What To Expect In Massage Therapy School: From Students’ Perspectives
Massage students share their experience at massage school to help new and prospective students know what to expect and how to get the most out of their massage training program.
The most interesting things that I’ve learned in my massage program by far include the benefits of massage therapy, the interconnectedness of the human body, and how similar, yet different we are from each other as human beings. At the start of my program, I had no idea how beneficial massage therapy is to the human body and mind. It can improve and enhance functions of the endocrine, immune, muscular, digestive, and integumentary systems, to name just a few. Massage therapy includes manual palpation of muscles with the intent to relax and relieve tension. With this manual palpation comes increased blood flow, thus improving circulation, and allowing for better health at the cellular level. Continue reading…
The classes are exciting and fresh to me, and the material all new: my first anatomy and pathophysiology class; my first kinesiology class; an avalanche of new terms to learn. The program has 18 students, and we will study, learn, practice and grow together until graduation. We are getting to know each other well and have built trust and camaraderie into our relationships. We do Exchanges, (practice massage techniques) on each other–a great way to learn! Read more
At this school I have learned many aspects of the body from anatomy and physiology, pathology, different modalities to bones and muscles. The most eye-opening information that was taught in pathology were all of the potential illnesses and contagions a person might have. I soon learned that I am not merely just “rubbing lotion” on people. I am helping to relieve people from their body pain. One of our classroom projects was to conduct a case study on someone. A case study involves observing a client’s posture, gait, overall structure and determining what issues the client may have and how to resolve them. Documentation of what muscles are affected, a treatment plan and the end results are also included in the study. Keep reading…
I want to share some of the most interesting things I have learned in massage therapy and offer some advice for future students in massage training programs. I’ve learned so much fascinating stuff in massage school that has thrilled me. The amazing details of how touch supports the immune system, circulatory and nervous systems. How to sense into the tissue, how to find the sensation of hypertonic tissue and trigger points. And learning the feel of applying just the right pressure to just the right areas of the body. I have also found much of the education around running a massage business to be quite interesting and motivating to me. One of the most interesting things I’ve learned during my time as a massage student has been what I learned from my experiences of being in the client role. Being a client to multiple professional massage therapists and other alternative health care practitioners has taught me an immeasurable amount about massage therapy and the health care practitioners we refer to. Read more…
I’ve had a fascination with human anatomy and physiology since my first exposure to the subject as a senior in high school. During my undergraduate degree at Colorado State University, I had the tremendous privileges of learning anatomy on human cadavers, followed by dissecting the cadavers for the anatomy class the subsequent year. This strongly cemented the fascination that had begun to flourish in high school. Nearly two decades later, having explored multiple career opportunities, I am currently back in school, preparing to become a massage therapist. There have been many moments confirming this choice for me, though my favorite recurring confirmation is the level of giddy excitement I feel when I learn new information about the human body. Keep reading…
Clinicals at massage school allow an opportunity for hands-on learning, and a chance to pull together information from all of our classes, and apply it when working with real clients. I was given the privilege of working with a friend’s 12-year-old son a month or so into clinic, at a point in the program in which my confidence was building but still relatively fragile. Meaning, I felt self-assured when presented with a client suffering from a sore neck or in the late recovery stage of an injury, even surgery. This, however, felt like a very different challenge. My client, who I soon discovered is incredibly sweet, curious, intelligent and surrounded by a rockstar family for support, also has quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy. Read more…
Now, because of my massage school, I have a much better understanding of what causes pain and inflammation. Things like how the skeletal system changes with age, how hormones and nerves interact to influence a person’s sensitivity to pain, and how edema can result from a failure/overload of the lymphatic system. I also learned different techniques to manage and influence these physiological processes. For example, for edema, it is important to place the non-inflamed swollen area on cushions and raise it above the level of the heart as elevation will help with drainage. Perpendicular and parallel stretching of the skin over the lymphatic vessels’ fibers will stimulate the lymphatic capillaries to open and thereby allowing the interstitial fluid to enter the lymphatic system. These are all bodily functions that I have learned directly from my massage therapy class that has been so interesting and that I wouldn’t have known before. Keep reading…
To me, being in massage therapy goes far beyond adhesions in muscles and tissues. I believe a massage therapist touches souls. During school, I have been fascinated by the anatomical changes that take place during pregnancy. The hormones like relaxin that are kicked in to soften the joints and prepare a woman’s body for birth. And how we as massage therapists need to be cautious of over-stretching during this time. The risks of high blood pressure or gestational diabetes, and the symptoms associated with pregnancy-related conditions that we need to be cognizant of during our intake for a prenatal massage. Additionally, being aware of certain acupressure points around the ankles and neck to avoid a potential induction. Lastly, the positioning of a woman’s body to offer the greatest comfort and support during her massage, which likely means no lying on her belly without special prenatal pillows, no lying on her back to avoid compressing the vena cava vein unless she is propped with several cushions and really confident, secure draping. Read more…
The beginning of school was an exciting and scary time since it has been over 30 years since I have been a student in the classroom. On the first day of class, faces that mirrored my own emotions looked back at me and a kinship formed within this body of learners. The excitement that we all felt at finally pursuing our dream was palpable. Some of us were fresh out of high school, some were new mothers, some were single parents, and some, like me, were beginning again. We were all embarking on this journey together, knowing that this was our time. I needed to remember how to study all over again. I needed to rework my time to accommodate work and home life with studying. We all needed to find our stride, and we were able to do it as a class. “No student left behind”, we said. The support of my classmates and instructors as well as the administration has been an unexpected blessing. Meeting my classmates and forging these friendships has been such an added benefit to my education and to my life. Struggles shared always lightens the load. Keep reading…
I stand now a little more than halfway through my program and greatly satisfied that I chose to begin the process of a massage therapy certification. Class time allows me to integrate disparate modes of knowing by moving fluidly from lecture to demonstration to practice. We will often spend an hour at the start of class reviewing the origins and insertions of a major muscle group by first viewing slides, answering questions, and then drawing the muscles ourselves. This works to solidify complex information and bolster confidence in my abilities as we move on to practice on the human body. Moving methodically and strategically, we cover all areas of the human and review the prior class’s lessons the next day to further ensure a retention of information. The constant review of information and techniques is crucial and has allowed me to perfect, for example, the myriad draping techniques which proved particularly difficult for me in the beginning of my program. Draping, table adjustment, ergonomics and timing: these are all things I struggled with that have improved dramatically over time. My favorite part of class so far was learning the chair massage routine! This is a specific routine replete with foot-wiggles (for adjusting posture and gravitational force as we descend down the back) and a series of moves that work the client’s entire posterior surface in just fifteen minutes. Read more…
Going into something with eyes and mind wide open is important when undertaking something brand new. After stating that, I must admit that at the end of my first week in the program, I was having major doubts about my new journey. I was particularly overwhelmed by Kinesiology I. I literally had a pounding headache after each class and had doubts that I could ever learn all of the terminology. But, in spite of my doubts and headaches, it felt wonderful to learn something brand new. It also felt wonderful to acquire knowledge about the human body, massage therapy and different approaches to the mind, body and spirit. Once I settled down, I was hooked. The first term was primarily about fundamentals and getting a knowledge base for future massage work. I enjoyed all of my courses and had a very successful term. I became intrigued by Eastern Philosophy and looking at the mind, body, spirit and everything else from a perspective far different from anything I had ever thought about. I will admit that I didn’t comprehend it all in the same way that I could memorize human bones, bony landmarks or anatomical functions. But what is the purpose of learning but to stretch our mind in new and wonderful ways? Read more…
Once my massage therapy classes got to the muscle portion of the chapters, it became difficult. I loved the material and thought every muscle was so beautiful and brilliant because it’s a part of us. We were required to learn multiple muscles with limited time. Learning a muscle’s origins, insertion, as well as its actions in just two weeks was very challenging. One thing I did to encourage myself was to focus on how accomplished I would feel once I got all of these muscles down, so I took steps to get there. To learn in this situation, I started using the school’s resources such as the college’s cadaver lab. The cadaver lab has everything needed to learn about the human body through various ways, such as models of the skeleton, heart, and cadavers from people who donated their body to science. By using these resources, I always did well and it made a difference in my ability to learn and retain information. Read more…
The most interesting thing so far has been my anatomy and physiology class. It also includes medical terminology. I wasn’t really prepared for the difficulty level of this class, but it makes me want to put in more effort understand and keep up with everyone else. We have already explored a human cadaver and it was awesome to see how things are actually laid out in the body; how all the muscles are connected and the entire internal framework right down to the pericardial sac around the heart. Down to a molecular and cellular level human bodies do so many things on a daily basis that we don’t think about. I have always been fascinated by the human body specifically muscles and bones. We are currently studying the cellular makeup of muscles and will begin our bones section in a few weeks. I do have a kinesiology background due to my personal training certification and that has been a huge help with the body systems. It has also been awesome to build the knowledge bridge between my personal training certification and what I have learned so far. My anatomy and ahysiology instructor has been able to answer almost all of my “why” questions that I was unable to ask during my personal training certification classes. Read more…
I initially thought that my knowledge of human anatomy and symptom management would mean that what I was to learn in massage school would just be a review. Boy was I wrong! The classes in kinesiology are teaching me more about the complex details of structural human anatomy than I ever learned in nursing school. It is amazing to me that I never appreciated the intricacies of muscles overlapping and intertwining with tendon, fascia, nerves and blood vessels. How did I not need to learn that in nursing school? More amazing than seeing how the body fits together is to feel it! The process of learning where structures are by palpation has taken my knowledge of the human body to a level where I am observing the uniqueness of each person’s body with my hands. The terms in the massage anatomy textbook are intimidating at first, but they are not as unfamiliar as they first appear. We have all been using abbreviated names for these body parts our whole lives, and so we are already innately aware of how they interconnect. Learning the long anatomical names for structures of the body does take effort, but the terminology builds on itself. Keep reading…
Massage therapy school is so much more than I expected. Entering the program, I expected it to be mostly hands-on learning mixed with some anatomy and physiology, but it is truly exceedingly more than that. We are learning ethical practices and ways to run a massage business such as policies and procedures I may want to have in place. We also are delving into industry standards that I want to adhere to. I am learning to evaluate my own morals, values, and to self-reflect. We are not just learning the bones and muscles, but we are learning how they work in the body and ailments that people may have in those muscles or joints. One of the most important skills I am learning is client assessment and that it is okay to ask questions. Everything I am learning will be helpful to me in starting my own practice. I am already starting to use these techniques in my own personal life to help prepare for my professional transition. I am overall thinking about life differently. I am now considering my boundaries and limits professionally. I never would have considered these without taking these courses. Keep reading…