Jeni Spring, LMT, MTI, BCSI

Owner of Heeling Sole Barefoot Massage Therapy

Owner & Creative Force behind The Center for Barefoot Massage, Creator of the FasciAshi Strap

TX LMT #047987, TX MTI #2235, TX CE #1378, WA LMP #MA18117
NCBTMB CONTINUING EDUCATION PROVIDER #1333, BCSI (#TBA)

Jeni Spring is the original Sasquatch and owner of Heeling Sole Barefoot Massage – the nations first multi-therapist specialty clinic that only offers barefoot massage services. She has been a practitioner of Ashiatsu since 2003, a Massage Therapist since 2002, and an Ashiatsu instructor since 2009. In February 2017, Jeni co-founded the Center for Barefoot Massage, a continuing education company for massage therapists, where she launched the FasciAshi barefoot massage technique. She was previously an Authorized Instructor and top producer for Ashiatsu DeepFeet Bar Therapy between March 2008 and February 2017, leaving due to a difference of vision in the direction of Barefoot Massage education: Jeni felt strongly that the technique should not be taught by video or online, and that it should evolve into something beyond relaxation massage.

Trained by the founder and leading instructors of Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy (AKA DeepFeet Bar Therapy), Fijian Massage, Barefoot Sports Massage, and the Rossiter Technique, Jeni has helped to build Barefoot Massage awareness around the nation, creating a wave of healing footprints across peoples backs everywhere she goes. As an educator in the field of massage therapy, Jeni has taught across the US, as well as internationally and online, has published articles in massage magazines, and demonstrates barefoot massage at national massage conventions.

Jeni has set the standard for the signature massage here at Heeling Sole with her style of FasciAshi, which is her blend of myofascial release and barefoot massage techniques. The flavor of her sessions stem from Jeni’s years of experience applying orthopedic, medical, clinical and injury treatment based massage techniques with her feet. Expect to feel an intuitive, slow flowing, deeper than deep tissue full body massage that incorporates joint manipulation and very specific work to tissue issues anywhere in your body offering muscle recovery and rehabilitation from chronic pain underfoot.

Jeni also teaches the Mobility classes at Heeling Sole. She has a history in modern dance, and a 200 hour Yoga Instructor training from Southtown Yoga here in San Antonio, plus intensive training in the Yoga Tune-Up Fitness Roll Model method, training as a Crossfit MobilityWOD Coach, so this won’t be your average stretch class. Jeni is slowly pursuing further Yoga, Mobility and Movement based continuing education whenever she’s not ankle deep in someone’s muscles!

How did this all happen??!
Jeni took her 1st steps into learning how to massage with her feet as early on as just 2 days after completing her initial Seattle Massage School training… in fact, she skipped her college graduation in order to attend her first Ashiatsu course.

Within her first year of massaging, Jeni worked at Seattle area spa’s part time while building her own massage practice – called “AshiatsYOU” back then – mainly with a focus on injury treatment bodywork surrounding car accidents and on the job injuries. She collaborated with local chiropractors, physical therapists and a team of massage therapists to develop her feet and hands as effective tools to treat whiplash, bulging discs, muscle strains and chronic pain.

While moonlighting at frouffy spas, Jeni was contracted to develop a barefoot massage menu at a high end spa in Kirkland, Washington, “Soule Ease,” and she arranged for advanced barefoot massage instructors to fly into town from around the nation and train the staff – this started to deepen her network within the massage profession at an early stage in her career. As her private injury treatment practice grew, Jeni weened herself away from the pampering massage world and dove feet first into what is now known as medical massage – billing insurances and working directly with medical professionals to achieve benchmarks and goals for clients as they heal underfoot from a variety of injuries stemming from on the job and vehicle accidents. Jeni focused her studies into her feet, and every continuing education course she took, or retook, she applied the protocols to her barefoot massage session, refining the accuracy and effectiveness within her Barefoot Massage sessions.

It was during her 1st 6 months in practice that Jeni started using a strap dangling from her Ashiatsu bars for extra leverage and support while applying myofascial release with her feet on varying planes and angles. It seemed like a no-brainer at the time for her, but this element has since grown to be a revolutionary and important aspect of the FasciAshi technique she ultimately developed.

After relocating to San Antonio due to her husbands job promotion in 2007, Jeni was handpicked by the founder of Ashiatsu DeepFeet Bar Therapy to become an instructor for the modality. Jeni trained further in her Ashiatsu studies, but also worked onsite with an Osteopath, Physical Therapist, Chiropractor, as well an Active Release Technique practitioner while she attended St Phillips College working towards an Occupational Therapy degree. It took a complete restart involving her stubborn choice to retire her hands completely and only massage with her feet, but Jeni opened Heeling Sole in San Antonio as a solo therapist, which grew into the business that you see today, as it incorporates all of her clinical and practical, and even frou-frou spa experience that accumulated over the course of her career.

Since she began teaching Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage, Jeni had consistently been one of the top-producing instructors for the DeepFeet modality each year, over 1000 students have come through her classroom between 2009 and 2017, and countless more since then with the help of steady growth in the exposure of this work. Staying in high demand from massage therapists who travel from all over the world, Jeni is inspired by all the amazing people who choose to train with her. The first european Ashiatsu class was taught in Germany by Jeni, and she was a ‘feetured‘ presenter in the World Massage Conference bringing the Barefoot Massage presence to an online conference for the 1st time ever. She has taught at massage conventions, as well as at massage schools. She taught the LARGEST ashiatsu class ever: with almost 100 people attending, in the August 2018 World Massage Festival in Las Vegas. Jeni Spring has been published in Massage Magazine, the Journal of Massage Science, Natural Awakenings Magazine (Hill Country), Les Nouvelles, Dr Oz Magazine, the San Antonio Current Magazine, and San Antonio Woman magazine.

To prove that Barefoot Massage can be a specialty that can enhance your practice, Jeni retired her hands in 2008 and has ONLY provided Barefoot Massage since. This business, Heeling Sole, was for LONG time the only barefoot massage specific, multi-therapist clinic and training center in the country. A trend was set and has caught on across the globe, and thanks to Ashiatsu, Fijian massage and Thai bodywork, Heeling Sole served as a thriving example for the emerging barefoot massage field.

Jeni quickly grew from a super-excited, uber-fan of any kind of barefoot work into an Ashiatsu instructor, an instructor trainer, a social media influencer, an operations assistant to the founder of westernized ashiatsu, Ruthie Hardee, helping to grow the DeepFeet modality and support their graduates. During her time with this company teaching 4 different swedish-relaxation & Thai based ashiatsu classes, Jeni helped champion the phrase “Barefoot Massage” in the massage industry, helping to better categorize any style of massage that utilizes the feet as massage tools under this umbrella term, in the hopes to increase awareness and understanding of the work inside and outside of the profession. It’s important to know that not all barefoot massage is Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage, and Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage is not the only kind of Barefoot Massage out there! Jeni also played a key part in helping to rebrand Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy into Ashiatsu DeepFeet Bar Therapy, and restructure the internal certification processes managed there. Jeni ultimately left this company in 2017 due to an increasing difference in vision for the direction of Barefoot Massage education – feeling strongly that the work be evolved and updated to include evidence-based material, to refrain from teaching the technique online or by video where it couldn’t be felt, and to support different forms of Barefoot Massage as something unique and beneficial. After asking for the founders blessing to move onwards and upwards, Jeni left Ashiatsu Oriental/DeepFeet Bar Therapy in February of 2017.

That is when she started the idea of the Center for Barefoot Massage. Jeni invited Mary-Claire Fredette and other previous DeepFeet instructors who left for similar reasons to rise from the ashes (Ashi’s?!) and start something new. Jeni co-founded the Center for Barefoot Massage, starting a new continuing education company and launched the new approach to ashiatsu barefoot massage with the Myofascial Ashiatsu “FasciAshi” technique that Jeni developed at Heeling Sole. Focusing on teaching only live, in person classes where everyone could feel and experience the technique raw, the FasciAshi classes developed into something that is now taught in 14 different states, with 7 classes available, and more specialty training options on the way. Jeni took on even more roles in this company, and is working hard to create a solid continuing education program to support all barefoot massage in the future of the massage therapy industry. All this the while running Heeling Sole, teaching massage classes, and massaging you!

Jeni brings to every class her experience working as an employee, an independent contractor, a business owner and a boss-lady from a range of environments such as spa’s, PT/DO/DC offices, athletic venues, public events and her own massage clinic. But mainly she brings her years of active, practical experience using the technique on a daily basis – not many people can say that they’ve massaged with their feet more than with their hands over 19 years!! And even less people who teach can say that they still maintain an active massage practice.

In June, 2023, Jeni graduated intensive training through the Anatomy Trains Structural Integration program in Maine, and became a Board Certified Structural Integrator in December 2023. During 2023 and early 2024, the Center for Barefoot Massage was transitioned into Jeni’s full ownership, with goals to grow the company while keeping the original vision and values aligned and moving forward. The future of massage is a foot.

Jeni spends her working hours split between massaging clients through both FasciAshi and Barefoot Structural Integration approaches at Heeling Sole in San Antonio, running the business end of both Heeling Sole and the Center for Barefoot Massage, while also helping to grow the barefoot massage community nationwide by teaching excited massage therapists this work and advancing the skills of the instructors on her thriving teacher team.

Read this>>> Center for Barefoot Massage instructor spotlight post (with fun trivia questions!)

Jeni loves spending time with her dog, nibbling on Salted Caramel anything, chugging iced lattes or Mai Tais depending on the hour of the day, gardening, rewatching Star Wars, or trying to turn off her brain well enough to take naps in the sunshine.

View Jeni Spring’s LinkedIn Profile
about.me/HeelingSole

Read this>>> Center for Barefoot Massage instructor spotlight post (with fun trivia questions!)