To Nurture your Practice … Nurture your clients.
With the idea of nurturing a practice, I suspect the first thing that comes to mind for many is attracting new clients. For this article I chose to focus on something I find equally important – nurturing the clients who actually make appointments. My focus will be mostly on Functional Integration® 1-on-1 clients as that has been more the focus of my 18+ year-old practice.
As with all things “Feldy” there is no one size fits all. That being said I would like you to contemplate this … would you rather see ten different clients for one session, not to have them return, or one client who chooses to return ten times? Yes, this might be an oversimplification, and your answer might be in the middle. Still, this a question worth considering.
My own practice history has definitely leaned toward the “client retention” side of the equation. Several years back I recall hearing that, though not my personal experience, it is quite common for folks to come to an initial private Feldenkrais® session only to decide it is not for them. This has rarely happened to me. When it has, looking back I see I failed at what I share below. Successful initial visits are key to client retention and I will devote a large part of this article to those.
So, what has worked for me in the initial sessions?
Several years ago, I had a client who would often wear a t-shirt to her sessions that said “Mind the Gap” that she brought home from England. As practitioners, we must bridge that gap between client’s ideas about what they need and want and what we sense.
Again, practices vary, though it is very common for folks to come with a diagnosis that couldn’t be helped by more conventional interventions. Often my clients have had an expectation that I touch them in some sort of different way to make the pain go away.
In our training we don’t learn much about “diagnosis” other than that one is typically not important to what we do – not something most new clients would appreciate hearing. How might we acknowledge a diagnosis and also use our tools to mitigate its effects without falling into the trap of a “label”?
As a side note, if a client you are going to see tells you about their diagnosis and you are not familiar with it, I highly recommend doing at least a small amount of online research so you can be knowledgeable about what is likely to come up.
In Feldenkrais training, we learn about how difficulties come about as the result of certain “patterns” and how we should not “work on” the problem area directly. Again, that concept is quite possibly in conflict with a new client’s expectations.
Here are some of what I consider my “best practices” to address these issues.
Commonly during an initial session, a client will tell me about their diagnosis. I will be sure to ask them what they have previously done to address it, and how successful that was, as well as what the problem is preventing them from doing. Of course, they would not be seeking my services if all were well.
I only hope that sometime in my lifetime it will be common to initially seek Feldenkrais®!
I typically follow up with some questions about their work and professional history and how they like to spend their leisure time. Their answers give me useful information both directly related to the concern that brings them to see me, and also about how I might speak about my work.
I often then gently suggest that, in my experience, challenging problems are often associated with some habits of “posture” or movement that they may not be aware of – and that I can help them discover and address. I often demonstrate in an exaggerated way something relevant. For example, let us say a new client has chronic right shoulder tendinitis. I notice that the right side is shortened. (I do try to get a very quick sense of a pattern as a client enters the space.) As a way to illustrate how a habit or pattern may be associated with a complaint, might really shorten my right side and then of course struggle to lift my right arm. I lengthen my side and lift more easily. Typically, that is understandable. I then say we will work on that.
Even though a client appears to understand that resolution of their problem may well involve parts of themselves other than those where their “diagnosis lives”, my experience suggests that unless there is really acute pain, clients feel validated by my touching the area of concern. In the shoulder tendinitis example, I might have the client lying on the side with the painful side on top. I might very gently place my hands on the shoulder and make tiny movements forward or back as is easier and then make my way to working with the ribs and side flexion.
I take particular care to make first hands-on experiences not overly long and quite focused. I will end with giving the client the opportunity to notice shifts. Something I have learned over the years, especially working with folks focused on their pain, is to ask more specific and still sensory oriented questions. This is because I find that if I ask something more open ended, the answer will typically be related to the level of pain only.
Before the client leaves, I typically give one small piece of “homework” – what might be called an ATM® sound bite. I review/discuss my assessment of what is going on and make a recommendation on how we might continue to work.
How I make my recommendations varies. Often, I say something like “similar to today’s session, I will continue to provide opportunities through movement, hands on work and conversation aimed at helping you take a deeper dive into exploring the connections between certain habits of posture and movement and (your problem)”. Usually I recommend starting with between three and six additional sessions based on my sense of what is the minimum needed for the client to sense some sort of change, as well as what I sense the client will find reasonable. I always say we can change our minds at any point. Especially if Feldenkrais® is unfamiliar, I do not want a client to feel pressured in any way regarding their commitment.
I have had some experiences where I did not believe further work was the best way forward and have shared that recommending another option.
Restating, client retention begins with an initial session during which the client feels acknowledged, senses and understands what might be possible, and has some idea as to how things might proceed.
The last topic I plan to address here is conversation both during FI® lessons, as well as before and after. This applies to first and future lessons. Whether or not conversation during a session is appropriate, and if that can change over time, is part of that dance between a practitioner and a client. In my own practice I let intuition be my guide. Generally speaking, the more familiar the client is with Feldenkrais® and the more trusting they are with their sensory experience, the less talk seems appropriate, especially during the sessions. For those less kinesthetically inclined, answering questions and verbally directing attention can enhance the process.
In professional training we hear so much about meeting clients where they are in terms of working in the direction of ease and not “correcting”. Another way I find it extremely helpful to meet my clients where they are is how I talk about what I am doing.
I will never forget working with a mechanical engineer with chronic back pain. I spoke to him about force transmission and compressive stress. His response was “why hasn’t anyone else explained this?” He improved quite quickly most likely because he could internalize how to align his spine.
If I have a client who is into meditation and yoga, speaking about “awareness” might really resonate in a way that might have resonated less with the engineer client I just described. These are just a couple of examples.
To conclude, client retention begins with and depends on what happens during the first lesson. Key here is to bridge the gap between the client point of view and what we as Feldenkrais® practitioners find most appropriate. This meeting of the client where they are is an ongoing process not only regarding what you do, but also what you say.
Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2022 issue of InTouch – the practitioner newsletter from the Feldenkrais(R) Guild of North America.