Kyle C. Wright is the Founder and President of the North Carolina School of Advanced Bodywork, Inc., in Charlotte, and the Florida School of Advanced Bodywork, Inc., in Jacksonville. He was Founder and Operator of the highly successful FIVE Southeastern Schools of Neuromuscular & Massage Therapy from 1992 to 2007, two of which received School of Distinction Awards from ACCSC* before selling the five schools to a large University based in Florida.
* ACCSC: Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (formerly the ACCSCT)
Kyle C. Wright wants to help YOU become the Leading Edge Clinical Massage Therapy School in your city. Kyle will share his 40+ years of direct, hands-on experience, helping YOU in designing and managing your new or existing school, or expanding your curriculum to serve the Clinical / Medical Possibilities you could provide for your Students. Kyle does not just teach you theories. He assists you in implementing what has WORKED in his seven schools and several clinics over many years!
WHO IS Kyle C. Wright?
Visionary Leader and four-decade+ authority in the field of clinical and structural bodywork, Kyle C. Wright is the Founder and President of the Schools of Advanced Bodywork (NCSAB and FLSAB) and the developer of a cutting-edge, clinical/medical massage therapy curriculum.
He is the McGraw-Hill published author of the foundational text, Structural Balancing: A Clinical Approach, and has established seven successful massage therapy schools, training over many thousands of practitioners. His unique, results-oriented methodology—focused primarily on achieving muscular balance & symmetry—is the trusted standard for lasting pain relief, relied upon by the general public and elite professional athletes across the PGA and European tours.
Kyle is a 25-year member of the American Massage Therapy Association and the Florida State Massage Therapy Association.
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Building a Massage Therapy Empire
In 1989, Kyle had an Idea with a Vision. … A BIG Vision!
And Kyle was willing to do whatever it took to bring that idea to life. … Even if he had to Hitchhike his way to accomplish his goals!
Back in 1984, massage was for the most part only known for general relaxation, spa, and luxury applications. There was very little awareness that massage had profound clinical and medical healing applications, especially within the medical professions. Yet, unable to compete economically and legislatively with the growing drug and surgery-based medical culture, most therapeutic massage & bodywork knowledge had already been nearly lost by the turn of the 19th/20th Century.
Ironically, after all these years, while there has been much progress, most massage & bodywork therapists do not see the vast potential of clinical & medical healing available, literally at their fingertips, if they only had the right knowledge & skills. This awareness is the latest driver of Kyle’s work to complete what he started so many years ago. That being to help existing or new massage schools teach their students about the more wide-ranging clinical/medical implications of hands-on therapy.
[KYLE: Do you have a Short Case Study or a Testimonial of someone with a condition not normally associated with massage therapy. Something most people, including therapists, would not expect to be caused by muscle tension.]
It was up to people like Kyle Wright to help bring back that lost knowledge, improve on it, and take it to the Next Level in America.
Kyle had a Thirst & Quest for Deeper Knowledge of bodywork and how massage could become a clinical therapeutic modality, and be more fully utilized for medical conditions. In his early intuitions about the potential of properly delivered medically/clinically-oriented massage therapy, he searched out and studied a wide range of advanced knowledge of how the human body functioned, how it broke down, and how hands-on Neuro-Musculo-Fascial Therapy could help so many cases of pain & pathology.
Kyle studied with many of the early Great Men & Women in Massage Therapy: Paul St. John, Judith Walker, George Kousaleos, Dr. William Bonney, Gus Keathley, Tony Gray, Dr. Robert Perault, Leon Chaitow (a pioneer in European NMT), and many others.
Because massage therapy was not commonly known for clinical or medical applications, Kyle would work for unreasonably low wages in high-end medical clinics just to prove what advanced massage & bodywork therapy techniques could do for patients and clients.
Kyle also became a Lead Instructor for the St. John Method of NMT (Neuromuscular Therapy), traveling all over the country for Paul St. John to teach the NMT method to hundreds of therapists in many cities. Here too, the pay was unreasonably low, yet in his quest to master his therapeutic and teaching skills, Kyle persisted to gain the knowledge and skills he was building into his own neuromuscular system and his own BodyMInd.
In 1989, Kyle decided he could do a much better job of teaching what he had learned — at great personal cost — to new therapists, providing them with a satisfying, rewarding, and profitable career while helping human beings get their lives back. And yes, too much pain or restriction on movement for too long can ruin a person’s experience of life beyond what most people can imagine unless they’ve suffered such pain or limitations themselves.
SO … with NO capital to his name, Kyle financed his new, Leading Edge Massage School on a credit card … and, because he had been operating on such low wages for several years, he hitchhiked to and from his first school for the first six months [???]!
Now, many years later, as Kyle says, “For over three decades, I’ve had the privilege of being a part of one of the fastest-growing professions in health care: Massage Therapy.”
Kyle’s Early Training & Career
“About 20 years ago, a young man applied for admission to the Suncoast School of Massage in Tampa, Florida. What distinguished this teenager from his peers was that he knew what he wanted to do and had the desire to reach his goals. …
“His mother, Anita Wright, not only encouraged him, she was also a classmate in the program. Anita’s nursing career obviously inspired her son, and she helped keep his young mind on track. …
“I know I can help people through touch, and I want to learn as much as I can to do it effectively,” Kyle Wright stated. (Quoting from Dan Ulrich, Founding member, Suncoast School of Massage Therapy in Tampa, Florida. Dan was also a chairman of the Florida Board of Massage Therapy and a president of the Florida State Massage Therapy Association.)
“Kyle was a sponge for knowledge and excelled throughout his course of study. He went on to learn from some of the best of the modern massage therapy renaissance … It was no surprise that Kyle quickly built a solid practice and established two flourishing clinical massage therapy centers.”
Kyle’s massage career started in 1984 when he graduated from Suncoast School of Massage Therapy, Inc.. He had the privilege of learning from and assisting Paul St John, LMT, and Judith Walker, LMT, in the development of their post-graduate educational seminars. He assisted them nationally in the field of Neuromuscular Therapy from 1986 through 1991 while maintaining his practice at the Jacksonville Neurological Clinic for 6 years.
Kyle went on to work at the North Florida Center for Head, Neck, and TMJ, assisting their physicians’ patients by normalizing the soft tissue components of their bodies, thus reducing many of the afflictions associated with temporomandibular disorders.
Kyle served as an instructor on the teaching rotation of the Complementary/ Alternative Medicine (CAM) curriculum at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida. There, he taught proper posture, myofascial imbalances, and their relationship to musculoskeletal pain.
In 1988, Kyle opened up two “Wright Centers of Advanced Bodywork” centers in Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, becoming one of the first providers of clinical bodywork in the community. His vision still lives today as his original The Wright Centers are successfully operating under his students after 25 years.
For the past 25 years, Kyle’s commitment to the field of bodywork has helped further his studies, working with many physicians specializing in neurology, orthopedics, podiatry, radiology, chiropractic, and dentistry. He has also worked with many of the industry’s greats in athletic training, physical therapy, and with many nationally renowned massage therapists.
Returning to Dan Ulrich’s comments: “As the years passed, Kyle recognized the need for clinically based massage therapy training and eventually opened his own school. The success of the school led to the opening of several other schools and gained a strong reputation for educational excellence. I used to joke with my students at the Suncoast School by saying, ‘There won’t be a new body model next year with new parts, so study this one, and you’ll always have a solid foundation to build on.’ Kyle never forgot that, and his book reflects the importance yet simplicity of basic skeletal and muscular function.” Dan’s above comments are from the Forward he wrote for Kyle and the 2010, 380-page textbook, Structural Balancing: A Clinical Approach, authored by Kyle C. Wright.
His early, Original Clinical Vision still lives today, as in [19???], he sold his first two clinical practices, The Wright Centers in Jacksonville, Florida, to his loyal and long-standing therapists of 20 years, and they are successfully operating after 25 years. [KYLE: Details on that sale, at least the year???]
[KYLE: I’m not sure the below section should be here. I was hesitating to include myself on the home page. However, I can see it could be beneficial in some ways, and it could help US in our efforts for building SEO and AEO (Augmented Intelligence Engine Optimization). And it helps flesh YOU out as a “risk taker” willing to see the value in new things, which might be a good example for your site visitors. So if you do not want it here, that is okay, and maybe we’ll put it in a sub-page so I can get some SEO link-juice for my sites.]
A Quantum Advancement in Medical Massage & Myo-Structural Balancing / Bodywork
In 1993, Kyle was invited to Sarasota, Florida by David Shue,* LMT, one of the Leading Edge NMT Therapists in Florida, to attend a seminar/workshop led by David Scott Lynn (DSL). The seminar was on DSL’s Method of Psycho-Muscular Release & Structural Balancing, as it was called way back then. (It is now known as DSL EdgeWork).
Kyle says that was a Life-Changing Event in that DSL taught him several ground-breaking ideas & strategies about bodywork that were almost unknown by anyone in the massage industry at the time. Among these were the NO Pain, MORE Gain approach to keeping Clients in a more relaxed, parasympathetic state, the effects of the abdominal wall on posture and pain, more certainty on anterior/posterior pelvic tilts and lumbar lordosis/kyphosis, and using manual pressure on musculo-fascial units to “talk to the CNS & Brain.”
DSL also had some unique refinements to the Neuromuscular Laws that were more popular at the time, such as the critical differences between muscle TONE and TONUS. It was not about muscles being “too weak or too strong, but too short or too long,” and how focusing on relaxing & lengthening of locked short muscles instead of “strengthening allegedly ‘weak’ muscles” was a far more efficient way to restore postural alignment and structural balance.
Many of the things DSL was teaching went directly against what was considered “common knowledge & practice” at the time. But they made total sense to Kyle.
Kyle was already known as a “Leading Edge” Practitioner & Educator. Yet he knew he was going out on a limb by going against what was “commonly held knowledge” at the time by teaching DSL’s Methods. But being a TRULY “Leading Edge” Therapist, Kyle was NOT afraid to challenge the status quo. After the DSL Workshop, Kyle completely redesigned his Massage Therapy School Curriculum and his Private Practice and embraced these new ideas.
As a Result of Kyle’s Forward-Thinking & Pioneering Spirit, his seven schools have consistently turned out therapists who have a superior understanding of how the human body works, how it breaks down, and how to heal those breakdowns.
Because of their well-known reputation and a nearly 100% pass rate on the national exams, Graduates of Kyle’s schools have always been in the highest demand by local chiropractors, clinics, spas, and other employers.
A collaboration between Kyle and DSL produced the 380-page textbook, Structural Balancing: A Clinical Approach, published by McGraw-Hill in 2010.
[KYLE: The following also might not be good for the home page. But I was thinking about when a Prospect asks a Massage School Owner or Manager how much money they can make, and what they can say as a motivating factor …???]
On Income Potentials for Solo Practitioners
When a Massage School Prospect asks “How much money can I make”??? …
David Shue, LMT, practiced in Sarasota, Florida, for about 40 years before he passed away in 2010. For the last ten years of his practice (approximately), David was performing EIGHT, 55-minute therapy sessions per day, five days per week. He was usually booked up 4 to 5 weeks in advance. He had a small office with a small waiting area and a part-time receptionist. So yes, he had some minimal overhead.
He was charging $145 per session, no insurance. He accepted only cash or credit card. If you “do the math,” you see that 8 sessions per day over five days is 40 sessions per week. If he took two 2-week vacations a year, then 40 sessions per week times 48 weeks is 1,920 sessions. 1,920 Xs $145 = $278,400. Even if his overhead was $50,000 per year … well, you can see the potential for a highly motivated and well-trained individual in a very profitable practice.
And even if you only work 3 or 4 days per week, just run the numbers. YET, the Real Question is, HOW do you become worth $145 per 55-minute session? Kyle C. Wright can help YOU develop that level of success.
David Shue said that for his Method of Therapy, he was using similar training Kyle learned and provides, along with what he learned from DSL in 1993, as did Kyle. David Shue also had the foresight to locate his office in a medical complex in a wealthy community and was not afraid to talk to anyone he came across, including many medical professionals from whom he could get referrals. So he was a “natural marketer” at heart, and he positioned himself strategically. David Shue was also a reasonably strong man and knew how to take care of himself and his muscles & joints.
While, of course, this is an unusual situation, and David was in much better conditions than most, we are NOT making any income representations or projections. Yet it goes to show what the upside possibilities and potentials are for a highly motivated person who plans ahead and locates himself or herself correctly, and is willing to “get out there” and do marketing or networking.
Master Anatomist & Educator
Kyle has been on the Leading Edge of highly detailed anatomical & kinesiological knowledge of the human structure.
The more we know about how the musculo-fascial units interact with the bones, and how the bones relate to gravity, the more competent we become at resolving complex structural imbalances in the human body.
It is our objective that SAB-trained students are among the most well-trained therapists in Structural Anatomy & Functional Kinesiology as possible.
The SAB Curriculum is designed around that objective, yet still fits within the constraints of the 500 to 1,000 hours most licensing programs require.
Massage Therapy School Development
[KYLE: I did not find enough good photos to set these up with the format I have on the rest of the page — photo on one side, text on the other. That can be easily fixed when we get the right photos and text figured out.]
The First School: Jacksonville, Florida
Kyle’s first School was located in Jacksonville, Florida. It opened with six participants as highly committed students.
Kyle’s original NCSAB’s curriculum was initially developed in 1992, when he founded his first of five Southeastern Schools of Neuromuscular and Massage Therapy, Inc., in Jacksonville, Florida. There, he developed the clinical and practical portion of the clinical massage therapy and structural bodywork curriculum. Kyle wrote and self-published the manual Clinical Neuromuscular and Structural Bodywork, which served his former students of the Southeastern Schools for the past 16 years.
The Five School Network in the Southeast
He also went on to co-found the Southeastern Schools of Neuromuscular and Massage Therapy, Inc. in Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as Greenville, Charleston, and Columbia, South Carolina.
Kyle offers regular continuing education seminars for the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. He teaches a variety of postgraduate training courses to further educate licensed therapists in the evaluation and treatment of structural imbalances and musculoskeletal pain.
Returning to the School Business
After selling his first five schools, he moved to the Asheville, NC area and opened a new Clinical Therapy Practice, The Wright Center, and a school, the School of Advanced Bodywork, in Fairview, southeast of Asheville. This was in great part because of the many golfers in the area, of whom he had great experience in working with therapeutically and maximizing their physical capacities to improve their golf game.
When his non-compete with Keiser Education terminated, he moved the school to Charlotte.
The New Schools of Advanced Bodywork
In 2007, after selling the Southeastern schools to Keiser University and two Wright Centers of Advanced Bodywork practices to his loyal and long-standing therapists of twenty years, Kyle shifted his energy to fulfill his dream of living and operating his new school, the original School of Advanced Bodywork, in the health and wellness-minded area of Western North Carolina, in Fairview, NC.
The SAB school’s curriculum and health care facilities are devoted to the treatment and ongoing clinical research of postural-related problems, muscular imbalances, and myofascial pain. His hands-on instructors teach functional anatomy, kinesiology, soft-tissue pathology, and clinical treatment strategies.
The schools provide a variety of postgraduate training courses to further educate licensed therapists in the evaluation and treatment of various modalities, along with structural imbalances and musculoskeletal pain.
Kyle has taught a multitude of post-graduate training courses to further educate licensed therapists in the evaluation and treatment protocols for soft tissue injuries. The schools offer regular continuing educational seminars as a “category A” provider for the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork.
Kyle’s Recent Career
Kyle has semi-retired from Private Therapy Practice and is now focused on … ????
While Kyle is still available for a few Clients, his time is limited by his work with Massage Therapy Schools & Startups.
Kyle is now developing strategies and processes to help other Massage Therapy Schools Optimize & Maximize their immense potential, given the potential growth of massage therapy schools in the near future.
[KYLE: We need a statement about what the new version of your work is all about, and your objectives.]
Working with Golfers
Through the years, Kyle has maintained a unique relationship with many of the world’s top Professional Golfers playing on the PGA and European Tour. When traveling and working with the players, his treatment strategies — in conjunction with his unique method of hands-on, Myo-Structural Therapy — include cardio training, light work-outs, and stretching 3 hours before their tee times. The massage and bodywork in the evenings enhances their peak performance.
[KYLE: We need more details on this aspect of your life and work, and more photos if you have them.]
TESTIMONIALS from Golfers HERE [Page not installed yet]
Curriculum Development & Publishing
[KYLE: I thought I had a photo of your original School Curriculum Book, but I could not find it. I was going to put one on each side of the text to show the evolution of the book.]
Kyle’s original curriculum for the North Carolina Schools of Advanced Bodywork, now in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida, was initially developed in 1991, when he co-founded his first of five Southeastern Schools of Neuromuscular and Massage Therapy, Inc., located in Jacksonville, Florida. There, he developed the clinical and practical portion of the neuromuscular and structural bodywork curriculum.
Kyle has written and self-published the manual, Clinical Neuromuscular and Structural Bodywork, which served his former students of the Southeastern Schools for the past 17 years.
In 2010, the 320-page textbook, Structural Balancing: A Clinical Approach, was written in collaboration with fellow therapist David Scott Lynn and published by McGraw-Hill.
Honors
In 2005, two of his schools were awarded School of Distinction Awards by the Accrediting Commission for Career Schools and Colleges of Technology (ACCSC), formerly known as ACCSCT.
ACCSC is a private, nonprofit institutional accrediting agency that evaluates and accredits postsecondary career, trade, and technical schools, including many for-profit vocational institutions. It is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), which allows its accredited schools to participate in federal financial aid (Title IV) if they meet other federal requirements.
Kyle was honored to be selected as Massage Therapist of the Year by the Kyle is a 25-year member of the American Massage Therapy Association and the Florida State Massage Therapy Association. in the North Florida Chapter in 1992.
Kyle is a 25-year member of the American Massage Therapy Association and the Florida State Massage Therapy Association.
Speaking Engagements
[KYLE: If possible, each of these should have a short story about the audience, what you taught them, how they responded to your talk, what it might have led to,etc. Would be good to have a photo of you speaking to a larger crowd, too.]
• The National Convention for Osteopathic Medicine
• The Florida Chiropractic Convention
• The Florida State Massage Therapy Convention
• The Mayo Clinic, Physical Therapy Department, in Jacksonville, Florida
• National certification courses for strength and conditioning coaches and trainers
For Massage Therapy School Startups:
^CLICK HERE^
For Entrepreneurs, Investors, & Businesses interested in taking advantage of the growing Massage Therapy School Industry:
SPECIAL REPORT on Massage School Potentials
For Massage Therapy School Optimization:
^CLICK HERE^
For Existing Massage Schools interested in more efficient operations and profitability
SPECIAL REPORT on Massage School Optimization
For Massage Therapy School Clinical / Medical Curriculum Development:
^CLICK HERE^
For Any School Interested in Providing Superior Therapeutic Evaluation & Treatment Strategies
for Neuro-Musculo-Fascial & Joint Systems & Myo-Structural Balancing to Their Students:
SPECIAL REPORT on Massage School Curriculum Development