Julie Onofrio
Julie has been practicing massage and bodywork for 20 years in Downtown Seattle. She graduated from Seattle Massage School (now Ashmead College) in 1988 and began a practice in a health club in 1989 in downtown Seattle. Since then she has built her practice and taken many classes along the way. Her most intensive study has been through the International Zentherapy® Institute which is a combination of Structural Integration (based on his training with Ida Rolf), meditation and using energy in the practice of bodywork. Other classes she has taken include Reflexology, a Leon Chaitow workshop, Deep Tissue, Somatic Unwinding, reflexology and a few Feldenkrais classes. Her current work involves using the physical techniques that she has learned with body psychotherapy techniques.
Her life before bodywork was a career in the commercial photography industry that was always stressful. (Everyone needed everything yesterday!) When she realized she was putting in all these long, hard hours to pay for the owner’s year off while he built his own sail boat and sailed around the world, she decided there must be a better way! She found herself in massage school within 2 weeks and the rest is history.
Julie started www.thebodyworker.com in 1999. It was initially a project to set up an apprenticeship program for massage therapy in Washington State. While gathering information to put a program together, she realized how many “hoops” you have to jump through to become approved, accredited, etc, etc. She is not much for politics and credentials - so this is what has come about - A website with free access to all the materials needed to be a massage therapist/bodyworker.
Also, through the years she has seen many friends take up massage, only to give it up later. Even after graduating from accredited schools and passing all the exams, they were not able to succeed in business. They didn’t realize how much was involved other than the hands on part. Marketing, business planning, billing and managing a practice were such a struggle. With that in mind, Julie hopes to provide support for all those who have chosen to explore the art and practice of massage and bodywork while maintaining a business.
At that time, she also felt really burned out from practicing massage since 1989. She read an article in the local AMTA chapter newsletter by Jack Blackburn (www.presensingsource.com) - talking about the hidden addictions in doing bodywork and the issues we are faced with as caregivers. She went to the AMTA convention specifically to meet Jack and took a 3 hour class that he was offering. The result was two more websites www.massagepracticebuilder.com and www.massagetherapycareers.com.
After learning about supervision, she has rededicated herwebsites to educating massage therapists about the process of supervision and peer supervision groups. She feels that the future of the massage profession depends on our strengthening our community and preserving the core of all modalities and that is touch. Supervision and peer supervision groups will be instrumental in providing a forum for such a community.
She has found that one of the first things people really need before they can start understanding the influence they have on clients, is that they need clients. They need a viable practice to sustain them financially. With this in place, a committed therapist can then take the necessary steps to deepen their practice through the community support of peer supervision groups. With that in mind she is currently updating the websites to include even more information. When this information is assimilated and passed on, it allows wisdom to become the basis of a healing practice.
Julie also believes that a successful massage (or other healing) practice, is really because of the therapist and who they are. It is not what technique you know or how many hours of education they have. It is 90% who you are and 10% what you do. Supervision and peer supervision is also the way to support the therapist in their process of healing.
Julie is available for email consultations as well as in person and phone consultations to help massage therapists in dealing with all aspects of starting, building or maintaining a massage practice or finding a job.
Thanks!
Yours in service,
Julie Onofrio
Editor, Explorer, Webmaster, Student, Janitor
