Task 5, Sustainable Massage Practice

Task 5, Sustainable Massage Practice

Through out this blog I am seeing the relationships between massage practice and principles of environmental, social and economic sustainability and will be outlining at least three ways in which I could make my practice more sustainable.

Environmental
With New Zealanders trying to clean up their act by saving power and looking after our environment, I guess we should help by making our clinics and equipment as environmentally friendly as we can. Things that will help, is making sure we are efficiently heating the clinic with out losing the heat generated. “Heat pump systems are commonly 300% efficient, meaning for every 1kWh of electricity they consume, they generate 3kWh of heat (Air source heat pumps). This shows that using a heat pump will befit the business, because of their conversion efficiency.
Lighting is another cost, as you don’t want to work in a dark environment but you don’t want too much light. So having a couple of lamps with energy efficient lights in them with help save power and in the long run help with the sustainability of the environment. Energy efficient lights “save up to 80% of the electricity an incandescent bulb would use” (Energy Efficient Lighting, 2003).
With washing our linen we should uses a nature friendly washing powder that is less harmful on the environment and should hang them out to dry as using the dryer is using power and we are trying to be energy efficient to save the environment for the next generation.

Social
Things that will make a clinic more sustainable would be having interaction with the community, different types of religions and cultures. By having an understanding of these social interactions it will help with recognition of the clinic through the communities eyes. By this I mean if they see us out and about helping or working our name is out there for them to see and it is also another way of advertising without any extra cost.
Work done in the clinic that is related to social sustainability will be how we help our clients; this might be by distressing them or releasing pain. By giving our clients relaxation and achieving their goals their social interaction with friend and family will be improved and will reflect back on your work.
A way to make it easier to understand different cultures or religions will be working from a clinic as you will have to deal with lots of different people. This will help to learn about different types of beliefs and what is right and wrong. By having this understanding will show the client that you have an interest and you do not judge who they are, because of their cultural or religions.

Economic
To be able to run a business that is successful you have to know what target audience you want to aim at. Having the right people coming into your clinic is going to help with sustaining the profit of you business. At the moment with people trying to save money where they can this is very important as you want to be able to cover your cost for running the clinic, other wise you won’t have a clinic to run.
As we know massage is growing every year, there is no shortage of a massage therapist through out New Zealand and even on the world scale it’s growing. So to be able to sustain a business in this fast growing industry we need to know the pros and cons to running a successful clinic. I think we need to put these three things, environment, social and economics together to produce a massage practice that is sustainable to run and will work for employers and clients.

The three things that I will like to try and use in my massage practice to make it more sustainable will be making it more heat efficient as this is import as I want my clients to be warm and comfortable as possible and I don’t want to be paying heaps in power to heat my room.
Having knowledge of my clients cultural and religious beliefs I think will help me run a successful clinic as I will not only show them that I take and interest in their life but I might be able to help their social life by making them a happier human being and allowing them to communicate with people that they might not have been able to before.
Making sure that my clinic focuses on the right target audience I think is a major aspect of sustaining a massage practice. You want the right type of people to be walking through your doors and you want to make sure you can achieve their goals that they have come in for as that is how you build a good client base with the right people.


1) Right House. Air source heat pumps. Retrieved May, 21st 2009, From http://www.righthouse.co.nz/products/heating/heat-pump
2) Aurora, 2003. Energy Efficient Lighting. Retrieved May, 21st 2009, From http://www.electricity.co.nz/lighting.htm
3) Class notes. (2009). Fundamentals of massage, Sustainability. Retrieved May, 21st, 2009, From David McQuillan class lecturer.