[Closed] Wanting to set up holistic therapy business opinions please

try to affiliate yourself with your local hippy/health food shop, my local shop does loads of trade for their 'therapists'.
also try not to make it sound like quackery, as a medical type some of the ads ive seen in the shop make me pi$$ myself.

I'd see massage as more of something to get done when there's a problem rather then a general well-being thing. In fact the only time I remember having one done is after a martial arts weekend when I could hardly walk. Obviously other people will be different, but I would definitely try and cover sports massage, basic physiotherapy if it's possible.

As far as the quackery and woo-ism that usually goes hand in hand with holistic massage; ask yourself this: Are you going to make more money appealing to the intelligent and well-informed, or the credulous dim of bulb? No competition, really.

To be brutally honest any therapy that has the term "holistic" in would make me run in the opposite direction.

my local chiropractic clinic has loads of rooms and self employed types in there. You could look about and try out renting a room first rather than going the whole hog with your own premises etc. Hot stone therapy anyone? 😀

I have always been interested in massage especially after doing an afternoon workshop

This rings alarm bells for me. I know a couple of people that have been into this for some considerable time and still can't make a living from it.

Our company used to have monthly Indian Head massages/Reiki for employees, but since the ol' recession they have cut right back on that kind of thing.

I hope it works out for you - good luck....but it's a pretty crowded place.

Look carefully at the course you'll be doing - some of the quick, expensive courses at private colleges might get you a certificate but you won't have the experience. Local further education colleges often have courses which can be cheaper and good - this is what I did four years ago.

As for "get rich quick". How many hours a week can you work? Not just what you have spare but how many treatments can you physically do as a decent massage will take it out of you. How many of those hours will you actually have a client? Will your clients want treatment in the evening rather than daytime? Multiply that by what you'll earn per hour and that's your limit. But you can make more money by adding value - think hairdressers where they'll sell you styling stuff etc. or as someone says "hot stones" which people pay a premium for - no idea why, heated lavendar bags or hot water bottles can have the same effect. Or maybe set up your own salon but that's a lot of hassle.

You'll need to learn anatomy and physiology to back up the massage. Run your own business, do your own books or pay someone to, advertise etc. And once your qualified keep on top of new ideas etc. otherwise you get left behind.

What makes people come back? Depends what they want. I want sports / remedial massage so if they don't get results then I don't go back - I can also tell if someone knows what they're talking about which helps. If you do relaxation then the person might like to talk whilst having the massage and if they enjoy that they'll come back.

There were about 10 of us on my course - two of us could have made it - the others weren't good enough at massage or just didn't have the get up and go to make it in business. I decided not to pursue it as a career change as my job started to get better.

Might have painted a bleak picture but to be good takes effort. I really enjoyed it so would suggest you do the course which should cover the business side as well so you'll then have a better idea of any potential business opportunities.

Agree with the comments above. You should do lots of market research into the size of the market, costs of renting premises / rooms etc, competitors, prices, promotional channels etc. and then write a realistic business plan. Some places e.g. Bristol where I live are saturated with people offering a range of holistic therapies and complementary medicine.

I know a number of people who have been on courses with the intention of going self-employed and have either given up or are doing it on a part-time basis and have to find additional income. Some of these people who are only able to do it part-time are also working in other roles (e.g. receptionist, personal trainer, gym staff) in established gyms, physios and complementary health centres where you expect them to be able to have direct access to potential clients - yet they are unable to find enough work to do it full-time.

You mention students as a market - don't forget they tend to be around for only about 30 weeks of the year. I live in student land in Bristol - and I see very few students in the waiting room of the Complementary Health / Holistic Massage centre which I pass a couple of times a day which is one a road where every other house is converted into student accomodation.

However, if you have a robust and well-thought through business plan and the drive and desire to make it a success you should make a go of it. Perhaps one way of doing it would be to start doing it in the evenings and weekends so you don't lose the income from your current job. This will give you the time to see if your venture could be profitable without losing core income.

The other route might be to consider working for the large gym or hotel chains who often offer such services for their members or guests, and see if this kind of work is for you.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do!

[i]also try not to make it sound like quackery, as a medical type some of the ads ive seen in the shop make me pi$$ myself.[/i]

+1.

Massage is a hands on physical treatment in my opinion, and all that new age crystal aromatherapy stuff sounds silly. Sports massage, yes, but no Hopi ear candle whale songs please.

Make sure you do courses which are ITEC or VCTC aood accredited - this will enable you to join professional registers.

It's hard to set up full-time with just a single skill, you will get clients asking for some of the more esoteric treatments, if you don't have them you'll lose business.

Holistic massage is the basis for most other bodywork therapies, and if you do ITEC/VCTC it will include anatomy & physiology, business studies and first aid.

Join the 'healthy pages' forum, there's a wealth of advice and experience there plus you will get feedback on courses & colleges and plenty of business advice and support.

http://www.healthypages.co.uk/index.php

One of my mates is a "reiki master". Which sounds great. However he works 3 days a week on web stuff and that seems to pay most of the bills as he doesn't seem to have that many clients. Where he makes lots of cash is running courses on how to do reki. £40 or so (not sure what he actualy charges) vs £100's per person for a 2 day courses that seem to attract 5 to 10 people regularly.

This is in the center of east dulwich in london- lots of people with high disposable incomes.

Reiki seems an easy way to make your money- hold your hands above someone while your energies heal them! He had some great descriptions as to how it works 🙄

Homeopathic A&E

[i]To be brutally honest any therapy that has the term "holistic" in would make me run in the opposite direction[/i]

'holistic' simply means 'treating the person as a whole' in other words looking into lifestyle and environmental factors rather than treating isolated symptoms........

hd - it may well "mean" that to the trade, but to most people it means "ducklike".

A friend's wife got a tie-in with a local hotel. She rents their treatment room on the cheap & offers preferential rates to the hotel customers. Is a win-win situation, if the hotel's got the space to spare...

Stoner - that may be true, but 'most people' have many misconceptions 😉
a good holistic therapist will explain the nature and limitations of all their treatments just as a good medical practitioner should.

It's not the misunderstandings of uninformed people that is an issue but the willful misrepresentations by people who consider themselves educated and sophisticated.....

I'd understand financial positions before diving in. (I'd also read the previous sentence quite a few times)

In this case I'd stronly suggest that you should try to do it part time whilst maintaining existing cirumstances.

If you're in a 'thriving student' population bear in mind the lack of money they have and also bear in mind that like Reading Uni their students may offer 'cheap treatment' as part of their training course (*full physio hour £7 last year - you can't compete with that). I've never had children but my friends experiences lead me to believe that lying down for a 30 min massage with a toddler in tow would not be possible.

Re the 'rent premises and go mobile' - stop and have a think, that's 2 up front costs costs straight away - premises and travel kit , every massage I've been for has been in a private home (it's a lot cheaper).
- 1 was a chill out place, massage and sensory tanks or whatever they're called installed.
- 1 was spare bedroom, she always met client with her hubby for the first few visits
- physio - in a converted bedroom

I paid for the massages and tank as it was a 'new experience' type thing, I wouldn't do it again. I pay for phsio as little as possible however will if if I think it'll help me recover.

If you were a physio on the NHS list and doing work for them (11-4 say - as people who work don't get ill obviously) and pjs the rest of the time that seems to work.

"a good holistic therapist will explain the nature and limitations of all their treatments " has to get a [s]patsy[/s] client past the door that has "holistic" written on it first.

It's a pity that quite a few good alternative therapies with independantly tested and proven eficacy have got in to bed with the quacks under the umbrella of the FHT or CThA. It doesnt serve their interests at all well. IIRC you are a physio? I have no problems with physios or sports masseurs. But bundling it up with smelly oils, hot rocks, energy flows and cyrstal enemas rather dillutes it's seriousness.

Stoner - Yes, it's a complicated situation !!
There is a kind of 'unspoken code' that any complementary therapist will not criticise any other bramch of their profession and that does mean that the FHT and CThA has included a lot of areas of practice that may not have otherwise been included.

However, there is another aspect to be considered - just as some people 'feel better' after "retail therapy", going to their personal stylist for a makeover, having a pep talk from their life coach etc some people, also 'feel better' after recieving smelly oils, hot rocks, energy flows and crystal enemas.
You could consider that the effect of a treatment is in the mind of the receiver and as long as no false claims are made by the giver then it is a valid trade, feeling relaxed and 'happy' is almost certainly an equally important part of good health as having the 'right' blood count and that is essentially the concept of 'Holistic Health' 😉

As I wouldn't want to be making any false claims I work (part time) as a therapeutic masseur rather than a physiotherapist (but have also trained in Indian head massage, aromatherapy, Reiki, chakral energy healing and accupressure)

I did these courses as much for my own interest and experience as a commercial venture as I also have a 'day job' as a lab based postdoc biomolecular scientist.
Having a 'foot in both camps' has significantly helped me undestand both the conventional and complementary explanations as to how the human body 'works' and has convinced me that no single code of practise of mode of thinking can provid a full explanation for any phenomenon, let alone one as rich and complex as human life 🙂

and as long as no false claims are made by the giver then it is a valid trade

then shouldnt they just call it Hot Rock Placebo therapy or Crystal Enema Placebo Therapy, shouldnt they?

The rest of the guff about energy centres and shakira's mountains is the kind of hooey that they're selling explicitly, rather than the placebo effects of one-to-one therapy and sympathy/empathy.

Hilldodger I'm well aware of the definition of Holistic. It's not the definition that makes me want to run in the opposite direction it's the fact that it only seems to be used by people who are advocating a therapy that has no proven theraputic effect. It's also quite insulting to advocates of actual working therapies as the implication is that such people don't care about the overall health of a patient which is simply not true.

You seem to be happy to trade on the placebo effect, I prefer any treatment I have to have an actual effect.

[i]You seem to be happy to trade on the placebo effect...[/i]

gonefishin - as you have no knowledge whatsoever on the nature of my trade or how I portray it to my clients your comment is ignorant in all meanings of the word....

>My idea is to rent premises and also go mobile targetting Mothers with small children<

As if the poor sods dont have enough to worry about 😉

What's 'Bowen technique' when it's at home?

You mean appart from when you posted this.

However, there is another aspect to be considered - just as some people 'feel better' after "retail therapy", going to their personal stylist for a makeover, having a pep talk from their life coach etc some people, also 'feel better' after recieving smelly oils, hot rocks, energy flows and crystal enemas.
You could consider that the effect of a treatment is in the mind of the receiver and as long as no false claims are made by the giver then it is a valid trade, feeling relaxed and 'happy' is almost certainly an equally important part of good health as having the 'right' blood count and that is essentially the concept of 'Holistic Health'

which is nothing but a description of the placebo effect.

I made my assessment on what you have posted on this thread. If you want to change what you have posted I'll be happy to change my assessment.

You could consider that the effect of a treatment is in the mind of the receiver and as long as no false claims are made by the giver then it is a valid trade, feeling relaxed and 'happy' is almost certainly an equally important part of good health as having the 'right' blood count and that is essentially the concept of 'Holistic Health'

that sounds like a Crazy profession to be doing day in day out...

how much would it cost for a person to be relaxed/made happy for an hour?

Don't give up your day job, yet!
I know quite a few nurses who do this sort of thing- as a way to earn bits of extra cash- often starting off by getting the use of a room for say an hour a week, then building up from there gradually. If there is a local clinic that offers similar already enquire there- they will usually charge a fee for the room but do the appointment booking bits for you. It also helps to be affiliated with other paramedical specialities like physios and podiatrists (though I am concerned by your idea you might do a bit of "basic physio". You are either a trained accredited physiotherapist you are not.)
The problem they have had is that there just isn't enough business to do it as sole source of income.

Regarding the complimentary therapy therapy/placebo/quackery debate, I would recommend this as a good read:
[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0195313682 ]by Nigella's late hubby[/url]
I have come across people being completely ripped off by complimentary therapists- one that sticks in the mind being a man in his 40's with an incurable brain tumour, naturally absolutely desperate, found a quack in London that convinced his family to try some sort of high strength carrot juice therapy- went the whole hog and told him he needed to stop all conventional treament and did brain CTs that he read himself and purported to show improvement. Made it difficult for his treating doctors. Naturally he died. Naturally the therapist made a lot of money.
And I see lots of old dears with bad arthritis sending off for magic cures out of the Sunday supplements, magnetic bracelets, etc. If they have already shelled out I tend to say "well if you think it's helping" If they haven't paid out I tell them there is probably no evidence and I wouldn't advice my old mum to spend her pension on one.
On the other hand a bit of soft lighting, nice smells, gentle rubbing, "ooh I can feel the tension", and an hour of me time seems harmless, makes you feel better, and is probably a reasonable experience in exchange for £50 or so if you have the spare cash.

One of the things in the book that I found quite telling is the idea that we do complimentary therapy all the time. When a child falls and grazes their knee you pick them up, rub it better, say there there, give them a hug and put a plaster on. That, my friends is top class grade A holistic complimentary therapy in action, and it generally works.
At least we are honest with kids, but with adults, the complimentary therapy lobby tries to baffle us with pseudoscience. It is what it is, rubbing people better.

Bowen Technique:

"Positive self image therapy"
You're super, smashing, great!

[img] [/img]

or maybe it's an extreme form of accupuncture? 😉

[i]which is nothing but a description of the placebo effect[/i]

I'm afraid it isn't 😉
the placebo effect involves giving a treatment that is deliberately meant to have no effect to a patient/client who is under the impression they are getting a treatment with a specific therapeutic effect.

When you set out to treat client by use of any bodyworks system, listen to their concerns about their health/lifestyle and offer sound advice based on recognised principles that is not a placebo effect, it's effective therapy.......

@ stoner
shakras meridians and the manipulation of them has been going on for thousands of years.
your post smacks of total ignorance.

shakras meridians and the manipulation of them has been going on for thousands of years.

so has christianity, islam and judaism.

[i]Chakra is a concept referring to wheel-like vortices which, according to traditional Indian medicine, are believed to exist in the surface of the etheric double of man.[2] The Chakras are said to be "force centers" or whorls of energy permeating, from a point on the physical body, the layers of the subtle bodies in an ever-increasing fan-shaped formation (the fans make the shape of a love heart). Rotating vortices of subtle matter, they are considered the focal points for the reception and transmission of energies.[3] Seven major chakras or energy centers (also understood as wheels of light) are generally believed to exist, located within the subtle body.[/i]

From Wiki.

Given the above I can happily say that I hold both Chakra and the above religious nut**** rubbish with equal contempt. And it sure isnt ignorance just because you dont believe in spiritual hooey.

hd - just becuase the delusional practitoner of hooey therapies [i]thinks[/i] it [b]isnt[/b] deliberately meant to have no effect doesnt mean that any results are not as a result of the placebo effect.

check out all those double negs 🙂

[i]From Wiki.[/i] I rest my case m'lud 😉

Although the translation of the descriptions of chakra may be 'religious nut**** rubbish' to your sensibilities, try looking at some of the terminology used by quantum physicists to describe their work, translate it into a foreign language and read them through the eyes of a wildly different cultural system, before being too judgemental....

Ha ha ha, what an amazing troll! Holistic therapy, oh my days! I'm off to plant some 1 penny pieces in the back garden and then wait for the millions to roll in.

A word from one of your potential competitors:

"Massage benefits are both mind and body. It is rare that we take an hour to lie down, close our eyes and just 'be'. An hour's peace and quiet away from ringing phones and demanding children has a definite restorative effect."

If you can get people to pay you for the oppurtunity to lie down for an hour i take my hat off to you...

spirtual?
how so?
thankfully stoner during my early twentys i had the good fortune to get really really sick in a way that left the mighty medical folks baffled.
because they couldnt understand it they told me i would be like this for the rest of my life and would probably die early.nice.
three years later having learnt to cook macrobioticly so i could feed myself right and having recieved regular shiatsu i had it sorted.
the shiatsu practitioner that i used was awesome and a very busy man.
have to say though hilldodger i really have my doubts about you folks that say you can do all those things because you took a course.
it takes a lifetime of practice to be any good at just one of them.
so its a shame for you stoner that you will spend your life having zero idea about how to fix a problem when it arises.
thats upto you and fair play to you but why be so neg about stuff you no nothing of?
if you did you wouldnt go running to wiki now would you.

physics is physics whichever language you do it in.

Much as hooey is hooey.

spirtual?
how so?

Im sorry. I completely forgot that recent peer reviewed article of double blind trials on wheel-like vortices in the surface of the etheric double man in Nature last month. It being science and not spirtual hooey and all.

Cock detector working well for me...

just because something has been done for 'thousands of years', doesn't make it right. Human sacrifices to the Sun god anyone?

Each to their own, but paying for someone to carry out placebo/comforting/feel-good make-believe therapy on you seems like a waste of money to me.

Having a determined, positive outlook seems to help, the 'therapy' is less important.

thankfully chap i dont need no peer to make my mind up for me i find the proof for myself as can you if you wish.
so why not try it rather than be blind about it.

Cock detector working well for me...

Yes, I too can detect a lot of mumbo-jumbo pseudo-science.

Send me 50 pounds and you'll receive telepathic healing.

thankfully chap i dont need no peer to make my mind up for me i find the proof for myself as can you if you wish.
so why not try it rather than be blind about it.

...but, if it was tested and validated then it could be used to the benefit of others....

i find the proof for myself

well done. and did you find the proof of the efficacy of hindu ritual or the proof of placebo effect?

its really bloody simple folks.
next time you get ill find the point on your body that correlates with the malfunction and work on it and see what happens.
it costs nothing.

so, where do I locate my aura?

[i]so, where do I locate my aura? [/i]

you'll need a mirror, and possibly some KY

i have no idea what your talking about mate?

i shattered my knee in july. have been concentating on it consistantly since but its still giving me jip. any suggestions?

Next time you get really ill, look at life expectancy in the secular scientific first world, and then at the same figures for people using chakra pointy finger 'medicine'.

If the placebo, sorry, alternative therapy isn't working, maybe some real therapy is in order? Just to 'complement' a bit of shamanism, mind.

If people in the stone/bronze age could heal everything I'm not sure why we've bothered with developing medical techniques further. Oh hang on, maybe that [u]development[/u] is actually the key to it??

I had a shiatsu massage once. On honeymoon at the dead sea. The guy was very nice, He dug his elbows into my back quite hard for a bit, then told me I had "weak kidneys".
Clever fella. I had had the usual bought of upset tum so was probably a bit dehydrated, so he was probably right.
Doesn't mean that Shiatsu is a valid evidence based treatment, it just means he knew most Europeans got a bit of dicky tum, and had clocked my dry lips.
But then I went into with a sceptical head on, it was all part of the experience, I had nothing to lose but a bit of cash.
I would worry when someone takes a problem to a complimentary therapist and is given the same sort of confident advice based on nothing more than an educated guess.
"Good" therapists are a bit like Derren Brown really if you ask me. Good people skills, able to spot what people want to hear and tell them that in a way that makes them feel better.

I think one of the differences between complimentary and conventional medicine is the openness of the establishment. Conventional medicine is constantly re-appraising its treatments and is quite happy to change advice in light of new research- lots of examples of drugs that stop being used after years of being "firstline" because new evidence tells us that they aren't as good as we once thought they were. Negative trials are published as well as positive ones, and guidelines look at all the available evidence as a whole.
I don't see that happening in complimentary medicine- or am I wrong?

from a 'holistic massage' site again:

At the end of the session the therapist may give you advice about what you can do in between treatments to maintain or improve your body's equilibrium. This may be through gentle yoga or chi kung based exercises or dietary changes. For example, if you had the complaint of frequent headaches, it may be tension but one of the contributory factors may be too many caffeinated drinks (fizzy drinks, cups of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, for example) and a need to up their water intake. This is empowering as you are able to take responsibility for helping yourself 'get better' and this in turn really helps to boost self-esteem.

so if you feel the old massage hasnt cured all your ills... why not cut out caffeine? that fixed it? yeh? good. probably cos you had a massage right?

nope your not wrong at all this is why it gets a bad rap.
i was lucky to find a practioner that could show me how to look after things myself but there are loads of rubbish ones out there.

OP - you're very brave - as soon as I saw the thread title I knew there would be a riot.

There has been some sound business advice in amongst the trolling and shouting though.... A member of my extended family runs (one of?) the largest Traditional Chinese Medicine centres in Scotland.

She started off being driven from client to client in an old banger, practising mostly accupuncture. After perhaps six months of this, she took a room in a centre in Edinburgh, filled with other practitioners of various kinds (at the top of Cockburn St, Edinburgh). She just hired a room for three hours a day.

She made an excellent name for herself and opened her own clinic in a trendy part of Leith - if you live in Edinburgh you'll probably have seen it. She then filled the place with other practitioners, renting rooms out. Expansion followed and she now has clinics in most of the major Scottish cities, so it can be done, with a lot of hard work and good luck.

Just as an aside, I set up the Inverness clinic (sadly no more) during my Summer off at uni and was responsible for contacting practitioners and getting them to rent rooms. There was only one total quack that I met - she claimed to be able to read your dreams...... by telephone!! You had to phone a number costing £5 a minute and relate your dream to an ansaphone. She would then write out an analysis and send it to you. What a crock!!

nonk- was it M.E?

no mate chrohns had me by the scruff.

so I take it you're on mesalazine or something similar then?

nope nothing at all.

not ever?

first six months.
stopped it when i changed the diet.and yeah it did get worse for a while then started to recover.
if i get problems now i just clean up the diet a bit reduce the volume of intake and work on the meridians that get tight. those being liver and small intestine.and of course large intestine but most folks could say that.
amazing forum this you state what you have found and your a cock.

nonk, please don't discount modern medicine when it comes to the management of your Crohn's. As I'm sure you know only too well, it's a nasty disease that goes through relapse and remission, and I would hope you're getting reviewed regularly.

oh yeah i never said a thing to sugest that i had turned my back on medical help.
my brother in law is a gp.
he thought i was of my trolley in the early days.

just dont need the meds anymore

i never said a thing to sugest that i had turned my back on medical help.

Isn't it as likely that because you understand your problem, and can adjust your diet when needed, as well as gain a degree of control over it in a psychological sense, that that is what works rather than the chakra stuff?

I'm finding this a difficult thing to say because I don't want to 'take away the magic' if you know what I mean.

there has been some research into the role of probiotics/macrobiotics in crohns disease

I have read similar, and indeed it has been common practice to manage the diet for Crohns/IBD for a while (a couple of acquaintances have had various extremes of the condition). I dont see quite where "work[ing] on the meridians that get tight" comes into a proven therapeutic technique.

to be honest stoner me neither but i was well advised to get a meridian chart of my own and work out myself what heappens to them as my symptoms arise.
it was the changes that i noticed after recieving treatment from the practitioner that gave me the motivation to do it.
pre illness my mindset would have been much like yours but when your suffering..

your right doc i did but a bit much spin on that in my first post.

sorry crikey, maybee but it all seems to work so i dont wish to stop any of it.

Right, full apology from me for any cock references.

I don't believe any of it, but it has allowed you to get to grips with a proper nasty problem, and it's the outcome that counts, not the way you get there.

It's all a bit questionable to me. My sports physio had a holistics person in the same clinic, hopi ear candles indeed.

If it floats your boat, fine - enjoy it, but peddling it to people as a solution to physical ailments seems somewhat fraudulent to me.

Either way, it doesnt seem like a good career to be heading into this moment, I've seen two local "clinics" go down the pan - people don't tend to spend as much on luxuries when the economy is falling apart.

try looking at some of the terminology used by quantum physicists to describe their work,

The terminology is irrelevant, quantum mechanics makes very detailed predictions about the outcomes of physical phenomena. It isn't gibberish.

cheers crikey no bother man.

i agree that there is loads of hippy tosh under the holistic banner
but for me there is a few diamonds in there.
something i have found a laugh over the last few years is seeing if it holds up with mates's ailments yknow..does this hurt then? yes y bugger it does.

It would be perhaps more interesting to hear from people who've received complementary therapy and found it lacking or mis-sold rather than the same old wiki-wisdom & cut'n'paste knowledge being aired again and again.......

wiki-wisdom & cut'n'paste

feeling threatened hilldodger?

I quoted from Wiki an introduction to the belief in Chakra as a spiritual idea.
Do you disagree with its contents?

The vast majority of the soft-headed that pay for the more ridiculous kinds of quackery, are more often than not the most likely to benefit from the emotional component of any placebo effect.

stoner. there is a few systems chap the indian one differs from the japanese one etc.
i never had anty spiritual stuff to think about.it really was just a case of when this bit fails this bit over here will hurt due to stagnation of energy so just give it a bit of a shove.

Entertaining thread 🙂

We have the scoffers and mockers on one hand - some of whom have very closed minds indeed and the gullible on the other side who consider anecdote to be evidence.

I am trained in western "conventional" medicine but have had some complementary therapies with varying results.

There is no doubt there is a lot of placebo effect in "alternative" therapies but also in "conventional"

My experience - I approached this with a healthy open minded sceptisim

Homeopathy - totally ineffective - and seems like clear snake oil
Osteopathy - inexplicable effects - I have even had cranial osteopathy which is the most bunkum of the lot - but the cranial osteopathy had positive effects that lasted. The practitioners varied from snake oil salesmen to dedicated and professional
Chiropractic - no obvious effects
Acupuncture - unbelievably powerful. Real lasting and noticeable effects.

One interesting thing I found was challenging the bunk the therapists say. A couple of them would engage on this basis and gave me some interesting explanations based in western medical language which actually made logical sense such swapping sympathetic and parasympathetic systems for Chi.

My conclusion - and yes I know this is all anecdote not evidence - is that there is some real effects buried underneath a pile of mumbo jumbo - perhaps only a few %. I also conclude that many "conventional" trained medical bods have totally closed minds - its a product of the way they are trained unfortunately.

due to stagnation of energy

Oh come on. Between this gibberish and that lunacy about arranging water molecules in your socks on the other thread, am I the only one that gets a feeling we're sinking back into the dark ages?

Im off to de-stagnate the energy in my beer-aura.

Stoner - if they said " understimulation of parasympathetic system" instead would that help?

Are you going to be a snake oil masseuse or are you going to be a go in and beat the meat type?

[i]feeling threatened hilldodger?[/i]
😆 not in the slightest, barely amused maybe but little more reaction than that to yet another stw thread that's rapidly becoming a slaning match
[i]I quoted from Wiki an introduction to the belief in Chakra as a spiritual idea. Do you disagree with its contents?[/i]
Chakra is not a spiritual idea as I undertsand it, so yes, I disagree pretty much completely with that Wiki entry.

[i]The vast majority of the soft-headed that pay for the more ridiculous kinds of quackery, are more often than not the most likely to benefit from the emotional component of any placebo effect[/i]

Interesting that you stoop to insults and derogatisations so easily 😉

Would your definition of soft-headed also include people who pay to use relationship counsellers, psychotherapists and life coaches ?
Or perhaps it would include people who 'believe' the high end tosh peddled by advertsing agencies on behalf of health damaging products.

Anyway, day job almost over and I'm not losing valuable snake-oil selling time to continue here......

its just a diference in language stoner.

TJ interesting comments on the acupuncture.
the reason i went for shiatsu was i felt the redistribution of energy thruoghout the sytem was better than just releasing the excess.
might give it ago.