High Tech/High Touch Means Much for Healers

by Coach Cary Bayer

At the end of the 1980's, futurist John Naisbitt wrote a book that envisioned, among other things, a more sensitive world emerging as a response to the high tech revolution. His Megatrends camped out at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for nearly two years, selling eight million copies in 57 countries. Naisbitt's polished crystal ball saw the forthcoming trend, "High Tech/High Touch" that has much to teach healers, whether they work in traditional modalities or their more alternative counterparts.

This high tech approach is embodied by left-brained engineers, analytical problem solvers with a highly-developed rational approach to seeing reality. High touch, right-brained people, on the other hand, might tense up just thinking of reading a computer manual to fix a problem with their laptop, but might be extremely gifted at undoing tension in someone else's body, seeing behavioral patterns from childhood training, or seeing energy fields. High touch is embodied by healers--quite literally by massage therapists, for example--who employ a high degree of touch throughout the day to make a difference in the lives of everyone they all work with. The massive penetration of such work in the marketplace could revolutionize the world in a different way than left-brained leaders have already done.

Naisbitt envisioned hundreds of millions of people having a strong urge for a high touch response to an increasingly high tech world. Americans are forced to spend so much time on new high tech activities like "googling," "tivoing," and "texting," that we crave something far more high touch; witness the whopping $34 billion spent annually on alternative medicine in the U.S., according to a 2007 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The research found that about 35 percent of that spending went for visits to acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists and other practitioners. Total sales from those appointments were nearly $12 billion, or about one-quarter of what Americans spend on visits to mainstream physicians.

A case close to home: In 1989, just before Megatrends was published, I bought airplane tickets while sitting in front of Renee, a delightful travel agent in Woodstock, New York. Today, I buy airplane tickets while sitting in cyberspace. Something high touch got lost when I took a load off my feet and let Renee take care of my itinerary. So, it's not surprising that a stint in front of my computer screen resulted in a flight to Phoenix for a multi-day package at the Enchantment Spa in an extraordinarily powerful vortex among the red rocks of magical Sedona. A high tech booking literally created a high touch vacation.

In 2003, there were 136 million visits to spas in the U.S., up from 95 million just four years before, according to a study conducted for the International SPA Association by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Revenues soared from $5 billion in 1999 to $11.2 billion in 2003. That's more than one billion, seven hundred fifty million dollars more than were taken in by American movie theaters in 2003. The domestic spa industry employed 287,000 people in 2003, up from 151,000 in 1999, according to the study. That opened up a lot of work for licensed massage therapists.

All of you are in a field of work that's primed for a solid increase. You're there to help restore the high touch balance to an increasingly high tech world. Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, isn't any kind of a mission impossible. It's a mission very possible, a mission that delightfully grows out of your heart and soul. It's a mission to start communicating--first to yourself, as to what you want, then to others. Once you know you'd like to service the soon-to-come greater demand for your talents, it's imperative to set your life up for it. That means, for example, if you're working entirely out of someone else's business, carve out a slice--even if it's a small one--for yourself to do private sessions in your own business. Even if it's just one afternoon per week; it's a start. Once you fill that on a regular basis, add a morning or an evening. If you already own your business, consider expanding from a one-person business (you) to include others, and find those people. The space would be the next item on your agenda. And remember...once you have it, if you build it, they will come.

For more information visit www.CaryBayer.com.