Holiday fuss can so easily intrude on your practice. In all the hustle and bustle of places to be and errands to run, it can be easy to skip your simple self-care. After all, you had to use your lunch break to run to that one shop for that special gift, right? It’s important to know, that when you do self-skimp, it shows. Clients can not only tell, but they can feel, when something in you isn’t wholly stable.

One time, I was receiving a massage from a therapist whose hands were actually shaking as she worked on me. I waited a couple minutes, thinking that it would pass, but it just became more pronounced. So, I requested that she pause, and I asked her what was the matter. She admitted that she had skipped lunch and was feeling a little low blood sugar.

“Did you know I could tell?” I said to her. “I could actually feel you shaking.”

She was surprised—and also a little bit embarrassed. Who wouldn’t be? We ended up working it out where she stepped out of the room for five minutes and had a quick snack. She came back and finished the massage, and it felt a lot better.

As a fellow therapist, I was glad to see her rally like that, but as her client, though, I was a little bummed that I received what amounted to a sub-par experience given those five minutes, as well as what had come before. When we come into the massage room, we need to be ready to present our best selves to our clients so as to give them the best, most effective massage that we can.