COVID-19 Update: Here’s How We Return to In-Person Massage Therapy
As we’ve been getting more inquiries nearing the end of the statewide stay-at-home order and Gov Polis’ announcement that Personal Service providers can return to work we wanted to touch base with you about our reopening.
First and most important:
We look forward to returning to our in-person sessions with you!
Nearly as important: we are waiting for more information before we can start scheduling sessions for May. We anticipate these updates coming on April 26/27th and will be in touch with scheduling options once we know more.
If you are hungry for information about our process and what it will take to reopen please read below.
If you need a quick movement break, check out our 2-Minute Tech Break (no tools or stretchy pants needed) or our full YouTube channel (including three videos we made on treating neck and shoulder tension). Special thanks to the many clients who sent in their video requests - lots of you requested the same things so these are the videos we made first. We are still making more so if you have tension and want a video to address a specific area, let us know.
If you need more personalized support in yoga, massage, or postpartum planning our online sessions are still available at a sliding scale. We love the clients we have been seeing weekly or bi-weekly and we have room for you too!
So the real question -
What needs to happen before we return to work?
Wait until Boulder County lifts Stay-at-Home order (recently extended until May 8th)
New cases of COVID-19 are falling steadily, not rising.
We hear from the Department of Regulatory Agencies about Colorado’s best practices.
We have all the necessary supplies to be able to implement best practices whether in your home or our offices and feel a high level of confidence that we are able to return to seeing clients while prioritizing our individual and community safety.
Even once we are back in session it will not be “business as usual”. Some things will be visible changes and some will be behind the scenes. A few changes you can expect:
Slow return to work with a phased approach where we return first to in-home sessions, then the office.
Waiting room and office will look and feel different. We have removed any shared objects (tea cups, magazines, toys) from the waiting room and will be removing “soft things” from the office (upholstered furniture, extra table padding, eye pillows).
Cleaning and Disinfecting - You may not see us doing all of this, but know that we are disinfecting every surface we touch or you touch before and after every session with EPA approved disinfectants for cleaning emerging viral pathogens. We may also have a protocol of changing clothes or showering between clients and may ask you to come to your session freshly showered.
Masks - We will be wearing masks during your entire session. It is unlikely we will require you to wear a mask for your full session, but we will have to wait to hear any regulations and best practices before confirming.
Payment - We are expanding our forms of accepted payment (hello Venmo) and preparing contactless payment available to all clients. We may need you to put in your credit card information online when scheduling each session and apologize for the inconvenience.
Illness - We will be taking our temperatures daily and will cancel sessions if we feel unwell or anyone in our home or who we have been in contact with feels unwell or presents with COVID-19 symptoms and we will ask you to do the same.
Hiccups along the way. It is extremely likely that businesses will come back in fits and starts. We will open, and then close, and then be able to open again. Please have patience with us (and with all your fellow humans right now) as we navigate the uncertainty and know that we are always here for you whether or not we can see you in person.
I know this may all sound intense. It’s likely some of these protocols will be able to loosen as this virus is better understood and we have more information about which actions make the most difference (like washing hands!!!). While we wait for those discoveries, we are going to be extra safe. Remember, we are in this together and each of our individual actions affect our families, our neighbors, and our world.
As we come to a time in Colorado with fewer mandates and more personal choice just know that we will each be evaluating our own risk factors and choosing our actions with those risks in mind.
It’s OK if we all need different things.
You may not be ready to receive massage (or go to the grocery store, plan a play date, or schedule a doctors visit) yet - and we respect that choice! Call us when you are ready. In the same vein, we may be slower to open than other practitioners. We work with a lot of high-risk clients (pregnant, 65+, people with complex medical backgrounds). We have higher risk family members. We want to return to this work as safely as possible.
In the meantime…. what do massage therapists do when they aren’t hands-on with clients? We haven’t been sitting at home twiddling our thumbs. Aside from a crash course in small business administration as we wade through all our COVID-19 options… Our new website is nearly ready for release (stay tuned!), we love seeing you for online sessions, we are finding ways to support other local businesses and massage therapists, we have daily tips for staying sane at home on our Facebook page, and we add stretches and yoga every week to our new Mountain Mama Massage YouTube channel. (Don’t forget to Subscribe - we are at 10 and counting!)
Questions, feedback, or just need a human conversation? Reach out, we would love to connect.
Stay home, take care, and wash those hands!
(originally posted April 24, 2020)
