Ask Before You Touch, and Keep the Session Private

Imagine a massage therapist named Thea Pendry who works in clients’ homes. In January, she starts seeing Oriel Haverly, who reads the evening news on the city’s biggest station. Ms. Haverly’s shoulders ache from long hours at the news desk. Thea comes to her apartment every other Thursday at nine, after the broadcast.

At the first session, Thea is running late from another client. She sets up quickly and starts on Ms. Haverly’s back. Halfway through, she folds the sheet down to work on Ms. Haverly’s lower back and hip, without a word. Ms. Haverly goes stiff under Thea’s hands and says nothing.

Near the base of Ms. Haverly’s spine, Thea finds a long scar. “Oh, what happened here?” she asks. “Surgery,” Ms. Haverly says, and nothing more.

At the door, Thea smiles. “My sister couldn’t believe it when I told her I’d be seeing you,” she says. “She watches you every night.” Ms. Haverly thanks her. The next morning, her assistant cancels the next Thursday and does not book another. When her co-anchor asks about massage therapists, Ms. Haverly says, “She has good hands. Her sister knew I was coming.” The co-anchor finds someone else.

Suppose instead that Thea says how she works before she starts. “I’ll tell you before I move to a new area, and I’ll only uncover the part I’m working on,” she says. “If you want me to stop or change anything, just say so. You don’t need a reason.”

Halfway through, Thea says, “I’d like to work on your right hip next, over the sheet. Is that all right?” Ms. Haverly says yes. When Thea feels the scar, she asks, “Is there anything I should know about this area before I work near it?” Ms. Haverly says that she had back surgery two years ago. Near the scar is fine, she says, but not on it. Thea works around it.

Thea has told nobody where she goes on Thursday evenings. At the door, Ms. Haverly asks, “Do you see anyone else from the station?” “I don’t say who I see,” Thea says. “That goes for you too.” Ms. Haverly laughs and says, “Good.”

Ms. Haverly books every other Thursday for the rest of the year. When her co-anchor asks about a massage therapist, she gives him Thea’s number. “She tells you what she’s about to do,” she says. “And she tells nobody else anything.” The co-anchor calls Thea that week.

Thea’s hands were just as good both times. What changed was what Ms. Haverly knew about the session, and what she could tell about Thea’s discretion. In the first version, Ms. Haverly found out where Thea’s hands were going only when they got there. Then she heard that Thea had told her sister about her.

In the second version, Ms. Haverly knew the rules of the session before Thea started, and she could change them. Thea’s answer at the door showed her that nothing from Thursday evenings would leave the apartment.

So before you touch a client, say what you will do and wait for a yes. Keep everything you see and hear in the session to yourself, including the client’s name. Here is why hands-on work rests on asking first and keeping quiet, and what three people who work with clients’ bodies found.

A client on your table cannot see where your hands will go next

Here is the course’s view of why hands-on work asks for so much trust. During a massage, a stretch, or a correction to a lift, the client is lying down or holding a position. They are often partly undressed, and often facing away from you. They cannot see where your hands will go next.

A client also cannot judge your technique well in a first session. What they can tell is whether you said what you would do, and then did only that. The first part of the trust is that the session has rules the client knows before you start. The client can also change those rules at any point.

A touch that is part of the work is different from a handshake at the door. At the door, let the client offer a hand first. A touch in the session starts with you, so the question has to come from you too.

The second part of the trust is discretion. Nothing you see or hear in a session reaches anyone else, the same discretion that makes a professional known for keeping quiet. In close physical work, what you see includes the client’s body, such as a scar, an injury, or a change in weight. Privacy is already among the worries that come up most often for wealthy clients. For a client whose face is known around town, a detail about their body is news that someone might repeat.

A client cannot hear what you say about them when they are not there. They can hear how you talk about other people, which is why a client listens to how you speak of other clients. Ms. Haverly’s question at the door gave Thea that chance.

A New York massage therapist noticed everything in her clients’ homes, then wrote it down

In 2017, a massage therapist in New York wrote anonymously for VICE about her work. She works mainly for a company whose clients book massages in their own homes. “They pay for their comfort; I get paid to suspend mine for 60 to 90 minutes at a time,” she wrote.

She noticed a great deal. “My x-ray eyes notice everything in a client’s home,” she wrote. In one apartment on the Upper East Side, she saw the self-help books on a client’s nightstand. One was on living with the 12 Steps. Under her hands, she noticed that the same client’s feet were dry and cracked. Another client was a real estate mogul whose name, she wrote, is on the outside of his building.

She also saw why her clients let her in. In her words, “many people feel safe in my hands.” She is there, she wrote, “to see them naked,” and “to leave promptly afterwards.”

Measured against this lesson, the essay shows how much a professional learns with their hands and eyes. It also shows how easily what they learn can leave the room. It names no client. Even so, it gives the street corner of one client’s apartment and describes another client’s building. A client who read it might wonder what her own therapist would write.

What you notice in a session is part of the work, and it stays in the session. A client feels safe in your hands only when it does.

A Pilates teacher asks before every touch, and says what the touch will be

Olivia Bioni is a Pilates teacher who hosts a podcast for other Pilates teachers. In May 2025, she told her listeners how she gives hands-on corrections in her group classes. “You always need to get permission from your clients before you touch them,” she said. “Even if you think that your clients want or expect a hands-on correction, you don’t know until you ask them.”

Before class, she asks new people whether a touch is all right, and she names what it might be. “Is it okay if I tap your shoulder or scoot your knee a little bit during class?” she said. If they say yes, she tells them, “I’ll always ask before I give a touch cue, and you can always say, no thanks.”

A yes to one touch is not a yes to every touch. “A person who says, yeah, you can tap my shoulder, may not want a hand on their lower belly,” she said. So before each touch, she says what it will be and waits. In her words, “Ask before you touch, say what you’re going to do before you touch, and then wait for that confirmation before you touch.”

She also corrects without touching. She holds her hand where a client’s knee should go, for example, and asks the client to reach it. “I like that the client is in control,” she said.

Bioni was describing group classes, and the step to a private client is the course’s own. Here is the step. A private client is alone with you, often in their own home. With nobody else in the room, a touch can feel more personal. So asking first matters even more in a private session than in a class.

A Los Angeles trainer to actors keeps quiet about most of the people he trains

Chad Landers owns Push Private Fitness, a gym in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Several big film and television studios are within a couple of miles. In 2018, he told Lou Schuler of the Personal Trainer Development Center about training famous clients. “It wasn’t like I set out to train celebrities,” he said. “Once I got somebody from the area, they started referring me to their friends.”

Landers has trained a lot of famous people, Schuler wrote, “few of whom he can talk about on the record.” He can name only a few, such as the actor Corbin Bleu. Even if he could talk about the most famous ones, Schuler wrote, he would not necessarily want to. “If I started promoting that I train this person or that person, the paparazzi would be here all the time,” he said. “I don’t mind that people don’t know all the people I train. It’s not about me, and that’s okay.”

Landers’s clients sent him their friends without his promoting anyone. A famous name on his website would have brought photographers to his door. Every client who trains there would have walked past them. So keep a client’s name out of what you post and what you say, even when the name might bring you work.

Why taking one yes as a yes to every touch goes wrong

Imagine a strength coach named Selwyn Ibbotson who trains clients one at a time in his private studio. Ms. Wycombe, a partner at a law firm, comes on Mondays and Wednesdays at seven. At her first session, Selwyn asks whether he may touch her shoulders and knees to correct her form. She says yes.

Three weeks later, she is learning to brace for a deadlift, and Selwyn is running behind. To show her where to tighten, he puts his hand flat on her lower belly. Ms. Wycombe flinches, laughs it off, and finishes the set. She cancels Wednesday. The next week, she tells Selwyn that work is too busy for training. When a colleague asks her about him, she says, “He knows his stuff. He’s a bit hands-on for me.”

Selwyn was right to ask at the first session. His mistake was taking her yes for her shoulders and knees as a yes to her stomach. A hand on the stomach is a different touch, as Bioni said. Ms. Wycombe had no moment to say no before his hand was there.

The version that works asks again for the new place, and offers a way to do it without touch. “I’d like to put a hand on your stomach to show you where to brace,” Selwyn says. “Is that all right, or would you rather I show you on myself?” Ms. Wycombe asks him to show her on himself. She braces, lifts, and keeps her Mondays and Wednesdays.

Asking before each touch does not make you sound unsure

Many professionals who work with their hands worry that asking will slow a session down. A massage therapist may also worry that a question halfway through breaks the client’s calm. It might also make her sound unsure of her work.

Bioni admits that asking “takes time and it also is a skill.” She sets it up once, at the start of each class, when she tells people that she asks first every time. After that, each question takes a sentence. Thea’s question about the hip took one sentence too, and Ms. Haverly answered it with one word.

A question that names the place also sounds sure. “I’d like to work on your right hip next” tells the client that you know where the work needs to go. The question gives the client the choice, and you still decide what the work needs.

How to keep hands-on work safe and private

1. Write the rules of your sessions in two or three sentences, and say them before a first session starts. Say that you will tell the client before you touch, and that they can stop you at any point without a reason. For example, a stretch therapist can say, “Before each stretch, I’ll tell you where my hands will go. You can say no to any of them, at any time.”
2. Before each touch, name the place and what you will do, then wait for a yes. Ask again for any new place, because a yes to one place is not a yes to another, as Bioni says. For example, a yoga teacher giving a private class can say, “I’d like to press gently on your lower back in this pose. Is that all right?”
3. When a client says no or hesitates, give the correction another way, and say nothing more about the touch. Use words, show the move on yourself, or hold your hand where you want the client to reach, as Bioni does. For example, a golf fitness coach can say, “Turn until your shoulder reaches my hand.”
4. Write each no on the page you keep on each client, with the date. Do not ask about that place again unless the client raises it. That is the course’s suggestion, because a second request for the same place starts to sound like pressure. For example, a sports massage therapist might write, “March 4: no work on the scalp.”
5. When you notice a scar, a bruise, or a brace on a client’s body, ask only what the work needs to know. Leave out “What happened?” Then offer any change it suggests, and let the client decide. For example, a personal trainer who sees a brace on a client’s wrist can ask, “Should we leave out the push-ups today, or keep them?”
6. Keep every client’s name out of view. Use initials, not names, in any calendar or phone that other people see. Post nothing about whom you train, even a name that might bring you work, as Landers does. For example, a nutrition coach whose friend asks whether she works with a local football star can say, “I don’t say who I work with.”

Next: You will see how to fit your work around a wealthy client’s travel, second homes, and the dates they train for.