A conversation with someone outside the massage industry made me rethink what we charge

I had a conversation recently that made me seriously reconsider how I’ve been pricing my work.
I’ve been a massage therapist for over a decade, and my practice has evolved significantly over the years. A lot of the people who come to me now have persistent pain, complex tension patterns, restricted movement, or issues they’ve already tried to address in other ways.
I mentioned to someone I know that I was considering charging $300 for 90 minutes of my highest-level therapeutic work.
Their response was basically: I charge considerably more than $200 an hour for my professional expertise. Why wouldn’t $300 be fair for 90 minutes of highly skilled, physically demanding work?
That stopped me.
I realized I’ve spent years comparing my rates almost exclusively to what other massage therapists charge.
But why is that automatically our benchmark?
We spend years developing palpation skills, pattern recognition and clinical judgment. The work is physically demanding. There’s also intake, preparation, laundry, supplies, turnover and all the invisible business time surrounding those hands-on hours.
And unlike many professions, there’s a very real physical limit to how many hours of high-quality work we can sustainably perform.
I’m not saying every massage therapist should charge $300. Experience, skill, clientele, services and markets are obviously different.
But I am starting to question whether we collectively create our own pricing ceiling by continually looking at each other and asking, “What does massage cost around here?”
Maybe a better question for experienced therapists is:

What is my particular level of expertise and the work I provide actually worth?

I ultimately decided to separate my services. My relaxation/maintenance work remains at my regular rate. My most advanced, focused therapeutic work is now priced substantially higher.
Will everyone choose it? Of course not.
They don’t need to.
I’d rather do fewer intensive sessions, give those clients my best work, and build a practice that I can physically sustain for years.
I’m genuinely curious how other experienced MTs think about this.

Do you think massage therapists sometimes undervalue our work because we benchmark ourselves almost entirely against other massage therapists?