Bodywork is practiced in many forms. Recently, I made some effort to count the number of modalities that are taught by what appear to be reputable schools and institutes around the world, and that control with some form of governance – and mostly through licensing and accreditation – how these modalities are practiced by their students. I stopped when my list included fifty-five names.

My list was far from conclusive, and it was never my intention to make it so. Instead, I wanted to create a high-level overview of the bodywork modalities that seem to receive most attention on the internet, and specifically across social media. More importantly, I wanted to ensure that I stayed familiar with forms of bodywork that are out there, and how these are taught and practiced. More important still was my intention to understand how each of these modalities claimed to contribute to the physical and emotional healing of their recipients.

What caught my attention was that most of the sites I visited failed to describe how bodywork practitioners were to support their clients after their treatments. In fact, much of the information I read implied – if not bluntly stated – that therapists are not required to provide client care outside their appointment times.

Explaining the Therapeutic Accumulation Curve

To see why I don’t agree with that suggestion, and why I believe ongoing client care is necessary, it might be helpful to understand what the Therapeutic Accumulation Curve (TAC) is about. This curve is a hypothetical model that illustrates what an ideal therapeutic bodywork process should look like.

Broadly, the model illustrates how the therapeutic effects of bodywork should accumulate over time. In this example, six session are performed at five-day intervals, over a thirty-day period. When a new client enters this treatment plan, the first improvements can only be made during the first session. Then, when the therapist keeps the designs of following sessions attuned with previous therapeutic achievements, the client is likely to experience an accumulation of benefits that helps her achieve her therapeutic objectives quickest.

In the diagram above, the improvements that were observed during the second session are illustrated by a dark-blue section marked ATI, which stands for Accumulated Therapeutic Improvement. Essentially, this ATI section indicates that the work the therapist performs during Session 2 builds on what was achieved during Session 1. For the entire treatment plan to be successful, each treatment must build on the improvements made during previous sessions.

The music lives between the notes

For the Therapeutic Accumulation Curve to work properly, it is important for the therapist to carefully consider the frequency by which sessions are conducted. This is because the client will experience most of the therapeutic effects not during sessions but during post-treatment periods. Treatments are nothing but catalysts that set in motion the healing processes, which can continue for days after the therapeutic work completes.

If treatments are performed too frequently, the client may not be given enough time to integrate the changes sufficiently, which could cause physical over-manipulation and possibly emotional overwhelm. On the other hand, planning the sessions out too far apart diminishes the accumulation effect, which could mean that more sessions will be needed to achieve the desired therapeutic outcomes.

What a famous composer once said about his symphonies – “music is what emerges between the notes” – holds very much true also for bodywork therapies we offer. As with music, the real physical and emotional change magic happens between treatments. And this is precisely why we believe that our care model should also cover those all-important in-between periods. These are the periods in which clients need support most.

Be where clients need us most

With an every growing number of clients it has become practically impossible to provide ongoing care to each individually. Staying firm on our intention to stay available to our clients between treatments we introduced our Telegram Messenger channel mid 2022. Over time we gradually broadened this channel’s purpose by also using it to announce new booking opportunities and to promote special bodywork offers. The channel’s main purpose remained undiluted, which saw a steady increase in subscribers over the last few months.

The channel also offers us a means to keep our client communications constrained to one platform. It helps us reduce the messages we receive by email, text, and Facebook messenger for example, which can make it sometimes difficult to respond in a timely fashion. What’s more, it also allowed us to switch off on our devices all communication notifications except, of course, for the messages we receive through Telegram.

The channel has proven to be useful. Between 1 September and 1 December we received no less than 189 messages from clients. More than half asked for suggestions on how to deal with post-therapeutic effects and symptoms. We also received rafts of wonderful feedback, and fewer questions about our booking system.

Therapeutic Accumulation Curve caveats

It is important to understand that the TAC diagram presented above illustrates an ideal treatment plan scenario. Although it illustrates correctly how therapeutic improvements can accumulate throughout a treatment plan, reality is of course not as predictable as suggested.

During the early stages of a new treatment plan specifically the therapist will be on a steep curve to learn more about his client’s physical, emotional, and mental aspects. The first few session may therefore result in little improvements, and in some cases no improvements at all. However, during these sessions the therapist will learn more about the client, which contributes greatly to the design of the personalised treatments the client needs. Any learning still contributes to the creation of ATI, even when therapeutic improvements remain initially absent for the client.

It is also impossible for a therapist to predict the exact number of treatments the client will need to achieve a therapeutic objective. This is especially true when there is no working history with the client; when her conditions are complex, and her treatment goals ambitious. Although some predictions can be made tentatively for concerns that are relatively simple and common, no health care provider can ever offer concrete promises about a client’s improvement trajectory. This does not render the TAC diagram useless or obsolete because it still illustrates what a well-planned and properly managed therapeutic plan could or even should look like.

The importance of our Telegram Messenger Channel

At Advaya Healing we prove daily that with proper therapeutic care, professionally managed treatment plans, proper use of best-in-class techniques and methods, and true, dedicated concern for the well-being of all our clients, the TAC model we discussed above can be brought successfully to life.

All this rests on the comprehensive care model we offer clients. Our Telegram Messenger Channel is an essential element of this model. It enables us to stay in contact with all our clients, and to offer support, advice, and answers on demand. As the number of subscribers grows, and the interactions we maintain with them increases, we believe that this part of our service will become more important to our clients and ourselves.

If you are a client, and are not subscribed to our Telegram Messenger Channel yet, visit this page to learn how to do so now.