I’m taking a professional-level massage class. Three days a week, 3.5 hours per day, for three months. 125 hours towards a license or certification, if I want to go that far. Say goodbye to free time. But I’ll enjoy it, I really will. I took two massage classes through a local community college about four years ago and I really got a lot out of it. My daily work in the computer industry is very left brain, linear, analytic, and utter passive physically. Body work, by contrast, is much more right brain, intuitive, sensing, and relatively physically active. I have really enjoyed the balance this has brought to my life in the past and I’m looking forward to regaining that.
But…
Two of the teachers that I’ve dealt with the most are far too… “new-agey” for my tastes. One has been talking about cleansing auras and how “gravity doesn’t just pull towards the earth, you know; gravity also pulls you up, lifts you to the sky”. Huh. I must have missed that day in 8th grade science class. After 20 years of body work and 10+ of teaching, she says she’s just now getting into anatomy. The other teacher is very big into talking about sacred space, and the “energy we’re building in this room”.
I dunno. I don’t want to sound like some republican. But I’m a realist, technical by training and vocation. I trust observable phenomena, I like measurable results, I like documented and verifiable assertions. My previous massage training was very solidly grounded, heavy on anatomy and kinesthetics, very no-nonsense. Which is to say, very unlike the classes I’m in right now. This side of the class is fairly challenging in that regard.
There’s another teacher who is a former engineer with PacBell. I’m hoping to corner him after class and ask how he handles that side of the profession. But I’m vaguely worried he’s going to say something like “I can tell by your aura that you’re really bothered by this. Have you considered talking to your guardian angel about this?”
While I’m on the topic, this class includes a requirement that I perform 16 massages outside of class. I’m not too comfortable asking people at work, and as sad as this might sound, I’m not too sure I know 16 people outside of work. Interested in a massage by an enthusiastic and partially trained amateur? Drop me a mail.
I personally would be nervous to if put in your situation. I guess it’s mainly asking yourself about how you’re going to meet these people. I think the best, least freakish method might be to go to a place that does massages and ask if you could work for free. Then again there might be other requirements with the class I don’t know about and you have a full-time job to think about too I’m guessing. How you go about talking them into it, I don’t know…
Based on what I’ve read, you don’t want the people you ask to get the wrong idea about you, nor do you wish to be bombarded by strangers asking you to give them a massage.
You’ve got to get leverage. Not that I have any of the answers in this predicament, but you signed up to this class for a reason. You have to come up with a strong enough reason for sticking with it. It’s outside of your comfort zone. Much like socializing with people has been for me. However if I don’t do it, I won’t grow as a person and will live with regrets.
You’re much older and shall I say seasoned than I am. Use whatever principles made you the current success you are today and apply them to this.
Maybe I’m totally off and am a foolish idiot, but I took the risk and voiced my opinion. 🙂
Heh. Maybe I will invite you to breakfast. 😉
Actually, I will say that I am at a way higher comfort level with these New Age people than I used to be. When I moved out here from NYC, I was about as agnostic/skeptical/cynical as you can get. And the reiki laying-on-of-hands-i-do-yoga-every-day-feeling-your-energy set did not sit well with me.
I still think most of it is hooey but the people aren’t as wacky as I thought- I just kinda ignore that stuff and they come up with some good alternative/Chinese medicine info every so often.
Well, when the criteria is “would I want to offer to massage this person?” I’m not sure I know 16 people, either. 🙂 I might be game, if you can get me to sit still for the requisite amount of time. ‘Specially if you are learning any deep tissue work. If course, you are quite a bit stronger than the women who have done deep tissue work on my neck and shoulder in the past…. 🙂
I know several massage-trained folks, and my impression is that there are all kinds. Different styles of treatment attract more or less spiritual folks. To be quite honest, I much prefer the kind of treatment I get from those who have both feet firmly on the ground. I feel like they are more in tune with what is going on with my body, and they are more focused on the work. Perhaps that’s my perception. 🙂 I do work with someone regularly who is very spiritual, but she’s fairly private about it. She has an altar in her massage room, and I suspect she “preps” the space before her clients come in. Whatever works for her – she gives good massage.
rhymes with sewage….
A funny thing about that is, the first place I heard the term “newage,” the person using it was a Wiccan High Priestess…
I’m a Neopagan, I have been a massage and Reiki client, and I am studying Reiki. But I try to stay, as some of my friends would say, “grounded in the earth plane, man.” It bothers me when someone I know spouts some pseudoscientific blather (or worse, pseudohistorical utopianism) about their healing or religious practice. What I do to keep from constantly saying, “What? That’s bullshit!” is…
1) Try to figure out what they are talking about, as if they were someone speaking a second language badly. Does “gravity upwards” translate to “muscle habits and other conscious or unconscious tendencies to be upright?”
2) Determine whether the statement becomes useful if treated as a metaphor. For example, is it useful to think that there are forces which pull us up as well as down?
3) Ask for clarification. Maybe what they are really talking about will become clear, and maybe it will make sense then.
4) Say something apparently self-deprecatory like, “I’m not sure I’ve mastered the appropriate paradigms to understand that statement. Could you explain that a little more simply?”
5) Just smile and say moneyhums to myself until they’ve stopped spouting nonsense, particularly if they are the teacher. (If I am supposed to be teaching them, I kick the– I mean, I gently point them to a more cogent viewpoint.)
6) Realize that there are many people who are very skilled in certain areas who are militantly ignorant in other areas. Even if their logic circuits are faulty, they can still help me develop my skill. (In the case of “energy work,” mostly we have no clue how it works– people make up pretty explanations with scientific-sounding words to legitimize and rationalize the whole thing. But it does work.)
Re: rhymes with sewage….
In this case, I mostly opted for solution 5. 🙂
Since this original post, I have taken a couple of other massage courses (and I’m in the process of signing up for yet more). While I still have much of the left-brain vantage I was dealing with in this post, I’m also finding a growing acknowledgement of my intuition and the role it plays in my body work.
For instance, I typically preceed a massage with some form of body reading and structural analysism trying to figure out what’s happening in the client’s body. A lot of that happens in my left brain; the left shoulder is elevated, the scapulae are protracted and elevated, there’s a pronounced lateral rotation of the left leg, originating at the hip, yadda yadda. However, there’s an increasing part of that analysis that is more intuitive, is more about impressions and less about spotting a specific issue. “For some reason, i really want to work on the left quadratus lumborum. Not sure why; I just do.”
These days, my assessment is all about abandoning plans, it seems. I have one strategy simply from looking at my notes from the last time with this client. Then they arrive and we talk about how their body feels today and we do some structure reading, and I toss the first plan and construct another one. Then I get them on the table and start some opening holds and palpations, and I end up chucking that plan and doing something altogether different.
The results have been effective, but it’s interesting to watch the process evolve.
and another thing—
It does bother me that someone could be a LMT (I assume) and teacher and not study anatomy. In the backwards corner of the world where I live, an LMT has to study anatomy– especially bones, muscles, and the nervous system. The only formal massage class I’ve ever taken had specific pointers on anatomy.