Have you ever ended a workday at your massage business and felt so drained you wondered if this is the right profession for you? Have you ever said goodbye to a client and wished they never booked with you again?

This feeling of regular exhaustion is not a symptom of poor hands-on skills. Your massage skills are solid. Instead of signing up for another technique workshop, pay more attention to how you establish your professional boundaries, how you respond to boundary violations, and how you maintain professional boundaries as your relationship with a client evolves over time.  

In this course, we’ll define professional boundaries with clear directives and examples. You’ll learn to rest in the structure created by your knowledge and professionalism. Together, we’ll unravel complex client-therapist scenarios and use behaviors and language that keep sessions on track, even when clients misbehave.

With more attention to professional boundaries, those dispiriting workdays will be a thing of the past. We’ll remember why we wanted to practice massage in the first place, feel energized by seeing our clients make progress towards their wellness goals, and derive satisfaction from the good work we do in a profession we love.  

The digital textbook titled, Boundaries: The Foundation of Ethical Massage Practice is required for completion of this course. That textbook was included in your purchase of the first course of this series, which is a prerequisite to this second course of the boundaries series. 

Prerequisite: Learners must complete Course 01: Personal Space & Personal Boundaries in an Ethical Massage Practice and Course 02: Essential Boundary Skills in an Ethical Massage Practice before they begin this course.

HEALTHY PROFESSIONAL BOUNDARIES

• Introduction
• Learning Objectives
• Terminology Preview
• Professionalism
• Physical Boundaries
• Sexual Boundaries
• Sensory Boundaries
• Psychological Boundaries
• Emotional Boundaries
• Privacy Boundaries
• Autonomy Boundaries
• Ownership Boundaries
• Dual Relationships
• Apply It! (2 Activities)
• Practice Quiz (10 Questions)

FINAL COURSE EXAMINATION (20 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS)

Having completed the content in this course, you will be able to:

• Define These Terms: Client confidentiality, dual relationships, informed consent, intimacy, self-disclosure.
• List two ways professionalism helps a massage therapist establish boundaries with clients.
• Compare and contrast information that is appropriate to disclose to a client with information that is inappropriate to disclose to a client.
• Compare and contrast healthy intimacy with unhealthy intimacy in a therapeutic relationship.
• Explain why touch is reserved for the massage session in setting appropriate physical boundaries with clients.
• List two exceptions to the “no touch except during the massage boundary.”
• List five behaviors considered sexual and therefore prohibited in a massage business.
• Describe two items you should include in a zero-tolerance for sexual behavior and sex discrimination policy document.
• Outline the four-step response to client sexual behavior.
• Describe one way to empower client sensory boundaries during a massage session.
• List two ways to ensure you don’t cross a client’s psychological boundary during a massage session.
• Explain why a massage therapist’s emotional boundary may become permeable and why this could have a negative impact on client sessions.
• List one example of a massage therapist crossing out of their scope of practice during a client’s emotional response to bodywork.
• List two ways a therapist may violate a client’s privacy boundaries.
• Explain the limits to client confidentiality and how clients are appraised of these limits.
• Outline the information that should be included in client informed consent documents.
• Describe two ways client ownership boundaries are violated during massage sessions.
• State two examples of dual relationships that are generally permissible in a massage practice.
• Explain when a dual relationship is unethical in a massage practice.
• Give an example of a boundary complication that might occur in a dual relationship with a family member or friend.

Learners must complete Course 01: Personal Space & Personal Boundaries in an Ethical Massage Practice and Course 02: Essential Boundary Skills in an Ethical Massage Practice before they begin this course.

To complete this course (Course 03: Healthy Professional Boundaries in an Ethical Massage Practice) work through the materials in Lesson 04: Healthy Professional Boundaries in the digital textbook titled, Boundaries: The Foundation of Ethical Massage Practice.

You do not need to complete Lessons 01, 02, and 03 to meet the requirements for this course because you learned this material as part of the prerequisites for this course. 

Please click the “mark complete” button at the bottom of each webpage in the digital textbook to log your progress through the appropriate sections.  You must pass the final course examination from the link at the bottom of this Course Area with a score of 70% or higher.