this year. Um, but then you, so you say, okay, well look, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna teach this course and say I'm doing it. I'm doing these ones with the M T A A. Well, they do all the registration, they do all, they take all that and they take their percentage, which is great. Cause I mean, that's a lot of work too for anybody listening. It's if you were doing a course on your own without like a, a, an assistance or without like an association, it's a ton of administrative background work, like hundreds of hours again. And you've got that, you're paying for the platform, for your website and for the registration and for the fees. Yeah. You paying lot of work. Yeah. And so, so if you're doing with an association, they take on all that expense, but then what happens? You're like, okay, well, they're like, okay, we've got enough people for this course to be viable. I gotta pay for my airfare. Book a hotel. And usually the airfare, you gotta pay first. And so you're eating that cost until you, until a couple months afterwards when you get paid. And then you gotta go and send them. You're paying for your hotel, you're paying for your, um, all your food and everything while you're there. Food, you don't get for that for a while afterwards. So there's a big, there's a big cost that you eat into and you, and it's okay. Yes, you can make good money teaching Connet, otherwise I wouldn't do it. But it's not, it's not as always as lucrative. Like, oh my God, you have 50 people, you made $20,000. You're like, wow, I didn't really make $20,000 in a weekend because there was all these other costs and everybody gets their piece of the pie. That's what one of my business mentors said too. She's like, I don't think you ever take into consideration, even when you are scheduling courses, like you have to, you should be like, on top of any clinic, on top of having your own practice. You've gotta be like blocking off time to advertise those courses. Yeah. Like that's time of your schedule. So it's no, it's not just the two eight hour days that you're teaching. Yeah. It ends up being between the creation of the course, which even if it is, you're teaching it for the 50th time, you're still taking that creation of the course. But all of that advertising like that is tedious work. Mm-hmm. Answering questions like, and I try and be so, so specific on my ads. Like everything will say how many con I credits or PD credits, the amount, how to sign up where it is. And then you get 50 messages on Facebook, like, where is this? I don't know, read the ad. You're trying hard not to get snippy at people, but you're like, click on the link and it takes you to everything. But no, you are also admin support. Right. So big companies, and that might have somebody doing that for you, but if it's just you doing it Yeah. And you're trying to have a really personal touch to it, it's like you're answering those questions. And then the other thing too is yeah, if you do have a practice, you're away from that practice. Yeah. So yeah, there goes that money, but it is, it's more expensive than people think to host courses. And like room rentals and that, like, that's not cheap. Yeah. You're looking at, well, it depends on where you go. You could be spending between, I don't think I've ever spent less than a thousand dollars on a weekend. Usually it's like two plus three. Yep. And the, the thing I had to learn how to take into consideration, and I get this a lot because I absolutely love going up to Edmonton teach, and I love the idea of traveling and teaching. But what happened was my, my migraine disease got to the point where instead of taking, I could just go up on a Friday and teach Saturday and Sunday, or teach Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I have to travel up at least the night before. If I'm teaching two days in a row for the migraine course, then I have to take a day off and then I teach another course for one day and I cannot drive, even though it's just a three hour drive. It's too risky for me to schedule just to drive back that day. So I'm staying an extra two to three days minimum. So for hotel costs, and, and that's just because I suffer from the condition that I'm teaching on. So it's like it gets really pricey really fast. And, and I do, there is a lot of fear around teaching in person now because it's one thing for me to cancel a, a day's worth of patients, but for me to cancel on 25 students who have traveled to come see me. Right. Of course. That's super scary. So the amount of times I've dragged myself in so medicated or had an attack occur mid class and like, cool. They get to see like how you can actually watch your patient go downhill, but all of a sudden I'm staying over in Edmonton extra night and, and you feel really bad. Like, so the stress of that, that's hard. Yeah. But, but at the same time, like I am still like there is a part where it's like, no, I'm lucky that I do suffer from the disease so I can teach on it and teach. I. From an actual personal experience standpoint, but it does, it makes it far more expensive because I have to make sure I have those accommodations in place. So, wow. Well that lived experience is really, really important, um, with the stuff that you're, you're teaching, and I think that's really, that's really valuable. And, um, and I, I, I think that most of us, if we're teaching something that we're passionate or excited about, it really helps to have that lived experience. I know for the chronic pain stuff that I teach, you know, my lived ex, not my, not my lived experience, but my, uh, family, um, lives with chronic. Some people, my close to me live with chronic pain and has, and so I've seen it and experienced it, um, from observer. Perspective. And so that's really got me into, into teaching. It was, was when, was with, uh, my wife lived for years and years and years with debilitating Pain. And I was like, what? This doesn't make any sense What's going on? Like, nothing, like I don't understand. Like you've been, all these things have been done to you. Why are you not better? And I was like, I don't understand. Yes. And that's, and so I bring my, my motivation, um, for doing what I do, it came from seeing the errors, uh, and the mistakes that were made and how M s k world treated her with Yep. Chronic pain and, um, yeah, that, I think it's, that's, that's a powerful thing. So I think, yeah, it's kind of like, I always say that I wish that there was more any type of healthcare professionals, especially in a, who focus on a condition that had that condition, but at the same time, like there was no way I could go. Med school with my migraine disease. Like there's, um, no, you can't do that. There was times I missed like, oh, three to four weeks of school for massage therapy. Wow. So it does, like these people with these conditions, unfortunately a lot of times can't step into the role of healthcare provider, especially like in those higher roles. So when we do find people with lived experience, and I know there's quite a few educators really getting into it now in our profession, um, like there's a couple with mobility and it's like, oh, this is great because I feel as though that is the best opportunity for students ever to hear it from a practitioner, but also somebody who either has a very close relative and has fully experienced what they're going through or somebody with that lived experience. Well, one of the, one of the projects I, I, I have, I started this last year was was working with people that are course creators that want to create. Content and create and teach courses. And, and one of the, the, the, the big focus of that is to have obviously evidence-based content, but to make a population focused and it's you. Mm-hmm. And majority of people that are in this, this program with me, they are, they have a lived experience of something and they're teaching about it. So just look at what you just said. And, uh, so I'm really excited to see, hopefully over the, the next few years, more and more people bringing in their lived experiences with the evidence behind it, teaching more on these populations, because that's really what we should be, we should be doing. And you're gonna go against the status quo. You're gonna have people tell you that you're crap and that you're wrong, and that you know, they're not gonna like, like what you say. Yep. If you don't, and this is what I always say, this has took me a while to realize, but what I always say to people is like, if you're not creating an emotional reaction to people, if you're just like monotone and boring, and you, and you, and you're telling people exactly what they want to hear, they're not gonna learn. You need to, no, they're not learning anything, that type of feeling in them. And sometimes that means going against a status quo, like in your, your evidence mm-hmm. Based migraine courses. Right. And, and even your, uh, aromatherapy stuff, you know, you're going against status quo, telling people what they need to learn, maybe know what they wanna learn and, you know, they can take it or leave it. Hopefully they will event if they don't take it right away. Hopefully they'll come, come back around and, and, uh, you know, realize we're getting at down the road. It's hard to argue with somebody with lived experience. Like, and I will happily throw that back to patients like from an, or practitioners, from an ethical standpoint, when they do try and disagree or challenge my evidence in the courses. And it's like, well, how, like where do you pretty much, where do you get off saying that? And I'm like, where do you get off as a practitioner who has no clue about my condition? Why are you telling me what to do if you actually have no clue about pain levels and like pain subjective? Then what? So they, I find, yeah, it's, it's far more beneficial to live with somebody from a lived experience standpoint. Even when we're doing in clinic, like in-house practice training, because I treat, I personally had treated a lot of CP and a lot of smma, but when I went to make the training for my staff, I had the light bulb turn on of like, how dare you, Jess? Because like, if you're getting really cranky with these people talking about migraine disease or like, like normal people call it migraines and how you should be living, why on earth are you speaking to mobility conditions? I don't have a mobility condition. I'm an neurological condition. So I, we actually hired on an amazing community outreach coordinator and accessibility consultant, and she's lived with S M A, obviously her whole life. And we, we did a lot of research and had input from our SMMA patients so that they could speak to how they wanted to be spoken to with a disability, the language that they wanted to be used and the way they wanted to be treated. And that was out of all the things I did last year, like one of my, the best things that I did as a practice owner was to take a step aside and be like, we need to bring in more lived experience, input into even just our clinic training. That's amazing. It's not my job. Yeah. No, that's amazing. It sounds like you're doing, you're doing great stuff there and you're people that work at social wellness or are lucky to have you. Um, we should probably wrap this up and I don't know how long people wanna listen. You gonna go treat? Yeah. You gonna go treat? Yeah. You gotta go work. Yeah. I gotta, I gotta edit this now. So thanks Jessica for being here. Uh, if everybody, anybody listening wants to check her out, uh, same star wellness, uh, that you're also, that's the same name you use on your Instagram and yeah. Reels as well. So check those out and, uh, thanks for being here, Jessica. And, uh, you know, maybe I'll get a chance to, uh, meet you in person in, in Calgary. Yeah. That's so weird. We've actually never met in person. I always forget that phrase. Yeah. Okay. Well thanks Jessica. Thanks Eric. Thank you for listening to Purvi verses. Please subscribe so you can be notified of all future episodes purvi versus is available on most podcast directories. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment and share on all your social media platforms. If you'd like to connect with me, I can be reached to my website, eric purvi.com or send me a DM through either Facebook and Instagram at Eric Purvis rmt.