Holistic Therapist Says Facebook Helpful, Can’t Beat Personal Touch

Kuala Lumpur — Nicki Ooi checks her Facebook page everyday for new clients. Today she has one new visitor who seems interested in her holistic therapy service in Kuala Lumpur.

Ooi’s 3-year-old business, ‘Nicki Ooi Structural Integration Practitioner’, has relied heavily on social media for marketing, but the response has been slow.

“It is still the personal touch, face-to-face interaction and client referrals that make up the bulk of the business,” said the 44-year-old. The unique nature of Ooi’s one-woman business demonstrates the limits of social media for small businesses that require a more personal “practitioner-client” relationship.

“With Structural Integration (SI), it’s a ‘trust’ process,” she said. “The client has to trust and feel confident to be able to stand in front of me in their undergarments in order for me to do a full body analysis on their postures and their movements to determine areas of restrictions in their bodies.”

SI is the creation of an American biochemist professor, Ida Rolf, over 50 years ago. Unlike chiropractic therapy that focuses on bone alignment and joints, SI involves the realignment of deeper connective tissues that surround and support bones and joins. The web of connective tissues, when aligned properly will support a good body posture. SI addresses the body pains and aches that arise from the poor posture by realigning and strengthening tissues. In Malaysia, Ooi is only one of six certified practitioners.

Client Lawrence Ang, 56, is a frequent business traveler. He comes to see Ooi because he has chronic shoulder pain from carrying his computer bag.

At Ooi’s brightly lit office, Ang lies face up on a massage table. Like many other clients, his first 90-minute session– out of a 10-session series was filled with pain.

As Ooi ‘worked’ on Ang, she pressed and kneaded away his tension and aches in deep long strokes, almost as if she were ironing out his connective tissues. An hour and a half later, Ang felt as if his rib cage had opened up. “I did feel more alert. Maybe cause I was more aware to be sitting upright, therefore I could breathe better.”

“It is very gratifying to see my clients leave, feeling better,” said Ooi.

Impressed by the vaunted effects of SI, Ang signed up his wife and one of his two daughters, each on a 10-hour series, and shared his experience via mass-email to his contact list.

“Confidence is something you can’t fake and with Nicki, I believe that is something that really comes across,” said Ang.

A former advertising executive who had senior roles at several international agencies, Ooi left her 15-year corporate career to pursue her passion. A yoga and Tai Chi enthusiast, she has always been interested in ways to heal the physical body and “how to get it to function better”.

Fascinated with SI’s effects on body posture, she attended three different schools in the USA – The Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Sedona School of Massage in Arizona and The Guild for Structural Integration in Boulder and Kauai – “to learn the different development and approaches to SI”.

Over two years, she refined her palpation, body viewing and analysis skills and extensively studied the human anatomy, physiology and kinesiology, qualifying her as a practitioner.

With an intimate therapy such as SI, Ooi said, “many clients, are more influenced by their friends – or people in whose opinion they trust – than paid advertisement.”

“Facebook served as a good media of awareness to this part of the world where SI is a relatively new therapy,” she said. “Although, enquiries from complete strangers via my Facebook page have been slow in converting into actual new business.”

According to Dr. Carol Tan, entrepreneurship lecturer at RMIT University, apart from providing a valuable product or service, building real relationships with customers is a key element of success for small businesses.

“Despite a growing number of entrepreneurs using social media as a vital part of their marketing strategy, many successful owners still agree that there is no substitute for personal contact,” Dr. Tan said.

Each session with Ooi costs RM250 (approximately USD82), while in the US, Ooi said practitioners charge between USD100 and USD250 per session.

Available by appointment only, Ooi works on 20-plus clients weekly, ranging between the ages 11 and 92.

“Many people have a lot of pain, in one form or another,” Ooi said.

With growing legions of laptop users across Malaysia, Ang’s problem, the slumped posture resulting from hours of hunching over notebook computer keyboards, has accelerated into the domain of the everyday city workers, she added.

Canadian-trained Dr Barry Kluner, a leading Kuala Lumpur-based chiropractor believes that the opportunities in this business area are compelling “because it does look at things in a complete concept.”

“But the trend of SI boom (in Malaysia) can only happen if they are more people with proper credentials.”

“In this wellness industry, marketing is unique because it is about educating the patients,” said Ooi.

With the backbone of her business and her differentiating factor – her confidence in her hands – Ooi makes it her priority to “continue to conduct workshops on the importance of good postures and how SI can help educate the body to re-organise and rebalance itself… Also, by meeting potential clients face-to-face, they can direct any concerns to me there and then”.