My name is Brenda Klarer, I'm a massage therapist and the name of the company that I have is Wascana Remedial Massage Centre. There are seven therapists working here in the clinic. I was actually on my own for three years, and we worked in a temporary location for eight months and now have been here in this location for three years.

The reason I got into massage therapy in the first place was my own health challenges. I had a really bad back and upper back and neck and had gone through all of the traditional ways of looking after it. I had seen the doctors and the chiropractor and someone told me about a massage therapist. And I thought, well...I was really sceptical when I went at first thinking there wasn't much she could do being that I had gone through the traditional ways first. And when I went I was absolutely amazed at the relief that I got. Immediately after (after three treatments when my pain was completely gone) had asked her what I could do to become a massage therapist because I needed to be able to help people the way that she had helped me.

There was a massage therapy school right here in Regina. It's a long standing school. It was called the Western College of Remedial Massage Therapies and the name has since changed, but that's where I found out where to go, and who to talk to and how to take the course.

Above all, I think you have to be a care giver. The patient can tell whether or not you're a care giver or a mechanic. And you can know your stuff and do a really good job, but if you don't have that care giving attitude and care giving feeling it's not as effective as it could be.

Working in a clinic atmosphere is different than working at home. When you're working out of your own home you make your own schedule and you are responsible for your own people coming in to your clinic out of the home. When you're working in a clinic atmosphere, you've got to be able to work with the people that are there in the clinic. It's important that you have the interaction with the staff, being able to be open enough so that if you've got any questions that other people feel free to ask you about them, 'cause any knowledge that you have it's important that you share it with the people around you.

In massage therapy I think that positive attitude and positive behaviour are probably the most important attributes, except for your education of course. People need to be looked after and people need to be cared for. And when they come into the clinic I think it's our responsibility to make sure that they know that they've come to a place where people care and people are going to listen to them and do the best that we can with them.

The ability to adapt to change is important when you're a massage therapist for a couple of reasons. One is because when you have people coming into the clinic, every person that comes in is different from the person before. So you have to be able to focus on that particular person and change gears immediately. You've got different personality types, you've got different problems that they will present to you and it's important to be able to adapt quickly.

As a massage therapist, we belong to an association that in order to maintain membership in the association we have continuing education credits and continuing education hours that we must maintain. I think that even if it wasn't mandatory to belong to the association, we would go and seek more education and extra courses. Having the basic course and graduating from our three year course that we graduated from is like having the toolbox and then every single course that you take or any skill that you learn after that is like another tool to put into the toolbox. And so when you're doing a treatment, you're doing the basics and then you can kind of pull out what ever you need to be able to continue on with that treatment, be the most effective with that particular condition.

I think a typical day with a massage therapist depends on where they work. If they work out of their home, they make their own hours completely. If they want to through a load of wash in between treatments or make a casserole or do the vacuuming between treatments, they can do that. There's a lot of freedom in that kind of a situation. If they're working in a doctor's office or a chiropractic office and someone else is making the appointments for them, then they go and they check the appointment book, set up their day accordingly. In the clinic, as the owner of the clinic, when you come in at 7:15 in the morning and you do the vacuuming and do the tidying up and dusting., it's completely different than if you were working on your own.

The first thing you do of course is check the appointment book and see exactly who you have for clients that day, and what kind of spaces do you have during the day for appointments. You would go to the files and pull the files of the people that are booked in for that day, and then it's your responsibility to read what was in the file and what they presented before as far as symptoms went or what kind of treatments were performed on them before. And then set up a plan, being ready to be able to switch gears half way in case they come in with a different problem than you're anticipating.

Probably the most challenging part about being a massage therapist is educating the client as to what they need to do to help themselves. Our responsibility is to show them postural imbalances, to be able to teach them different stretches and exercises to be able to help themselves.

Oh, the people. I love the people. Every person that comes in the door is unique. Every person has a special set of circumstances that surrounds them. And to me, that's the most important thing and that's what I love the most about the job is the people.

If I had to give someone advise as to entering into the massage therapy field, the first thing that I would say to them is you don't do this job for the money. I mean it's easy to look and see what the rates are and think "Oh man, I can make a lot of money here," it's not happening. You've got to be into this job for...because you're a care giver and because you want to help people and not for the money. Because it's too hard of work. You work hard at this job and so the money just doesn't cut it after a while. You've got to have a love for people.