Hello... My name ish Bond, Jamsh Bond.......
I couldn't resist Rosemary, lol.

My worst blooper was last year. I had instructed an early 20ish client (young enough to be my daughter) who had never had a massage before to disrobe down to her briefs and we would be working with her lying face down. Thinking back, I don't recall specifying that she should lay in between the sheets. On returning to the room, I knock on the door asking if she is ready. Yep, so I walk in and finder her on top of the table with only her bikini underwear on asking "is this how you wanted me?" Aahhhh NO with a bit of redness in my face. I then proceeded to act as if nothing had gone wrong and helped her under the sheet and blanket.

I make sure to specify to clients I want them in between the sheets these days.

I Bloopered myself! How do you do that you may ask?!??! Well, if you are completely embarassed and are all by yourself, I say that counts! Not too long ago, I had just arrived at my shop. I was in the back and I heard someone walk in the front door and say to the gal at the front desk, "I hear you have the best massage place in town. The hospital just sent me down here." I'm by myself in the back, remember, no one can see, and I started doing this awful booty dance. I can not dance to save my life. I had to quickly stop myself, because all I could visualize was "Chunk", from "The Goonies" doing the shuffle. What do you think? Does that make it count?!?!? :):):):):):):):)

funny..just yesterday a woman who has never received a professional massage, I had explained to her that she was to get underneath the sheet..I step out..she says ok.. you can come on in..don't ya know that she was on her belly with the sheet down to her ankles with her rear end sticking out...that was a first for me..she is from Bermuda...sooo maybe they do things a bit different there..who knows

Marissa, maybe my story will make you feel better: On a Saturday morning a couple years ago, I gave a massage to a first-time client, a gentleman who had never had a massage before. The session went very well, and I was finishing work on his back while standing on a small stool for a bit of extra leverage, because I'm short. I balanced his energy, then carefully stepped off the stool (which was only about 8" off the floor) at which time the stool tipped and sent me flying into the wall! I left a dent in the wall from my head and landed squarely on my sacrum...and both my legs went numb. Pretty scary at the time. The nice man (who at this point was still feeling fluffy from the massage) asked if I was okay, and I had to ask him to please get the chiropractor I was working with (it was either that, or ask him to help me up)...so the poor guy had to hurry and get his trousers on and he poked his head out the door and yelled (to an office full of clients), "WE NEED SOME HELP IN HERE!" Good grief. As if that wasn't bad enough, my big, burly chiro rushed in and picked me up off the floor and propped me against the table (still on my knees) and the feeling came back to my legs. After a couple more minutes I was able to walk and any SI problems I used to have from horseback riding were history; it was like I had just had the mother of all chirporactic adjustments! It made me think of that Simpson's episode where Homer tripped over the garbage can and it "fixed" his back, so he set up a chiropractic studio in his garage so he could fix the neighbors too. It all turned out fine...I'm certainly okay (but for the dent in the wall that still makes me laugh) and I now have a new stool to stand on. I also gave the nice client a complimentary half-hour session the next time and he has been coming in ever since.

Love it! Love it! Love it! Keep them coming! The visuals you all are creating are priceless and I'm finding myself thinking about them and grinning all day!

Welcome all new members! Don't be shy! Please add your "funnies" so we can all get a good chuckle!

After reading some of the blooper stories, I remembered a few from my early days.
1. My first job in a MD's office. I was working on a man's back and leaned over the table to finish the long stroke. He started moving around and didn't say anything. I looked down and noticed that I had pinched his hands on the front of the table with my legs.OOPS! How funny he never said a word. I thought about doing it two more times so that he'd think it was part of the massage.
2. I had a nasty groin pull that was healing. While giving a massage, I walked around the edge of the table and slipped on a rug. The pain was so intense I almost fainted. Client didn't see me doubled over in pain, it hurt worse than ever.
3. On the way to a home visit at a client's mansion, I had some bad gas. I opened the windows and thought that it was over. Well, near the end of the massage there was an earthquake in my guts. I pinched my cheeks and soldiered on. Hoping I could make it through the end. As I was packing my table and planning my escape, the client wanted to rebook. Sweating and turning bright red, I asked if could use the bathroom. Made it in the nick of time, hoping his wife wouldn't hear the noises. Whew.

Ahh, memories.

Hi all I do alot of deep tissue work and with this particular client alls going well untill suddenly without warning whilst I was applying elbow into gleute maximus he lets rip a maximus amount of gas........well what do you do ? ... as professional as ever, I carried on with the technique and said reassuringly " dont worry sir it happens all the time....Yeah right. ......haven't seen him since... please tell me why ? So folks go easy on the elbow in gleutes routine you may release more than muscular tension..

I had a woman come in who was sensitive to scented candles, oils, etc. I found some unscented tealites that I'd gotten for a christmas gift that had glittered snowmen on them. Several clients later, I look over at my tealite holders and all 3 are on fire! They had burned down to the bottom and the glitter ignited. I blew them out and within 5 seconds every smoke alarm in the office went off. The chiro I work for started opening doors while holding her ears, the next room was yelling to open a window, and the woman on my table just laughed and laughed. Definitely got everyone's attention in the office. Note to self...don't use cheap glittered tealites!!

my favorite blooper goes like this....

i was still in school and at the time we were encouraged to experiement with lotions/creams and music. i took that whole heartedly. so i went online and did a search for music with acoustic guitar. not a big fan of flutes and asian inspired music but i LOVE acoustic guitar. so i made myself a cd of music i had found. i would listen to a little bit of it and decide if i wanted it on my cd.

so i'm in the middle of a massage...i mean right in the middle. just turned him over and a beautiful song started. really nice acoustic guitar starts up. the client is completely relaxed. then out of the blue it changes to serious HARD heavy metal. OMG!! i ran over to the cd player and quickly skipped it. luckily it was a person i had been working with throughout school.

lesson learned...listen to the WHOLE song before committing to it in a session. :)

Welcome to all new members! Thanks for sharing with us! Keep them coming! I feel that we all need to know that we are all in the same place! We make mistakes and we have to laugh at ourselves and keep on truckin!

If you guys are ok with it, Can I use some of your examples for my Fun massage network news videos? I'll change the names to protect the silly and ridiculous . lol :)

Fell free! Obviously, I have nothing to hide!

These are great! lol

Hey guys! Give Gloria the O.K. to spread the humor for her new video!

I'm cool with it!

No problem Gloria ......you's got to add one of your own though.....its only fair

Stephen, I am thinking about it....will have one in the near future. ;)

no problems here

here's another...not sure if it's a blooper but...

so i had this one client that would come in regularly as one of my practice clients during schooling. it was early on in my education...we were still learning your basic swedish massage. with each session the guy became more and more relaxed.

so one day i'm giving him a session...checking in as usual to pressure. he doesn't really say anything so i figure i'm doing good. well i do a stroke and he starts twitching. i pause and look at him and figured my pressure was too deep and that was his body's way of telling me. do another stroke he starts twitching again. at this point now...his hands are starting to twitch even when i'm not doing a stroke and i get panicky in my head thinking i've hurt the guy. till it dawns on me that he's SLEEPING!!!

phew.

DOH. :)

Ok here goes... so, I, 20 + years ago had a chiropractor friend of mine help me get started with my practice, in his office. Naturally, I wanted everything to be "perfect and professional". Clientele was building and an older woman referred her "good friend". The friend, a male, about mid 70's came in and said he was nervous about massage. So, I went through a whole professional chat with him. I explained only the body part I'm working on will come out from the sheet and then i'll recover him. He sighed with great relief. He said he was very shy. Of course, I wanted to honor that and believe him. So I proceeded cautiously and respectfully. About half way through the massage he said it was hot in the room. I offered to check the A/C and he said oh no honey that's ok. So I kept giving him his massage being ever so mindful not to expose him. It was time to turn supine. He Whips off the sheet....totally naked obviously, saying he is just so hot. I immediately pulled the sheet over him and told him it was state regulation that he needed to stay draped. He ripped off the sheet again and said oh no, it's ok, i'm hot. I proceeded again to cover him. Being naive of course. I have to laugh at my self now. Then he proceeded to say "honey, who was shy? I said, you sir.....needless to say he never returned. His friend wanted to know everything when she came back and was so happy he received a massage. What was I to say? lol. Oh thank you for the referral???? ;)

Gloria, I'm fine with your plan. In fact, if you put a head-sized dent in some drywall, you'd even have a visual prop from my best blooper!

Marilyn- That one still gets me going every time I read it!

Yeah, Marissa, I still roll my eyes when I look at that part of the wall. ;o)

My first massage session out of school was equally entertaining, but in a different way. We've probably all heard about eventually getting a client who expects the~um~happy ending? I got mine at my VERY FIRST session. I guess it was never a serious consideration on my part because of my age...and in this case, I was old enough to be his mother. But as a newbie, I was just concentrating on using my new techniques on somebody other than a classmate. It was at the very end of the session when any lack of confidence in my own skills was dispelled in the space of a few seconds, when (1) I realized how valuable my past judo training was; and (2) how grateful I was to have learned to think on my feet after years in a corporate environment! Of course this was all done with as much professional poise as I could muster as a fledgling therapist. The guy left and still plopped a sizeable tip on the desk on his way out ... and I now focus mostly deep tissue work!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnMX1HGnPSg

Tracy, this one is for you, inspired by you!
Candles in your massage practice :)

Very cool Gloria! Glad I could help. LOL!

The "happy ending" story is not really a record of your blooper but rather of your client's big one. Amusing, but I am still confused as to why your judo skills were needed. I've been a massage therapist for over 20 years now and every time I have had a guy request a hand job all I have ever felt the need to do is tell him "Not happening, hon" or words to that effect. I do have a fly swatter in my room, but I've only ever used it on flies.

My worst blooper was when I was a fledgling energy worker and I forgot to ground myself before I started doing chakra balancing on a person (fortunately my friend and another massage therapist) who was carrying a load of energy about her life and her husband dying of brain cancer in particular, and as she relaxed and trusted that negative charge to flow out of her it stuck in my energy body momentarily and actually knocked me out cold -- I was unconscious, slumped on my stool at the head of the table and my arms stretched out along side my client, head down, and as I began to recover I could hear my friend/client calling gently "Ellie, are you all right?" What a lesson that was. We expect to have to deal with issues for our clients and are not prepared for when something goes dreadfully wrong with us! I knew there was a reason why they always told us to be sure we were grounded before we did energy work, I just didn't realize how extremely powerful energy can actually be.

You know, I've been an MT for 7 years and I have never had anyone request anything inappropriate. Other than my hubby. He doesn't count. I have had several marriage proposals by both sexes though. Hmmmm... What little ego I have is rapidly deflating.

I have to say that I believe that where you are working (that is geographically) has a lot to do with whether people make inappropriate comments. I have done massage in big cities on the west coast and now I am located in a small town in the Ozarks. Only here have people ever assumed that massage had anything to do with sex, and I believe it is because the places I was on the west coast were more cosmopolitan and the people were better informed. I know this probably sounds "regionalist" or "classist", but I believe it is simply reality.

Now that I am way over 50 no one ever gets inappropriate with me. I think that it is a combination of my very straightforwardness and the fact that I tend to do deep tissue work. Once I have dug into their supraspinatus and rhomboids, I think they are afraid to ask me to touch anything so delicate as their penis, actually.

Now my ego is deflated. No one has ever asked to marry me!

Hi everyone,
have just started school and have completed my first 10 weeks. I know that this is the work that I was meant to do and nothing really earth shaking has happened to me yet. But I know that there is the possibility. Thank you all for sharing your "bloopers". I have had quite a laugh reading all of them. I start working in my school's student clinic soon- I'll let you know if anything happens with me.

Boy, I just thought of another mistake I made once. When I was making a new appointment, I was flipping pages in my book while we found a mutually acceptable time. I wrote the person down in my book on the wrong week, and did not catch it. I did write the correct time and date on their appointment card. Then, I booked the appointment time to someone else, since my client's name was not written on the right week. Imagine my embarrassment when the original client showed up for her appointment a few minutes early and I looked at my book and realized that in a very few minutes I was going to have another client on my steps.

Thank God neither person was a new client, both had been coming to me for several years. I confessed what I had done and asked told them I had numerous options open for rebooking for both of them. What wound up happening is that one of them went off to go shopping for a couple of hours, and I did them both back to back. We all had a good laugh about that, and it has made me much more understanding with people who miss their appointments because their calendars were messed up.

Ellie, you may be right about the difference a location makes in the way people tend to embrace massage. I have only worked in the Detroit suburbs but have had clients from all over. The clients from other parts of the country and especially Canada, seem to have a much higher respect for bodywork in general.

FYI, the "blooper" that had to include judo took place at a massage school and involved me quickly extricating my shoulder from a rather demanding grip without hurting myself or the client. I guess my Blooper was letting it happen in the first place, but at 55 it didn't occur to me that I had to keep my guard up, especially at a school! I am in a chirporactor's office now, a medical environment tends to change peoples' mindset too.

I have actually done this -TWICE! When getting ready for a massage I usually say "I am going to step out of the room now so you can get undressed." My blooper was I have instead said "I'm going to take my clothes off now." I got surprised looks from my clients. Fortunately they were women and laughed when they how horrified I was for my error!

On the dual notes of both happy endings and saying the wrong thing, I've got a good story. I was once working on a woman's subscapularis; as is to be expected, it was not the most comfortable and relaxing of work. She was a real trooper, though, and by way of encouragement I told her, "Ah, just a little bit more, and then we'll end with something happy."

I was talking about finishing the session with a scalp massage, but realized exactly what I'd said after a couple of beats. I corrected myself by saying, "Um. Wait. That didn't come out quite the way I meant it to."

My client laughed and said that she and her husband had been joking about "happy endings" earlier that day. We both wound up laughing til we were nearly in tears. :)

Marilyn, I have never had a client grab me, thank heavens! I might have had to use my fly swatter!

Speaking of things not quite coming out right, when I was first doing massage and I was ready for my client to change from back to front I told him "Okay, you can roll over now and put your face in the hole." After a beat when he gave me a very odd look, I added "in the face cradle!" I think I actually blushed once I realized the implications of what I had ordered him to do. We did both laugh after a couple of seconds. Laughter is always a good tension easer.

Welcome to all new members! Thank you all for sharing! Keep everyone laughing folks! This is great stuff!

When I was at the school in training and technical evaluation a new group student was offered to model. For some reason my friend decided to start the massage prone. By the end asks to the guy to take a supine position. And here comes the embarrassment moumment, the sheets were fine and clear color when the guy was on his back, he had a very noticeable erection. All students looked enduring desire to laugh, my friend did not know where to look, so that another student took a towel to place over the guy. The poor new student after the situation did not dare return to model and receive massage.

lol

So, I recently started doing the Bellanina Facelift Massage treatment. Very exciting, I must say. Well, I had to be the one who asked in the seminar how many times, when first starting, do you end up poking someone in the eye or sticking your finger up their nose. These things happen to me all the time, so I needed to be prepared. There were a few chuckles, but no answer. So, of course, my first week out, I'm in the "zone" doing the treatment and I actually poked someone in the eye! Luckily it was a dear friend and we just kept on laughing.

The female feel up!! You girls know what I'm talking about!! The naturally very well endowed client who hangs to the side; and when you do arm work tend to brush
up or even grab accidentally!!! How embarrasing!

I've done that! Now before any work like that, I security strap them in with the sheet. I always make a joke of it when they question why I'm doing it. I tell them that we just don't want anything popping out to say hi!

Gosh, I never worried about that sort of thing. But since I got my table with breast recesses it has ceased to even be a small problem. If you are going to be getting a new table, I heartily recommend springing the extra bucks for the breast recesses. Not only does it eliminate the side hand, it allows women's backs to be flat rather than bowed over all the stuff in front and makes the release of tension in the rhomboid area much more effective.

Hmmm. If I have to work on a well-endowed client (mainly when it's an enhancement), I offer a towel as a bolster when she's prone. Personally, the boob-recess and face-hole tables kind of creep me out.

I just had the unfortunate tummy talking session. It would not shut up! Of course it had to happen when I was working the back. Very close to client ear range there! Both of us couldn't help but start giggling about it.

My most memorable blooper...I was renting a room for only a month while changing massage locations. In this temp space, I had to bring all my stuff for my sessions - including a space heater. Well, I'm setting up for my first appointment and as soon as I turn it on, I blow the power to the room. I'm not too concerned because fortunately it didn't affect the rest of the studio. BUT, after a couple minutes I learn that the alarm system is located in my room and without power it starts to beep REALLY loud. So, now the other couple therapists and their clients who are in the studio hear the beeping and I couldn't find the fuse box. So, I'm scrambling around the office looking for it, calling the studio owner to figure out where it's at...and then actually needed to interrupt an appointment to flip the fuse. Of course, my client had to arrive in the middle of the chaos and I had to escort her into a pitch black room to wait until I fixed the issue. I could only laugh about it, but I made sure I had a different space heater the next time. Lesson learned!

Welcome new members! Glad you are here and thanks for sharing. Laughter is truly the best medicine. Take a look at all our stories and you'll feel better in no time! :)

It's been awfully quiet here lately! I'll share! For some reason recently, I have had an abundance of too eager to get on the table clients. They're cracking me up. Most of them are half stripped down before I'm out the door to wash up! A few of them have caught themselves in mid-strip and become embarrassed. I, of course, make light of it and respond with a "keep your clothes on, I'm going!". Lots of chuckles and the massage goes on...

Well, during my 90 minute session, I experienced some flatulence from my body. Not sure if my client heard, but if so, he was nice and didn't say anything. More than 1/2 way through, Mother Nature called me, and I had to excuse myself to use the restroom. Again, my client was very good natured about it. But, now I know to use the restroom prior to a long session.

I live in the Colorado Rockies and my boyfriend and I have a small hobby farm. In the summer, we have goats, turkeys, and rabbits, along with a couple of dogs and a cat. Oftentimes, we'll let the goats free range as mobile weedeaters.

Goats like grass and weeds, but they like grain even more. A LOT more. Unfortunately, too much grain at once can make them very sick or even kill them.

The other day, the goats discovered the cooler where we keep our turkey feed. I'd just gotten a new bag and the cooler hadn't shut all the way. The goats had gotten the cooler open, ripped apart the bag, and were merrily gorging themselves on the feed.

Of course, I discovered this while I had a client at the house, about a minute before he was going to get on the table.

I threw my Chakos on and went running out of the house. I barreled down the stairs and raced towards the turkey coop, hollering at the goats the entire way. They scattered like a school of fish and I slammed the cooler lid down, only to hear my client on the deck behind me, applauding me and cheering on my goatherding skills. *facepalm* (Luckily, he was a good friend . . . but still!)

Hmmm no new stories in a while... maybe this counts.. I had a new client one evening and discussed the procedure of getting onto the table and what I would do and blah blah blah... Well either I was not precise enough or he just did not even listen to me. When I entered the room (after knocking, of course) I found my client sitting in only his little white underpants! I definitely was more embarassed than he was, he really didn't even care. I quickly ushered him to the table and under the sheets. Now every time I have a new client, I make sure I'm very clear about where I want them when I enter the room!

Massage oil up the nose
I have been doing massage therapy for 23 years. It was about my seventh year of doing massage, I was working on a client and I asked her if I could use some arnica oil on her, she said yes. I said would you like to smell it? She was lying prone, so I put the bottle up to her nose and squeezed it, well it went up her nose! I felt terrible. I offered an apology, she started laughing ,so did I we both had a good belly laugh. Lucky for me I had been seeing her for years