Hey there, wellness entrepreneur! Welcome back.
Today, we’re going to talk about Four Steps On How To Transition Your Very Skilled Hands Onto Online so you can transition from being a hands-on rehab type practitioner or a hands-on massage therapist or yoga teacher with a lot of hands-on assists, to a successful online wellness practitioner.
And this is so you can create more revenue without having to rely on your hands, without having to rely on your body 100% in case you go snowboarding and fall down and injure your hand or your wrist and you literally can’t use your hands.
Or you’re like me and had to do several back-to-back surgeries and you needed to learn how to bring in revenue and keep your business afloat without using your body to show up and do manual therapy and or teach yoga classes and trainings.
Plus, when you transition online, you can do it simply by just starting one-to-one and learn how to transition your skills in a one-to-one fashion and get results, develop your frameworks, your unique processes, the systems, and how you help your clients create wellness and health results. And then you can put gasoline and create a bigger fire with that or ignite the fire in a quicker way, whatever, however the saying goes, by scaling that business and now reaching one-to-many in a group or membership or on-demand type format of a program and bring in more revenue even that way as well and just keep as many of the one-to-one hands-on in-person or yoga classes that you want to keep without feeling pressure to add more to get more revenue.
Okay, let’s go over the steps to create what type of processes of how you’ll work with your wellness clients online and get them results without using your hands or your body.
So we’ll go over the steps in an overview and then we’ll break it down:
Step number 1: You want to start with the end goals for your clients by recognizing the impact, the transformations that you make with them.
Step number 2: You want to clarify and document that in-person process for yourself, so you’re clear on how you do that.
Step number 3: You’re going to reflect on that methodology and start to expand your mind on alternative ways that you can achieve those same results.
Step number 4: Is going over and considering alternative methods.
Step number 5: Is implementing those alternative methods and practicing until you are insured that you can give, get people results online using the alternative methodologies.
So let’s break that down.
Also Read: How to Create More Time in Your Life and Business with the T.I.M.E Framework
Step Number 1: You Want To Start With The End Goals For Your Clients By Recognizing The Impact/The Transformations That You Make With Them
Number one, what does it mean? Recognize your impact, start with the end goal. So look at the wellness clients that you’ve worked with or students in the clinic, the studio, that you’ve helped to receive transformations. What type of transformations, what type of results do you typically get people? Write it down.
Maybe you help them to reduce pain. Now this is a tricky one. If you’re a rehab practitioner, hands-on rehab practitioner or a rehab practitioner that is exercise-based, for example, and you want to move online, you have to be aware, of course, that many of these rehab practices, you can’t work outside your state limits.
So if you want to work with someone outside your state, you’re going to have to transition from a pain type result or a reduction in pain type result or reduction in symptom relating to a specific diagnosis to more of a wellness-based result.
So it’s a slight switch in your brain, which we can get more into in the methodologies. But for now, just write down what that is. What are those results? Maybe you help someone reduce urinary leakage. Maybe you help them find more calm in their day-to-day. You increase their strengths. You improve their mobility. You reduce GI symptoms. You help them sleep through the night. You help them get more energy. You help them feel less anxious. You help them receive promotions, generate more revenue, become more connected to their significant other, develop more intimacy.
What is it for you? Write down the list. Take time to do that. And then pause. Think about the list and write down more. Get more specific.
Okay, if it is pain and if it is symptoms, what symptoms specifically? What pain did you help reduce specifically? And what was the goal that someone really wanted to? Why did they want to get out of the pain in the first place? Maybe they wanted to be able to attend any yoga class. Maybe they wanted to get back to hiking with their friends. Maybe they just wanted to be able to bend over and pick their baby up out of the crib or get onto the floor and play with their toddlers. What was the end goal of that? Because that’ll further clarify as you’re thinking your alternative methodologies which direction to go.
So write down the specific results achieved and how that positively impacted your clients, your patients’ lives. And here’s a bonus of this work: It’s really going to help reaffirm your confidence as a practitioner and the impact you’re making in the world. So you keep the momentum going for yourself that you are truly a skilled practitioner. You are making an impact. Look at all the people you’ve helped in all these variety of ways. Look at the impacts you made in their lives in terms of not only their ability to live the lives that they want but how it even impacts their children and why your prices are worth it. This work can be very reaffirming to believe and commit even more to your work.
Step Number 2: You Want To Clarify And Document That In-Person Process For Yourself, So You’re Clear On How You Do That
After you have that list of results, number two is you really want to clarify. So again, what do all those outcomes mean? What do all those transformations mean for your client’s wellness? Yes, and more importantly for their life, for maybe their connections with their spouse, their relationships with their children, their lineage, their legacy that they want to leave behind, future goals, how has the work that you’ve done impacted their future, the struggles of what kept them up at night? Why did they come to see you in the first place? What did they really want to achieve with you beyond just reducing symptoms, reducing pain, and getting stronger?
Dig into those whys because sometimes we realize, “Oh, okay, if I use my hands to help reduce their pain, for example, or their migraines, there might be alternative ways to do that where I can do that online.” So it starts to open your mind where instead of your brain getting fixated on the hands, the hands, that’s how I do it, now can circumvent that and instead focus on the true end result, the transformation that they really want. So write that down for yourself.
Must Read: 5 Secrets to getting a good night’s sleep even with Pain: Pain Management
Step Number 3: You’re Going To Reflect On That Methodology And Start To Expand Your Mind On Alternative Ways That You Can Achieve Those Same Results
And number three then is reflecting on the methods that you use to achieve those results. So it’s actually breaking down your session and being like, “Okay, when I first started seeing this person, I did an evaluation and then I gathered some objective measurements, I ran through some assessments, I got some baseline knowledge and then I did some manual work to achieve those results.” What manual work specifically and why? Or, “I did some exercises to do this or in a yoga private session, I gave some adjustments to achieve this and then in the next session, I did this.”
So break that down for a few clients that you know you got stellar results down. Write down that whole process on how you achieve those results and the specific methodologies that you used at that time in-person.
People Also Read: How Alyssa Morales Transformed Her Yoga Therapy Practice and Found Her Niche
Step Number 4: Going Over And Considering Alternative Methods
Okay, number four, now you’re going to consider some alternative methods. This is where our brain often likes to get stuck.
Well, for me, this is what would happen. If I can’t feel with my hands or actually unstick the fascia myself or clear the energy block myself or help them with this yoga wall technique in person, doing it myself, see a lot of me, me, me, then how can I help them to really achieve the result? And then I realized, “Oh, I need to adapt a different perspective.” And again, this is another shift from being a rehab practitioner to wellness based is more of, yes, you’re still going to be the guide, you’re still going to be the expert, but it’s not as dictarian.
So for example, if you go to the doctor, you’re going to list out your symptoms and they’re going to diagnose you and be like, “Okay, you have the flu, you need to do X, Y, Z.” Or, “You have this issue and you have to do X, Y, Z.” And then you say, “Thank you very much,” grab your prescription possibly, and you walk out the door.
The same is true with a lot of rehab practitioners. I know as a physical therapist, people would come to me with pain that maybe they thought possibly was sciatica. I would go through my assessments and my tests and then I would say, “Okay, yes, indeed, it is sciatica possibly coming from this and this. So I think we need to do this and this and you need to, in your home, how you live, how you function or bend over or drive, you need to do this and this.” And the person would say, “Okay, great!” And then you would say, “Do these exercises,” they would say, “Great.” And then they would walk out the door and leave with their homework, right? That was kind of the methodology that we’re imprinted in in school.
Also Read: 10 Ways to Ease Pain When You Have a Flare-Up: Pain Management
Here’s my philosophy. I’ve adopted more of a co-working, I guess you could say, type of dynamic where it is more client/patient led and it’s more less on my way or the highway, there’s only one way to do it and a broader perspective.
For me personally, this is the work of being curious and inquiring and asking lots of questions to get to why. Instead of just handing out the exercise program, hoping that they do it in their “spare time,” who the heck has spare time? And then hoping they come back the following week or later that week, improved in their symptoms, having done all the exercises diligently and to a T, it was more understanding of what is happening in their day to day, where they might get hung up in their time day to day. It’s more of a healthy lifestyle regimen and helping you to implement the practices that you will teach them, that you will guide them through so it’s more integrative into their day to day.
Instead of just giving them the exercises and then being like, “Oh, be gone with you now, I’m onto the next.” And truthfully, I think this is missing in a lot of Western medicine practices, however, not all practitioners. As you know, I am in Western medicine a lot to manage my Lynch syndrome and I found a team that really does sit down with me and ask me questions about my time, ask me questions about my day, ask me questions how I’m managing all my Lynch screening appointments and how is that going? So I do feel that there are some really great Western practitioners, but on a whole, it seems that a lot of Western practitioners are quick to just give out the diagnosis and the fix and then move onto the next person.
Must Read: Integrating Yoga, the Nervous System & Physical Therapy for Pain Reduction
So if you’re not using your hands or hands on adjustments to help create that fix or reduction in pain or improvement in movement, how do you do it? Well, some of it is through the conversation and a big part of that is nervous system work, which can be done through inquiring, asking lots of questions so someone has an awareness of their patterns, someone has an awareness of their triggers of their nervous system, which cause stress and anxiety, which clamp down on their muscles and restrictive movements, for example, in their neck or their hips or their shoulders. Some of it is through the nervous system of teaching them breath work or guiding them through mindful practices and visualizations to help down regulate, to create movement.
And of course, there’s a lot of techniques and modalities that you’ve done when you are doing step number three, reflecting on your methods. As you go through that list, you might star some that can easily transfer online, like demonstrating a yoga pose, demonstrating a core strengthening exercise. What might be different is maybe the speed that you’re demonstrating a new exercise or posture only because you want to break it down through more queuing or you demoing instead of guiding with your hands to help them into the pose. It has to be done more with words and specific queuing. So there might be a slight difference, but that for sure can transition online.
If you are doing restored poses with some breath work and visualization, then those, again, can also be transferred quite easily online. And then it’s just instructing more of the setup. If you’re a massage therapist and was 100% hands-on or like me, loves manual work and does a big part of your sessions is manual work, then you really have to dig deeper. And I really had to get into, “Okay, why is fascia getting stick in? Why is their mobility limited? And if I can’t address the fascia through my fingertips, how else can I do it?”
Must Read: How to Confidently Transition Your In-Person Wellness Skills to an Online Format
And that’s how I really got into the nervous system work. And I also learned and got other certifications. I know it’s taught out there that you don’t need another certification, you don’t need another certification, but if you really have been focusing on manual work for the last 10 years and you don’t have any other certifications, you might consider a yoga certification or a nutrition certification or a rolling certification because that will open the doors to a whole other avenue of helping people to reduce the fascia restrictions and create more mobility in their body.
So for me, I dug deep into yoga trainings that will help with the nervous system specifically. I got into mindfulness practices certifications. I dug into stress triggers, anxiety type certification. I also learned about rolling and I got a nutrition certification in terms of nutrition specifically to help reduce inflammation and irritation.
People Also Read: What To Do When You Finish Your Certification And Degree: A Guide for Wellness Entrepreneurs
And then after I got all these certifications, I really could see theoretically how I could help someone reduce pain, get more movement. Again, I had to change my languaging and how I was marketing. That is a whole other thing, but instead of saying like, reduce pain, let me help you with your back pain, online, it was more speaking to the end result, the transformation that they wanted. But I had all this knowledge now hypothetically that I could potentially help people receive these transformations online, but now I actually had to put it to practice.
Step Number 5: Implementing Those Alternative Methods And Practicing Until You Are Insured That You Can Give, Get People Results Online Using The Alternative Methodologies
And that is number five is hypothetically map out the process that you would walk someone through if they were to work with you online through these different modalities.
You can even do chakra, coaching, yoga, I named a few, and you could start to create your own frameworks, leaving flexibility for people to go at their own pace or be appropriate to the specific step that they might need at a given moment.
But the point is, is you got to get out there and start practicing with people, implementing it and then practicing with it. And then you’ll figure out the order of the modalities of, “Pkay, well, maybe I need to down-regulate the nervous system first and start with some restorative poses and breath work and maybe some visualization. Then I can get into some gentle movement and strengthening and maybe roll out some areas or I can look at some posture.”
You’ll start to figure out your own unique process for working with people online. And when you can replicate that with getting people results in one-to-one online, then you know, “Okay, now I can create more specific unique frameworks that’s more of my own methodology now because it’s this hybrid of my skillset and experience of working with people one-to-one in person for a while.” Now you can bring it and you’ll feel more confident to teach it to a group of people and make it more scalable.
Conclusion
So there you have it. Some ideas to start to transition from in-person, especially hands-on manual work to online. So I’ll go over those steps again.
Number one, it’s starting with the angles of your clients. What was the impact that you made in their lives? What were the results that you helped them to achieve?
Then number two, clarify and really dig into those results. How did it impact their life? How did those results actually impact the people that they care about in their lives as well? Write down the deeper transformations that you help people achieve because then when you’re thinking of alternative methods, you can be like, oh, “Okay, well, I can use coaching and questions to help understand why they’re not showing up to yoga classes every day or why they feel so anxious,” for example.
Number three, you want to reflect on the specific methodologies and orders and processes that you use to get people results within one session and then within a series of sessions because often sometimes our processes go more than one session. What do you do? First session, second session, towards the end of a package, all your processes and methodologies.
And then number four, consider what methods can you replicate online and star those and then what methodologies cannot be replicated online and what are alternative methodologies to replace those to get the results, the transformations that they really want, not just the symptom reduction, but to get the results that people want. And do you need a certification to help achieve those results like coaching, like yoga, like mobility certification to supplement your knowledge so you feel more confident ensuring that you do have skills to transfer your work online and get people results.
And then number five, implement your theoretical processes and skills to get people results online and practice it. So maybe it’s offering some free sessions, pitching it to your friends and family and having them go for it or offer some of your current in-person patients or massage clients. “Will you meet with me for 45 minutes online? I want to try out some of these online practices and see how they feel in your body.” Just offer a free session to them or a discounted session to start just to get some confidence and make sure that you are able to see progress with these newer alternative methodologies of helping people with their health and wellness.
Okay, there you have it. I’m curious to know your thoughts. So always message me if you get stuck or you can even better yet, just head to the website and hit the consult call and I can help you create this process individually for yourself.
All right, I’ll see you on a consult call or next week on the podcast. Bye for now.
Important Links To Visit:
The Secrets to Attaining 6-Figure Success as a Wellness Entrepreneur
Strategies and Mindsets for Wellness Entrepreneurs to Achieve Five-Figure Months
Turn Your Brick-and-Mortar Business into a Successful Online Program
