By Meribane K.
Aspiring to better yourself comes with a lot of adversity and challenges. To overcome these hardships, it requires hard work, planning, grit and most importantly, a love for what you do. Every day, you must remind yourself of your purpose and learn from it all. When I started the Massage Therapy at Stark State College, I had many obstacles and challenges that made me want to throw in the towel, but I did not. My name is Meribane, and this is my story of becoming a massage therapist.
I remember my first college orientation. There was a sea of students eager to start their journey. The President of the university came on stage and gave a powerful speech that resonated with me. He discussed how the strength and growth of a tree depends on its roots. He compared our journey in college to a tree and that in order to flourish, we must grow our roots deep so we can withstand the storms. I always kept that in mind throughout my college career and it encouraged me.
Why Massage?
While attending Stark State, I traveled with public transportation. Taking the bus gave me a different perspective of the world around me. At 5 A.M, I wake up to take multiple busses to attend classes or work throughout the week. As a passenger, I am a witness to a lot of different aspects of poverty which affected me emotionally. My way to school is like being in two different worlds within hours. On the bus, I see people struggling and doing their best to get by. I would see young teenage mothers, drug addicts and people who are dealing with mental and physical health issues.
There was one day I will never forget. At the transit, I saw a man whose gait was so bad, he dragged one leg in order to walk. His shoe was worn and dented on one side because of his compensation. Every time I saw that man, I wanted to help him. It brought me sadness to see what a human being can go through and endure. Being a witness to these things made me passionate about massage therapy. It brought out a deep desire to help, so I’m learning the skills to help people. I chose massage, so that one day I can make a difference.
My Passion for my Education
I work as a student worker at Stark State College in the Health Sciences Office. My days were extremely long due to commuting and working yet, I made sure I studied. Immediately after my 13 hour days, I sat and studied in a little set up in my room at home. Even though I was exhausted, I studied the material until I was confident. My education is important to me, so I took it seriously.
Transportation was hard on me, but I showed up, whether it rained or snowed. In my first semester, my professor taught the same four-hour lecture and lab on different days. Although it wasn’t mandatory, I would take the bus to attend both lectures. By attending, it helped my academics, and I finished with top grades. I built a strong foundation of anatomy and physiology knowledge by donating extra time. Later on, it helped tremendously in other classes required for my Associates in Massage Therapy. It gave me such an advantage because it made my core massage classes a breeze when learning new material.
Beauty in Challenges
Once my massage therapy class 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, and actions in 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. After work, for multiple semesters, I utilized the Cadaver Lab. In doing so, I always did well and made a difference in my ability to learn and retain information.
My ability to learn and retain information was crucial for applying certain techniques. Utilizing the Cadaver Lab was great for locating the muscles, pinpointing insertions and origins, except when it came to the actions of muscle. I had to be a little more creative, so I used my nieces and nephews to learn the actions. It gave me the opportunity to learn effectively because I was also teaching them. As a reward for helping me learn, I massage them. They loved it so much, they came up with creative ways, such as faking pain to get more massages. All these things made a difference academically because I had a 3.0 GPA, which was above what the program required.
The application of massage was difficult. It looked difficult and impossible the way my instructor was gripping the muscle and manipulating it in different ways. I think the application of massage beautiful. Seeing the skin and muscle being manipulated was intriguing, but I wasn’t sure of my ability to replicate. I noticed other students having difficulty and it made me feel encouraged because I wasn’t the only one having trouble. I worked through my negative thoughts by applying myself and now I am very confident in my skills and abilities.
My massage career journey had many obstacles, but through the journey my passion helped me grow. Even though my transportation wasn’t the best, it taught me to utilize what I had and bring out the compassion that I have for people. I learned to dedicate myself and attend extra lectures to really learn the material. Running into the challenges related to coursework taught me to reach out for massage resources, give extra time and be creative along the way I learned. My journey also taught me to work through my negative thoughts which we all will face. My advice to any future massage students is to make the best out of each challenge. I learned to make all my obstacles something that deeply embedded my roots and helped me flourish as an individual and stand strong when storms come. Massage woke me up to the loving, caring, strong and driven person I am. Don’t be discouraged by challenges. Like Dolly Parton said, “Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
Continuing my Education
I plan on continuing my education. I have plans to travel to Indiana to take John F Barnes’ Myofascial Release seminar in May. I am applying myself in finding ways to get those skills under my belt. I am passionate about this technique. Myofascial release has many benefits as a therapy and I believe people deserve the healing it provides in various ways. I want to continue my education with this therapy. I believe this technique will help my clients both emotionally and physically because of its powers.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I hope you find inspiration as I did myself. Sometimes life just goes by and we’re all so busy and caught up on being done that we forget how much we have grown and how many challenges we have faced to be where we are. Mine has been nothing short of a beautiful journey.
