Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/72195
BE EXCELLENT They have a hard time attracting clients, become bored with their job, or simply find an alternative that works better for them. Most of us who have lasted in this field have had to work hard to develop our strengths in order to find the balance we need to survive. Our profession simply demands it. Our massage training didn't create those qualities in us, but if the schools we attended were good, then they helped us to identify our strengths and weaknesses and provided an environment where we could grow in some exciting and unanticipated ways. And, in the best-case scenarios, those discoveries continue to influence the way we work and live. BACK IN MY DAY This has been a particularly reflective year for the massage therapy profession. The fact that many organizations, including Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals, are celebrating important anniversaries has provided some of us old-timers an opportunity to look back on where we've come from, in an attempt to predict or even to influence where we may be going next. This exercise has a lot of appeal for someone who has watched our profession make some major changes in the last two decades. My own 25-year interface with massage has been much more in the realm of education than in practice, from that perspective I am happy to add my two cents to the discussion. People who were educated in massage along with me will remember what massage school was really like back in the day: classes were informal and were often conducted in someone's basement, living room, or large office. A particularly rigorous program might have a skeleton in the classroom. We bought or made our own tables and schlepped them to class with us every day. (My first table cost $25 and five massages. It was homemade of ¾-inch plywood, 2 x 2s, and a piano hinge. It had no face hole or cradle, and it weighed 50 pounds.) In those primitive, pre-lotion days, we used cold-processed almond oil from the health food store, until people started getting hives. Then we used cold-processed walnut oil, which is hypoallergenic, but it goes rancid really fast, so you have to keep it in the fridge—a special treat for massage on a cold night. In those dark ages before education requirements, I thought my program was extremely demanding. After getting a college degree that allowed me to avoid the sciences like the plague, massage school was my first exposure to anatomy and physiology, and it certainly felt like I was learning a lot. My first transcript, however, touts a whopping 125 hours of classroom instruction. We had no core textbooks written for massage therapists. Our reading assignments were jury-rigged from texts for other professions: premed students, physical therapists, etc. And our pathology text was the American Medical Association Family Medical Guide. My school had one wonderful, inspiring teacher, and he taught everything. When we finished school, we were proficient in Swedish massage and had enough experience with deep-tissue techniques to know that we had much more to learn. Our school had no administrators, student deans, financial 40 massage & bodywork september/october 2008