What "Pay-What-You-Can" Means to Us...
Dear Friends,
It has been really exciting to offer all of our incredible healing services with experienced, compassionate and enthusiastic therapists on a "pay-what-you-can" basis. This model is completely new to us in the spa industry. Because Sensorielle's philosophy is giving back to our community, being environmentally conscious, and holding the space for deep healing and beautifying treatments, we thought that changing our pay model would be right in line. We want people to feel beautiful from the inside out. Everyone deserves equal treatment, and every human being is just as valuable as the next.
For our Community
Of course, a leap of faith like this one can be frightening to a company who is in a high rent district, and viewed as a high-end luxury spa with expensive organic products. Each of us had to review our perspective on what makes us feel valued as therapists. We each have spent time, effort and money to go to a carefully selected professional school; massage, acupuncture, esthetics, and have spent even more countless hours and dollars on continuing training to keep us up on the latest trends in healing, learning new modalities, and expanding our awareness of what we can offer our clients. Pay-what-you-can can be almost unfathomable when you think in terms of how much we put into our trades.
We took that leap, in a challenging economy, in the heart of giving back to our communities, with faith that our clients would be honest and truthful in what they can afford, and there would be a fair exchange between therapist, client, and facility. And we are grateful that we did! In the five months we have been fully in this model, our experience has been amazingly fruitful and rewarding in so many ways. Most of our clients are able to pay our suggested prices, a few have paid more who wanted to support us, and those who have paid less have generally felt like an honest and fair exchange. We would not have implemented a "pay-what-you-can" philosophy if our staff was not on board.
We Are Infinitely Grateful for Pay-What-You-Can
We have been blessed to help people who are going through major life changes, loss of a family member, chemotherapy, fighting chronic disease, and even helping clients pass on comfortably. Even something as simple as treating someone with a skin condition and seeing their skin clear up under our care is so rewarding. Feeling beautiful is important. When we have the opportunity to help people feel beautiful, happy, stress-free, and finding self-love once again, there really is no price that can match our feeling of gratitude.
Pay What I Want?
Naturally, there are 2 sides to every coin. On occasion, we have experienced instances where a client is obviously taking advantage of our model. A client may not pay all they can... or may not value our time in a fair way, being late and paying less because they were late. Feeling valued means more than just a fair monetary exchange; it is also time, energy, and genuine appreciation on all sides. Therapists often end up feeling drained when a client is obviously not valuing them in one or all of these ways. Clients have asked "it's pay whatever I want, right?". It really isn't pay what you want, it is truly about paying all that you can afford and feel is fair for your treatment. If you can only afford very little, it may not feel fair to choose the most expensive treatment on the menu when another treatment, with less expensive product, could serve the same purpose (ie. choose the abhayanga massage instead of the 2 hour samadhi package).
The Reality
The reality around this healing exchange is that if the client is dishonest in what is affordable to them, they will not feel 100% happy about their treatment. There may be a feeling of guilt, even subconsciously, which is not conducive to their wellness. Because our philosophy is about treating the whole being, this is an interesting situation where we do not feel we are treating someone fully when the client is not honest about what they can afford, and then it becomes energetically draining for all, and the opposite of the "healing oasis" atmosphere we strive to create.
A New Economy
In this new economy, we as a family of healing artists need to have a lot of faith, and also look at the big picture. It's a completely different way of doing business. We are redefining and learning from our experiences along the way. We are amazingly blessed to have the opportunity to treat all people equally. Most of all, THANK YOU for coming to see us, sending your friends and families to experience us, and for being present on this amazing planet in an amazing community!!!!
Thank you!
Namaste,
Jewl
Health & Wellness
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