I’ve decided to write about this whole journey properly, because it’s a new experience. I want to learn from it and share the real ups and downs of this experience with the people who’ve supported us over the years. This is part one — how being part of team Scotland came about, what’s happening, and how you can support us if you’d like to.

We’re representing Scotland at the Nations Massage Tournament in Paris

This October, for the first time, Scotland is entering a team in the Nations Massage Tournament in Paris. Kev and I have both been asked to be part of it. 

We’ve been jokingly calling it the massage Olympics between ourselves, which makes it sound like a laugh. It isn’t. It’s a serious competition with an impressive panel of judges and impressive teams from all over the world. While this makes me slightly nervous, we want to win, we’re both a lot more competitive than two people in our line of work are supposed to admit.

What is the Nations Massage Tournament?

The tournament is organised by Artis Events and runs over two days. Nine national teams, five competitors each — wellness, sports massage, face, Ayurvedic and bodywork,  judged by an international jury.

Their philosophy is “people before trophies,” bringing home a trophy for Scotland would be nice. But that phrase is the heart of what we do anyway. When someone comes into treatment with us, we leave everything that’s going on with us personally outside the room. The only thing that matters is helping the person in front of us. I believe both things can be true, we’ll prepare, show up and give it our best and whatever the result, we’ll come home better therapists than we left.

Nine nations are registered: Scotland, Belgium, France, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Thailand and Ukraine.

I made the mistake of looking up at my competitors. I wasn’t nervous until I did. Thailand, whose massage tradition goes back centuries. France, the host nation, who take competition more seriously than almost anyone. And us, from a steading outside Biggar.

The judging panel includes two holders of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France title — a French state award for excellence in a craft — with Miroslav Skoric, a former World Massage Championship silver medallist, as President of the Jury. The Ayurvedic expert on the panel, Nordine Meguellati, trains Ayurvedic massage to doctors and future Ayurvedic physicians in India. He will be watching Kev very closely indeed.

How did we become part of Team Scotland?

Full transparency: when the message first came in, Kev’s reaction was that it had to be a scam.

I could tell from the message that it wasn’t but I didn’t fully understand what we were being asked, or that such a thing existed at all. How do you compete at this? What does that even look like? Why us?

It took a few calls with our team leader before we understood enough to say yes. And then it landed: this is the first time Scotland has ever entered. It’s a chance to get better at what we do and, I’ll be honest, good for our business too. Mostly it’s just an enormous honour to be asked.

There are five of us on the Scotland team. Fiona Whitecross, our team leader, is competing in the face category. Barbora Blaskova takes wellness and Sharon Anfield takes sports massage. Fiona is the one who got in touch in the first place, so she’s responsible for all of this.

What we’ll each be doing

The official category descriptions read:

• Bodywork – Body Alignment & Flow Ritual (Jo)
  Alignment, Mobility, and Assisted Movement Flow. Main objective: to improve mobility, body awareness, and movement quality through a safe and immersive bodywork experience.
• Ayurvedic – Personalised Ayurvedic Low Back Relief (Kev) The Art of Individualised Ayurvedic Care. Main objective: to demonstrate the ability to perform an appropriate Ayurvedic assessment and deliver a personalised treatment aimed at improving comfort, balance, and overall wellbeing.

When I knew I’d be doing bodywork, KCR and Connective Tissue Release, I felt fine. This is what I do day in and day out. I could do it with my eyes closed, read a client’s body, know I’m making a difference to their life. Then I read the category description and thought: I hope what I do is good enough.

KCR, myofascial release and yoga therapy have shaped the last 12 years of my work. It turns out they map almost exactly onto a competition category I hadn’t heard of six months ago.

What I keep coming back to is that I’ve spent those 12 years doing this in a quiet room with one person and the door shut. In October there’ll be a panel watching. That’s the part I’m still getting my head round.

Kev’s competing in the Ayurvedic massage category. This year it’s built around personalised lower back relief, so he’ll need to assess the client in front of him and build the treatment from that, quickly. No advance forms to plan ahead, but he has many years experience to plan on the day when he meets his client. 

He’s the first to admit that Ayurvedic massage is not how he ever pictured representing Scotland. Kev being Kev, he’s very relaxed about the whole thing, though I suspect that’ll shift as October gets closer. He’s still smiling about a massage competition being a thing and working out which part of the weekend he can get away with wearing his kilt.

Why this one means more than it might look like

The last time I was in Paris, it was a month before my hip surgery.

I remember pressing my fingers into my hip just to relieve enough pain to keep walking around the city. That was 12 years ago, before KCR, before Yoga Therapy gave me a way back to being pain-free.

Going back now, competing rather than coping, is the clearest marker I could have asked for. I’d always planned to return to Paris. I never thought this would be the reason. It’s the clearest sign of how far that recovery has come, and how much my life has changed with it, and it’s a large part of why this trip matters to me well beyond the result.

How you can support us

We’re going as an independent team, which means we’re funding every part of it ourselves: travel, accommodation, competition fees, equipment. We’re raising £3,500, and we’re 81% of the way there.

Support Team Scotland →

Any donation, however small, is genuinely appreciated. And if donating isn’t on the cards, following along and sharing our posts helps more than you’d think.

Thank you so much for being part of this with us, and to everyone who’s supported us throughout the past decade of the business. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Jo & Kev

P.S. We’ll be writing about the whole build-up to October, the training, the kit arguments and whatever happens in Paris. If you’d like it in your inbox rather than having to remember to check back, you can sign up here.

P.S. If you run a business and fancy sponsoring the team, we’d love to hear from you — a logo on our tops, a shout-out to our audience, or help with clothing, embroidery or kit. Just hit reply or get in touch through the site.