Continuing Education Workshops with Hillary Arrieta, LMT

Most barefoot massage training teaches you how to use your feet.

I teach you how to feel, think, and work differently in your body.

This is for therapists who:
• Are tired of burning out their hands
• Want real depth without brute force
• Care about fascia, not just pressure
• Are ready to evolve—not just collect techniques

This is NOT for:
• Brand collectors
• “Just give me a routine” learners
• Therapists who aren’t ready to change how they work

Inside my trainings, we focus on:
• Fascia-informed barefoot work (FasciAshi)
• Nervous system-aware pressure
• Longevity in your career
• Clinical thinking you can apply immediately

Most of my students don’t just learn a new modality…
They change how they practice entirely.

If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re in the right place.

If not, there are plenty of other classes out there—and that’s okay.

👇
Tell me—what’s currently the hardest thing on your body in your massage practice?

There’s a difference between curiosity and commitment—and in this profession, that difference matters.

I’m going to share an unpopular truth: watching, filming, or “picking up” techniques during a session is not education. It’s not training. And it’s not how you build a legitimate, sustainable practice.

Massage therapy is a licensed profession for a reason. What we do affects real bodies, real nervous systems, and real outcomes.

Techniques, especially specialized ones like barefoot work require more than observation. They require structured education, supervised practice, safety protocols, body mechanics, contraindications, and a deep understanding of why something works, not just how it looks.

“Feel and steal” might seem harmless, but it undermines professionalism, disrespects the work of educators, and ultimately shortchanges your clients.

It creates a gap between what is advertised and what is actually delivered and that gap erodes trust in our entire field.

Read that again.

If you’re new and eager to learn, that’s a good thing. Hold onto that. But pair it with integrity:
• Invest in proper training
• Respect boundaries in treatment spaces
• Ask questions in the right setting
• Honor the difference between receiving a service and learning a skill

There is a long tradition of hands-on healing in many cultures, and that history is valuable but in a modern, licensed profession, we have a responsibility to combine that tradition with evidence-informed practice, ethics, and accountability.

Real education isn’t gatekeeping, it’s what protects you, your clients, and the future of this work.

If you want to learn, I will always support that. But learning requires intention, investment, and respect.
🫡
Let’s raise the standard together.

My Ayurvedic Bodyworker Course is coming up in June. Learn more about my seasonal workshop with this blog post. https://www.theheelinghut.com/blog/ayurvedic-bodywork-massage-therapists

Massage therapists hear this all the time:
“Can you flush the lactic acid out?”

The problem? Lactic acid isn’t what’s making you sore.

Research has been showing this for decades. One classic study measured blood lactate during running and tracked soreness for 72 hours afterward. The results were clear:
Lactate levels rose during exercise.

But people didn’t necessarily get sore afterward.
Others experienced significant soreness without elevated lactate levels.
In other words, there was no relationship between lactic acid and delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

Here’s what science actually suggests:
• Lactate clears from the body relatively quickly after exercise.
• Post-exercise soreness typically appears 24–72 hours later, long after lactate levels return to normal.
• The soreness is more closely linked to micro-damage in muscle tissue and the inflammatory repair process, especially after eccentric movements like lowering weights or downhill running.
For massage therapists, this matters.
Massage isn’t “flushing lactic acid.”

What we’re actually supporting is circulation, nervous system regulation, and tissue recovery during the healing process.

The lactic acid myth has stuck around for generations — but the science has moved on.

And so should we.

PMID: 19997015

As a massage therapist and educator, I want to speak to something that has been coming up in conversations around the Epstein case.

The word “massage” was used by perpetrators as a cover for abuse.

That is not massage therapy.

Licensed massage therapy is built on clear ethical standards: informed consent, professional draping, client autonomy, and a safe therapeutic environment.

When predators misuse the language of our profession, it harms survivors and distorts public understanding of the work ethical therapists do every day.

For my students and clients: this is exactly why professionalism, boundaries, and communication matter so much in our field.

Ethical bodywork is transparent, respectful, and always centered on the wellbeing of the person on the table.

I know some clients question WHY they have to fill out an intake form for a professional massage. We do this to customize your session and as a requirement by the state BUT this is a serious green flag.

If your LMT doesn’t ask you to fill out any forms prior to your massage, they might not be licensed. Red flag!

Bottom line, predators may misuse words but that does not define our profession.

Real massage therapy is grounded in trust, safety, and care.

Here’s a cute puppy picture to remind you that the world is a beautiful place. Take care of your spirit during these difficult times. 💕

There’s ONE spot left in my May Fundamentals class!
Join me here:

Fundamentals: Dallas, Texas May2026 - Center for Barefoot Massage training and continuing education: Learn FasciAshi myofascial ashiatsu Myofascial Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage Classes

Care professionals spend their days witnessing how the world lands in people’s bodies.

We see how stress, uncertainty, loss of safety, and systemic pressure affect sleep, pain, mood, resilience, and nervous systems. Because of that, caregiving is rarely neutral.

Care is shaped by what is happening socially, politically, and structurally, whether we name it or not.

This space is grounded in values common to many care professions: consent, dignity, bodily autonomy, and a commitment to reducing harm. When policies or leadership increase physical, mental, emotional, or systemic harm, that matters in caregiving contexts.

This isn’t about debate or convincing anyone of a viewpoint. It’s about acknowledging the realities that care workers and the people they serve are navigating every day, and holding boundaries around what supports health and well-being.

Care has always been relational. It has always been shaped by the world around it. ❤️

if you’ve been curious about Ayurveda but turned off by vague language or rigid systems—come closer.

My Ayurvedic Bodyworker Workshop is happening this June and again in September, and it’s designed specifically for hands-on practitioners who want practical tools, not mystical fluff.

This is an embodied, clinically relevant approach to Ayurveda that helps you:
• Understand patterns instead of chasing symptoms
• Work with the seasons and more sustainably with your own energy
• Make clearer choices in sessions—under a nurturing framework.
• Deepen your treatments in a grounded way
It’s thoughtful. It’s practical. It’s immediately usable.

DM me for more questions.
Full details: https://www.facebook.com/share/1DbjR4pUQi/?mibextid=wwXIfr

I was chatting with a friend recently about the FSMTB interstate compact (IMPACT) and why it makes so many uneasy.

If one state requires 1,000 hours to become an LMT and another requires 300, what does a license actually mean?

We talk about “scope of practice” like it’s universal, but it isn’t. It’s written state by state, shaped by politics, not shared competence.

This matters for portability, but it also matters for trust.

Massage is one of the only healthcare-adjacent professions that’s constantly filtered through s*x work and human trafficking.

We pay for that with extra scrutiny, regulation, and suspicion no matter how ethical our work actually is.

And here’s the part no one wants to say out loud:
Despite all that regulation, trafficking still exists.
So what are we really regulating? Because if legitimate therapists are over-policed while exploitation continues, something isn’t working.

Trafficking is real. Protection matters.
But fear-based rules and inconsistent standards don’t create safety, they create confusion. And confusion is where grift and moral panic thrive.

If a license means different things in every state, maybe portability isn’t the problem. Maybe we still haven’t agreed on what “massage therapist” actually means.

Should we decide on that first?

Most of the biggest controversies in massage therapy aren’t actually about techniques.
They’re about stories.

“Releasing toxins.”
“Fixing what’s out of place.”
“Treating complex medical conditions with our hands alone.”

Different debates, same underlying issue: simple ideas are easier to sell than complex truths.

Here’s the uncomfortable part:
When we over-simplify or over-promise, we don’t just confuse clients,we create fertile ground for grifting.

The kind that thrives on certainty, fear, and insider “secrets” instead of humility, evidence, and collaboration.

And yes, I’ll say it plainly:
If someone is selling absolute answers, miracle mechanisms, or exclusive systems that conveniently bypass scope, science, or accountability, that’s not innovation.
That’s marketing.

But here’s the hopeful part
We don’t need to abandon massage, intuition, tradition, or our lived experience to do better.

We do need to:
• Get more comfortable with nuance
• Tell truer (even if less flashy) stories
• Admit what we know and what we don’t
• Respect our clients enough to not mythologize our work

Massage is powerful without being magical.
Helpful without being heroic.
Professional without pretending to be medical saviors.

I genuinely believe the next evolution of our field won’t come from new techniques, it’ll come from better language, clearer ethics, and fewer gurus.

So proud of my January Intermediate FasciAshi crew! 🎉

Congratulations on completing your workshop!

Your focus, curiosity, and commitment to the work really shined. It was an honor to guide you as you refined your skills, explored new challenges, and supported each other along the way.

Well done, and keep building on this momentum!

🤗

Lately, a lot of people are carrying extra stress, uncertainty, frustration, and plain old exhaustion.

That shows up everywhere, including on the massage table.

As massage therapists, we often hold space not just for physical tension, but for emotions clients may not have anywhere else to put. That can be meaningful work but it’s also real emotional labor.

A few reminders and tools that can help in the treatment room right now:
• You don’t have to fix what a client is feeling. Presence is often enough.
• It’s okay to gently redirect conversation back to the body when emotions start to feel overwhelming.
• Neutral language and grounding cues (breath, sensation, pressure) can help clients settle without engaging heavy topics.
• Clear boundaries protect both the client and the therapist, emotional safety includes yours, too.
• Make time to discharge what you absorb: movement, breath, supervision, peer support, or quiet after sessions.

This work matters, especially in times like these. Taking care of ourselves helps us keep showing up steady, skilled, and compassionate without carrying more than is ours to hold.
❤️

A beautiful winter sunset in Dallas, Texas