My passion is massage & bodywork. During massage school, it has become more and more clear that massage and bodywork really is my true purpose – my fated vocation. Throughout my journey to become a massage therapist I have found consistent confirmation that this is the way I can serve my community most effectively and it is how I found most fulfillment.
My natural skill of giving touch combined with my excellent massage therapy education brings much relief to my clients. Giving them relief and health brings joy to my spirit. I find myself in the flow state, a master of my craft, when I massage. As a child I happily gave my mom nightly foot rubs. As an adult I have mothered my baby with the gift of daily infant massage, creating a family culture of massage appreciation. Now, I have a 13-year-old who really likes receiving massage. It makes me smile every time he requests a massage with his sweet little voice.
In massage school I have received genuine praise from my instructors, classmates and clients. Some have emphasized to me in their feedback that I have “intuitive hands”, “a nurturing touch” and many have exclaimed pleasure at how hot my hands feel “as if they are hot stones!”. Realizing my calling to bodywork has been a thrill. I have now completed my certificate in massage therapy and am pursuing my associate’s degree in massage therapy. I am so excited to take the MBLEx test and become licensed. I am ready to prove my knowledge in massage therapy and demonstrate the excellent education I received from my brilliant teachers.
I am feeling so thankful to be ready for this stage of my new career and to take this exam, especially because I ran into a pretty good sized obstacle when I was 75% done with the massage therapy program at my college. What I thought might have the power to stop me from my completing massage school, ironically, gave me extra insight into the craft of massage. I got to experience it from the client’s perspective when a major health crisis hit me and my little family.
I started having sudden, extreme pain & debility where my occiput makes connection with the spine. These shocking, violent feeling moments came whenever I positioned my neck into extension and would resolve within a brief moment of me returning to neutral (by grasping my own skull in order to position it, and breathing. Unable to figure out what was wrong with me during doctor visits, I powered ahead in school, determined not to have any interruptions in my pursuit of becoming an LMT. Somehow, I made it through the last three weeks of Spring term, managing to still learn and practice the material, while avoiding neck extension like the plague.
I spent months of summer enduring these wild neck and skull pain episodes and then a unique set of symptoms appeared. I had significant balance issues, swallowing became very difficult, which was quite disconcerting, even scary at times. Then, there were severe headaches unlike anything I’d ever experienced. My partner and I spent weeks completely overwhelmed by my constant, intense symptoms that seemed neurological, when a CT scan was wisely ordered by an attentive chiropractor, a large mass was found in my brain. I was sent in for an emergency MRI that showed a benign tumor in my cerebellum that was blocking the output of the cerebrospinal fluid from the skull, causing severe swelling in my ventricles and swelling that smashed my brain stem. I was dying pretty rapidly. Emergency brain surgery removed the entire, benign tumor, but I was left with a TBI and a musculoskeletal system that was severely injured.
It took weeks to learn to walk again and many months to learn to balance again and to recover my neck and shoulder mobility. The surgery required a long incision through my trapezius from the EOP (external occipital protrusion), to C2 (cervical spine 2). Understanding all of these technical details about my health was actually easy for me because massage school had given me such a detailed education of the body and its systems through Anatomy & Physiology & Kinesiology, which were fascinating classes.
My little family went through immense stress for a good year after the brain surgery because I was unable to work or go to school. Also, I was blocked from doing common daily life activities like self-care, household work, driving and cooking. Recovering my body, nervous system and mental strength became my full-time job for a year. Then, to my surprise, I was actually able to return to massage school, activate the muscle memory I have for massage and begin reclaiming my skill of massage therapy. I did all of this with the support of my instructors and classmates and the health care practitioners who have helped me to manage the strain on my body and nervous system. Also, I am so grateful to my partner whose support has meant everything to my healing.
I have accomplished all of this because of my big passion for the craft of massage therapy. And now, I am so excited to stand here at the frontier of my career as a massage therapist, ready to take the MBLEx and become a licensed massage therapist.
I am looking so looking forward to realizing my personal goal and to be practicing the most fulfilling work I know. Due to my experience with massage therapy assisting my healing from brain surgery, I have very special insight into the healing process. Therefore, I am able to offer massage that is sympathetic to the client’s perspective, even a seriously injured client. My personal experience will help my massage practice to be effective for those with significant health issues & injuries. Also, I feel in a special position to encourage my clients’ health because I have seen first-hand how dramatic a recovery can be made by the human body.
It was a long recovery from brain surgery that has resulted in a tricky time period in which I have been unable to work and unable to finish my education in massage. This has created a financial hardship that it has now been 7 months since we had to leave our home because of inability to make rent. Being without access to a healthy, ergonomic chair or a quality mattress to rest on has added an extra challenge to my musculoskeletal recovery but I’m tough and keep managing to improve more each month. Though my body has struggled to continue its recovery while sleeping without proper support, I find myself resilient. I am feeling so very ambitious to pull myself up and out of this health and financial crisis by continuing to work hard to create a career that gives me a living wage, save up money and get into a home again. I trust my new career to become successful and provide a living wage eventually. I am so excited and grateful for this journey and my progress in it! I can see myself working as a massage therapist, helping others and standing strong and independent on my own two feet.
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 tissues 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.
I will definitely be a much more informed LMT now that I have experienced being a client, what feels good and doesn’t, what modalities are profoundly effective and what modalities I personally don’t prefer to explore more. I have also got to witness what the business side of being an LMT is like through the many conversations I’ve had with my massage therapists who can share insight into what it’s like to work in our industry. I would advise massage students to remember the value of learning by receiving. Be present with the sensations when your classmates are working on you. Give lots of feedback, use your voice. This is so helpful to your classmate’s development as a massage therapist and to your ability to receive massage benefits well. Also, be sure to find opportunities to receive multiple professional massages from multiple LMT’s outside of massage school in order to become aware of the various styles, what they are like and how it feels to receive them. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable this is to develop an innate understanding of the art of massage therapy.
