Are You Working to Your Detriment? Let’s get honest: if you’re pushing through pain, contorting your body, or grinding your hands into clients just to deliver “deep tissue” work… you might be sacrificing your own well-being for the sake of theirs. And it’s probably not even getting the results you think it is. Deep doesn’t have to mean destructive. At…
It’s easy to think barefoot massage is just about using your feet instead of your hands. But the truth is, how you approach barefoot massage is just as important as what techniques you use. When you deliver sustained pressure with purpose, understand fascial relationships, and meet clients where they are—your work goes from “deep tissue” to deep transformation. This is…
Ready for a reboot of your marketing? Let’s make a new resolution, or reSOLEution, regardless if it’s the New Year or a new moon to actually support your body, your business, and your barefoot massage practice? Welcome to the ReSOULution Challenge: a foot-focused, feel-good reboot that helps you create content that brings you back to your why—why you started doing…
(This article was originally published on 6/11/2024 by Jeni Spring here, and the social media recap from Julie Marciniak was posted 4/16/2025 here and here.) One of the questions that we Barefoot Massage therapists get asked VERY often is “Can you actually feel knots when you massage with your feet?” Yes, we can! OF COURSE we can feel things through our feet! It’s…
Resources for you to use to educate your immediate circles on the benefits of Massage AND ways to help YOU be more aware within your Barefoot Massage sessions. First off, welcome to this years National Massage Therapy Awareness Week! This long holiday is our professions chance to spend an ENTIRE DEDICATED WEEK to promote the health benefits of massage therapy and…
Myself and four of our instructors just got back home after sharing Fijian Barefoot Massage in Phoenix at the AMTA national massage convention! We set up a booth in the exhibit hall, provided about 45 Barefoot Matwork sample sessions, and talked to many of the 1,500+ Massage Therapists in the conventions attendance that visted us!
Meet the feet: We had such a powerhouse of instructors present at this event – I’m not even sure if the visitors to our booth knew the extent of our team’s history and experience in the profession. Myself (Jeni Spring) from Central Texas, Sara from Missouri, Hillary from North Texas, Ashley from Southern California, and Dawn from upstate New York. (Click each name to be taken to their instructor profile pages!)

Each one of these Barefoot Massage Barbies have been using their feet as massage tools for ~at least~ 10 years – double that in some cases! Dawn Dotson is our FasciAshi Range Of Motion instructor who designed the portable bar system that you can strap into and use with a portable, electric, hydraulic table or a mat. Sara Newberry is an author of the 1st ever Hot-Ashi Barefoot Massage class and has been on many podcasts talking about our Barefoot work. Hillary Arrieta is a published author with her own massage book and is our lead Fijian/Matwork 1 class instructor trainer. Ashley Shears is a Fundamentals class instructor who is making waves with her approach to myofascial barefoot work on the table and on the mat. (Ashley also roadtripped to Phoenix with a knife that came in very handy in the booth all weekend because we forgot to pack scissors!) I was there, too, and I’ve also done cool things. 😉
It was great for this section of our instructor team to meet other leaders and forward thinkers in the industry, to find old friends, to share selfies with AMTA royalty and instructor buddies, to get our feet on the pulse of as many people as we could to share Barefoot Massage with, and to talk with the masses of LMTs in attendance to see what they have questions about. (There were so many people there!!!)
I want to tell y’all all about this experience, from beginning to end: read on and enjoy our journey to the desert!
When we talk about what we do, our instructor team at the Center for Barefoot Massage has been working very hard to deepen the use and understanding of the phrase “Barefoot Massage” rather than using the single A-word, ashiatsu. We see that word in play a lot, especially used alone on its own as a massage service across the nation…
I’m already ashiatsu trained – where do I start? We are SO glad that you found us, and that you are considering learning our myofascial ashiatsu barefoot massage style of work! If you are ready to ask questions, be challenged, and grow your understanding of barefoot massage, then you are gonna love this game-changing take on westernized ashiatsu barefoot massage.…