No, we don’t accept tips.
Yes, really.
The reason why:
The work we do at Soma is different than most places you’ve been to. We’re not going to slather you up with oil for an hour, and slide you out the door a little more greasy than when you got here.
We’re going to focus on your posture, your trigger points, and your connective tissue. We’re going to stick our knuckles in your trapezius, break down the adhesions in your sacroiliac joint and iliotibial band, and use our elbows to strip your hamstrings and get those muscle fibers to line up again.
Sound therapeutic? It is.
(Sound intense? It can be. But we can certainly modify our approach to customize your massage experience! Just let us know!)
Our philosophy:
Our philosophy of massage is that this is vital to your health and well-being. Countless studies have proven the health benefits time and time again: massage therapy boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, speeds recovery after surgery, improves focus, decreases the risk of heart disease, and in some cases can even more helpful for low back pain than NSAIDS and chiropractic care.
Besides that, the last time we checked, we’ve never heard of anyone ever tipping their physical therapist or chiropractor. If you’ve never tipped them, why in the world would you tip us? Though the modalities are different, the intention is much the same.
It’s not “just a massage” — It’s Therapy!
Ever wonder why insurance companies won’t pay for your massage, but they will pay for your physical therapy? Because tipping your therapist puts us squarely in the service industry, vs being in the healthcare field where we belong.
Until we start seeing and treating massage therapists as the healthcare professionals that we are, insurance companies will continue to dismiss us, which will make it harder to convince them why you need massage to help your sciatic pain / carpal tunnel / migraines / high blood pressure / fill in the blank.
We pay our therapists well so YOU don’t have to:
Most corporate massage studios pay their therapists significantly less than we do here at Soma, and hope that you as the client will make up the difference at the end of your session with a generous tip. But that causes stress everyone involved: for you (worried that if you don’t tip “enough” that your therapist will be offended, or worried that if you tip too much then you won’t be able to afford to return as soon as you need to), for the therapist (worried that they won’t be making enough money to pay the bills or buy gas to get to work if they get a couple of “bad tippers” that week), and for the business owner (worried that the therapist can’t make it to work because they don’t have gas money, or worried about our clients who can’t come in as often as they need to when they have to factor in that extra cost of the tip!)
That’s why at Soma, we pay our therapists a living wage, and treat them well. We care for our therapists first and foremost, so that they can care for you. Stress free.
Besides, it should be our job to REDUCE stress, not add to it!
Other ways to show your appreciation:
We totally understand WHY you want to provide a tip: it’s to show your appreciation and gratitude for a job well done. THANK YOU! But truly the very best tip we can receive is to see you again!
Rather than a cash tip at the end of your appointment, here are some alternative (but highly impactful) actions you can take instead, to show your appreciation for your therapist:
- Leave your therapist a glowing review on our Google page here and mention their name!
- Ask them to write their name down on the back of a business card, and pass that card onto a friend who could benefit from a massage as well!
- Book another massage with your therapist!
- Take a selfie at Soma and post to social media, or “check in” on social media and tag our studio!
Thank you for wanting to show your appreciation. We sure love you, too.