MAY 21, 2021 UPDATE: Yup! We’re almost back to normalcy. Almost. Group classes have started again (YOU should come!) and we also offer facials, couple’s services, and more. But masks are still required until the medical board (who we fall under as massage therapy) declares it safe for medical practices to ensure safety for all). We thank you for your understanding as we move a little closer to normal…in a very relaxed way.
[June 3, 2020 UPDATE: We ARE OPEN after 2.5 months and we’re thrilled! This blog post has some good information in it so I’m not removing it, but for an update on our specific actions and plans, please visit our COVID-19 Response Page.]
Dear Friends:
Today’s blog is brought to you by the Letter C and the Number 19. There’s no way to make light of such an important topic as COVID-19, but this a That’s the Rub email, so I’ll try to keep it informative and fun as a possible. That said, let me hit the highpoints and then dig in more:
TLDR: Yes, we’re OPEN! Massage is GREAT for moving lymph and helping to strengthen your immune system. We are taking our already extraordinary precautions to an even higher level (we’re clean freaks anyway). We’re hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.
If you’ve been with That’s the Rub for any length of time, you know we take our client’s health VERY seriously. Likewise, we take our team’s health just as seriously. COVID-19 (the novel corona virus) is scaring a lot of people, and for a very good reason. We’ve always been a bit more than germophobic around here, but we’ve been increasing our disinfecting across the board…and knobs…and shelves…and anyplace that has a chance of being touched by one of us or you (honestly, we were pretty fastidious already, but more can’t hurt).
Massage therapists and estheticians (by training, law, and OSHA) wash their hands (for at least 30 seconds) BEFORE AND AFTER every service. Always. Every time. The only change is we may be doing it EVEN MORE. But you can rest assured we are doing a LOT (and I mean a LOT)!
Next, after a long and hard think, we have changed our sheet process. In the past we have used (or owned) a cleaning service to launder our sheets. In no small part to the current viral concerns we have switched to a certified medical-grade cleaning service who provides linens to hospitals. This might be overkill and is above and beyond state and federal OSHA standards for a day spa, but we think we’re all worth it — we’re not playing games with anyone’s health. Our sheets have always been single-client use, but now they are being fully sanitized, not just cleaned. The quality of the new linens is just as high as we’ve always had, but you can rest assured they are the cleanest it is possible to clean them.
The fuzzy blankets are still around but are no longer the default in making the tables. They’re not really needed, the new top-sheets we use are extra thick and when combined with the table warmers (on ALL our tables) are more than sufficient (If you get cold during a service, PLEASE ask your therapist to turn up the table, they will happily do so!).
We have always provided equipment for our Yomassage, breathwork, couple’s massage training and other classes, and we will continue to do so. While we do disinfect all equipment between classes, you are always welcome to bring your own, and single-use pillowcases will be available upon request for bolsters, etc.
Our 24-hour cancellation policy remains in place (e.g. if you cancel within 24 hours of your appointment you will be charged full price), HOWEVER, we have ALWAYS had an exception for illness which is certainly not changing. If you are sick, PLEASE call us as soon as possible and stay home, drink bone broth, binge watch something insipid, and get healthy. We don’t want it either.
Likewise, we have always empowered our staff to turn away any client for any reason whether it is health, cleanliness, safety, or otherwise. If you show up sick, and we are concerned, you will be asked to reschedule (did I mention we don’t want it either?).
However, should one of our staff come down sick, we also will ask them to stay home. This could become inconvenient at the last minute before an appointment, and we will do everything we can to keep you informed. Where possible, we will simply move you to another of our fantastic therapists and you won’t miss a step (did you know we take EXTENSIVE notes after each and every appointment for just such an occasion? Yup! Always have, always will).
But as there is a lot (A LOT!) of confusion as to what is allergy, cold, flu, or COVID-19 The chart at the top of this blog is for your reference. If you’ve only got allergies, may I recommend our signature Allergy Relief Rub? It’s awesome!
Friends, we’re all in this together, and you can be assured we are watching, reading, and listening to everything and will absolutely operate within the law, common sense, and needs of the health of our community.
That’s the Rub!
Jim, Lisa, and Team Rub
PS – If you have ANY questions, please don’t hesitate to write me directly: jim@thatstherub.com
I want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts here at That’s the Rub Massage Therapy Center and Body Boutique. It’s been a wonderful year of growth and opportunity, for you the client, our staff, our community, and our business. Affectionately known as The Rub to all of us who work here, we do our best every day make you the client proud to say you go to The Rub to take care of your body, to give back to our community and to support our staff.We’re very proud to say that 2016 has been our best year ever and we’re so happy that we got to share it with each and every one of you. You, the client, entrust us at The Rub to teach you how to understand your body better, to help you unwind and destress, to trigger a healing response from within for old and new aches and pains. We take that job seriously, while providing a safe, relaxed and happy atmosphere that we at The Rub have come to cherish. We at The Rub enjoy being here because It’s a cozy place to work. While our jobs may be busy, we are encouraged by your support and your loyalty, that gives us a sense of fulfillment and joy that can only be met with much gratitude. We truly love what we do and it shows.
All of our staff have a voice in how The Rub operations needs are met and each member of our staff is supported and honored for the work that they accomplish with us. The Rub wouldn’t be what it is today without our team of the finest front desk staff and bodyworkers in town and I love them all.
Here at The Rub, we take our community to heart. As busy multi-business owners / operators, we don’t always have the time to spend at functions and parties that support our fellow entrepreneurs, but we always give back to the community at large because we understand that it’s our backbone. When our community thrives, The Rub thrives, and all of the individuals who belong to our elite staff thrive. We’ve done seated chair events, most recently at Lucky’s for their health and wellness day, all proceeds from the event were donated to Stepping Stones; a local nonprofit supporting our community children in safe housing, education, and lifestyle coaching. We’ve donated to WFIU to support public radio: the family and I enjoy all forms of public radio while we’re on much-anticipated road trips. We also donate to the Mauer Women’s Law Caucus events because it’s important to support women as they continue to learn, and for anyone that knows me, I’m all about girl power. The Rub also donated to many silent auctions around the community throughout the year of which I’m sure some of you benefited. This list is just a brief description of the many donations we’ve done in 2016, with your continued patronage these donations and more will continue to support our community because while we may not always be in attendance, we do care about giving our support.
The Rub’s business this year grew in all directions as we’ve added to our staff, and expanded our menu of services. Carla is our new esthetician who provides waxing services, amazing facials, and body treatments. While she’s only been with us a few months, she and her husband recently expanded their family with Ava joining the team, we’ve missed Carla while she spends time with the new baby, and we look forward to seeing her around again in February. Lynnsie, our oldest daughter, joined our team in January 2015 and in July gave us our first grandbaby, Oliver, who I’m sure many of you have met as Oliver comes to the office with Lynnsie when she works. The staff and clients alike enjoy having Oliver with us, and he certainly enjoys all of the attention. Elizabeth will also be giving birth to our 2017 edition of babies born into The Rub. Due in January, she will be missed while on maternity leave, but we look forward to welcoming daughter Lexi into the team.
But it hasn’t all been about babies. We also welcomed new massage therapist Chris, he does great hot stone massage and Reiki, massage therapist Bri who is awesome at Deep Tissue and Therapeutic massage but is sadly leaving us for Austin, Texas in a few short days, and Kara who is a real dynamo working at the front desk and later becoming a massage intern to earn her hours towards state certification which happening this month. We’re so excited for Kara as she begins her new career as a massage therapist! As anyone who’s been on her table can attest she is an awesome massage therapist and we look forward to working with her in treatment. Beth has expanded her offerings to include acupuncture, a clinic for acupuncture and a massage that also includes acupuncture. Theresa has expanded her offerings to include cupping. Tonya Faye continues her education with IU for occupational therapy, let’s celebrate her smartness. If I’ve missed out on anyone’s accomplishments this year, I apologize, there are just so many that it’s hard to keep up and that’s just the personal side of the business.
For me and Jim, it’s been a real whirlwind of opportunity. We’ve expanded the product lines of The Body Boutique, offering more options for all natural, organic skin care that feels good, smells good, and supports local as well as USA made products. In May we were faced with our own mortality in the business because we were running short on space to launder the sheets, no small task I assure you. We’d been putting it off for a few months, but the need became so great that we could no longer ignore it, when we fell into a wonderful opportunity to buy a laundromat and to have business partners (other than each other) Purchasing a laundromat would prove to be a handful of challenges that we didn’t see coming, giving the word perseverance a whole new meaning. To keep a long story short, we welcomed Flip Laundry into the fold (see what I did there?) opening in August of this year. Flip Laundry is a commercial and residential pick-up, drop off, and delivery service for all your laundry needs, in this case it helped us greatly in providing a safe, clean environment to keep The Rub’s sheets going strong, while you guessed it supporting the community with what it needed…an easier way to do laundry, drop off or delivery style. The Launderette is the coin-op do-it-yourself laundry and provides a bright, clean, safe space for everyone to get their laundry on.
We’ve partnered with Ivy Tech Bloomington to create a massage therapy school for the southern region of the state because we all agreed that driving to Indy was quite the haul for anyone in the Bloomington and south to travel. Classes start January 17th (TODAY!). Please check the Ivy Tech website and register for class. If you’ve ever considered massage as a career for you, now is the time. We need more massage therapists in this town! We were already considering opening our own school (a dream of mine) when the opportunity presented itself to partner with Ivy Tech and we jumped at it. After all what better way to support our community than being part of community education for the profession that I love and have been a part of for 17 years….yikes!
Jim has graduated this fall with his Masters of Information Science, completing his third degree, the man is a real brainiac. We in the family joke that he is The Master, which you will only understand if you are a Whovian. If you have to ask what a Whovian is, you are not one of them.
Last but not least on the lines of the business, The Rub will be expanding and remodeling in 2017 to be all on the first floor (we had some upstairs rooms), this will give us handicap access (much needed) and more space. It will also allow our neighbors on the second floor to expand as well, bringing us full circle in our community support. I’m so proud to have created something that brings so much joy, wellness and opportunity to so many lives. Thank you so much for taking the time to be a part of The Rub and the lives of our team. Your loyalty really means a lot to me personally, but also Jim, our family, and all of Team Rub.
Cheers to you as we ring out 2016 and ring in 2017!
That’s the Rub is MIGHTY pleased to announce we are now carrying the absolute, unequivocal BEST deodorant known to humanity: Jungleman Naturals! Are we really THAT excited about underarm deodorant? YUP! We REALLY ARE! And YOU will be too! Jungleman is an all natural deodorant without that “hippy smell” so many others have.
Jungleman All-Natural Deodorant is made entirely from 100% all-natural products, with an ingredient list so short that it can be counted on one hand. From the scorching summer heat of the Australian Outback, to the frigid winter cold of the North American Rockies, to the sweaty gyms of professional mixed martial artists, Jungleman All-Natural Deodorant has proven itself as the safest, most effective, natural deodorant in the world. Yes, it’s true. You can be 100% all-natural and 100% odor free at the same time.
100% all-natural
No aluminum, parabens or glycerin
No artificial colors or fragrances
No alcohols or peroxides
No propylene glycol or sodium stearate
Super-absorbent
Tested in the most extreme conditions
Non-comedogenic, does not clog pores
Hypoallergenic
Odorless
Unisex: for men or women
Endorsed by professional fighters
Ingredients: corn starch, sustainable palm oil from non-peatlands, sodium bicarbonate, and tea tree oil.
As you may or may not know, That’s the Rub is the dream and brainchild of massage therapist extraordinaire, corporate spa consultant, and all-around fantastic individualLisa Keplinger. Every now and again, someone out in the big, wide world recognizes what an amazing entrepreneur she is and calls for an interview about her story, and her ideas about the future of massage therapy (for the record, she’s got a lot). Today we’re delighted to share with you the most recent one done by a leading massage industry education magazine.
1. Tell us a bit more about you and your practice as it is today? i.e. are you a solo practitioner or a business owner? If solo, what kind of an establishment do you work for, how large is it, what is the clientele like, what is the specialty offered? If it is a business that you own, kindly include the same time of relevant information that will give the reader a good idea about your establishment/practice. Please also include where you live and work?
I’m a business owner and a solo practitioner among many. The business is That’s the Rub Massage Therapy Center. We have five treatment rooms, eight massage therapists, a Tarot reader and an acupuncturist, we also have three front desk staff and a wonderful marketing manager.
Our clientele varies. We are a college town (Bloomington, IN) so we work with a lot of professors and students alike. There are also many businesses around us because we’re downtown that a lot of people from the surrounding businesses also come to see us.
Our specialty is our Therapeutic Rub. It’s focused on exactly what their problem areas are, then we pick them apart and put them back together again with an integrative deep tissue, myofascial and massage to name just a few of the modalities that most of us do. Then we all also have our individual specialties that come into play.
We consider ourselves family and is a family owned business. My husband/business partner and I established That’s the Rub Massage Therapy Center in March of 2010, we’re about to celebrate our four year anniversary. Each therapist is an independent contractor and is responsible for their own schedule/communication with our front desk staff to keep things running smooth and in an orderly fashion.
2. Tell us why you chose to go into massage and at what point in your life did you decide to do so? What were you doing at the time? Where did you first hear about the massage career? What factors influenced your decision? What were you looking to get out of this decision? CONTINUE READING
– READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW at: http://www.massagetherapyschoolsinformation.com/lisa-keplinger/#sthash.kza3jMmX.dpuf
Hey there, Bloomington! What are YOU doing for pain management? Are you ignoring your pain? I’ve been there, done that. But let me tell you, ignoring your pain is like muting your body’s distress call. It’s time to listen up, folks! So, what’s your goal? Are you ready to take the driver’s seat in your wellness journey?
Why Ignoring Pain is a No-Go
Pain is your body’s way of waving a red flag. It’s screaming, “Hey, something’s not right here!” When you ignore it, you’re essentially silencing your body’s alarm system. The more you ignore it, the LOUDER it yells. Trust me, I’ve been there. It’s not just about the physical toll; it’s also about the emotional and psychological impact of living with untreated pain.
The Science Behind Pain
Pain is more than just an unpleasant sensation; it’s a complex interaction between your nerves, brain, and spinal cord. When you experience pain, it’s your nervous system sending a signal to your brain, saying, “Pay attention! Something’s wrong!” Understanding the science of pain can empower you to take control of your well-being.
The Bloomington Approach to Pain Management
Here in Bloomington, we believe in a holistic approach to wellness. Whether it’s through therapeutic massage, proper nutrition, or regular exercise, we’re all about treating the root cause, not just the symptoms.
Local Resources
Bloomington offers a plethora of resources for pain management, from specialized clinics to community wellness programs. Utilizing local resources can make your journey to pain-free living more accessible and community-oriented.
Testimonials
“I used to suffer from chronic back pain until I discovered That’s the Rub. Their approach to pain management has been a game-changer for me.” —J.D., Bloomington Resident
Exercise: The Unsung Hero
You don’t have to be a gym rat to benefit from exercise. Even simple activities like walking or stretching can make a world of difference. Exercise keeps your body’s pulleys and levers—aka muscles and joints—in tip-top shape. It also releases endorphins, your body’s natural painkillers, providing a double whammy against pain.
Types of Exercise for Pain Management
Aerobic Exercise: Activities like swimming or cycling can improve your cardiovascular health and endurance, making you more resilient against pain.
Strength Training: Building muscle can provide better support for your joints, reducing the risk of injury and pain.
Flexibility Exercises: Stretching and yoga can improve your range of motion and alleviate muscle tension, both of which are crucial for pain management.
Nutrition and Hydration: The Building Blocks
What you put into your body has a direct impact on how you feel. A balanced diet and proper hydration can work wonders in alleviating pain and discomfort. Foods rich in anti-inflammatory properties, like turmeric and ginger, can be particularly beneficial.
The Role of Hydration
Dehydration can exacerbate pain by causing muscle cramps and joint stiffness. Make sure you’re drinking enough water, especially if you’re active or spending time in the sun.
The Power of Therapeutic Massage
Sometimes, you need a little extra help, and that’s where we come in. Therapeutic massage can be a powerful tool in your pain management arsenal. It not only relieves tension but also improves blood flow, aiding in the healing process.
Types of Therapeutic Massage for Pain Management
Therapeutic Massage: This is your go-to for general pain relief and relaxation. It combines various techniques like kneading, tapping, and long strokes to address a range of issues, making it a versatile option for many. Whether you’re dealing with stress, muscle tension, or minor aches, therapeutic massage is your all-rounder.
Advanced Therapeutic Massage: Ready to level up? This takes it up a notch by targeting specific problem areas with advanced techniques like deep tissue massage and trigger point therapy. It’s ideal for those dealing with chronic pain or specific conditions like sciatica or frozen shoulder.
Swedish Massage: Ah, the Swedish massage, the comfort food of the massage world! Known for its long, flowing strokes and gentle kneading, this type of massage is perfect for those new to the massage experience or those looking for overall relaxation and stress relief. It’s like a warm hug for your muscles!
Facilitated Stretching: Think of this as yoga, but you don’t have to do quite as much of the work! Facilitated stretching involves a therapist helping you stretch your muscles to improve flexibility and range of motion. It’s fantastic for athletes or anyone looking to improve their physical performance.
Take Control of Your Pain Today
You have the power to manage your pain and improve your quality of life. Don’t let pain hold you back from living your best life, especially when you have resources right here in Bloomington to help you.
Schedule Your Appointment Today!
Ready to take control of your pain, Bloomington? Schedule your appointment today or give us a call at 812-333-3393 and we’ll help you choose the right service and practitioner for what you need. Your body will thank you!
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