MY ROUTE TO MASSAGE TRAINING AT OSM – Marie Dixon
Posted on | December 22, 2011 | Add a Comment
Hi OSM,
I’ve been in Sales for most of my life and at age 40 I was feeling
like there must be more to working that just doing the job for
simply the money. Yet I didn’t know what that looked like to me at
that time.
In 2009 I had a serious car accident and realized after the accident
that I didn’t want to have my current career be as good as it gets
for me. So with that said I was receiving massages as part of my
healing process and noticed that Oregon School of Massage was having
a FREE training preview in Salem and it occurred to me that I would
love to be in a career that “Healed” others at the same time giving
my time to people that were in need of positive safe healing
massage. What a good feeling to have a job doing something like
that.
After the training preview I realized how affordable it could be at
the same time they offered night classes so I could still work and
go to school. OSM accepted my application for very low-interest loan. I’m grateful that the monthly loan payments are considerably less than what many people pay for car loans.
My life has changed so much since starting school at OSM. I have
more self esteem, better confidence, stronger hands and arms, and my
anxiety is almost completely gone which is a blessing in itself! I
am a much calmer individual. I get incredible respect from the OSM
staff as they welcome diversity completely. I also look forward to
seeing the people I’ve met through the school, it is like an
extended family. We exchange phone number in the beginning of each
class as students and that just strengthens a feeling of “being a
part of”!
I am lucky to have believed in myself enough that I took the chance
of getting the loan to start school for massage. It has helped me
be a better Me.
Sincerely,
Marie Dixson
EMPLOYMENT FOR MASSAGE THERAPISTS
Posted on | November 29, 2011 | Add a Comment
Massage Connections, November 28, 2011. Oregon School of Massage
Report by Ray Siderius, Director
On Monday evening two prominent Portland area employers of massage therapists provided a useful picture of massage employment for students and graduates of Oregon School of Massage, and other schools. Jordan Barton, Massage Educator at Cold Water Creek, and Jim DeWeese, owner of three Oregon Massage Envy clinics described the environment in which their therapists worked, outlined therapist compensation and benefits, and expectations of employees. (The presentation was another in the OSM “Massage Connections” series.)
An important part of the discussion carried on during the Q & A session was about the degree to which these two businesses require LMTs to follow a protocol or format when doing massage. While both firms use terms like “protocol” and “branded” in describing the massages that happen at Massage Envy and Coldwater Creek, the presenters provided numerous examples of how their massage sessions were in many ways unique expressions of the practitioner’s skill. The standardization which happens has much to do with certain procedures such as draping and record-keeping whereas each session is expected to address client needs, and therefore varies a great considerably.
Both of these presenters were passionate about providing good service to their clients and developing good relationships with massage therapists. They indicated that one of the benefits of working in such an environment was the support and sense of community that developed. If you were being interviewed for a job one of their first questions would be, “Why are you doing massage?” They are looking for good good communications skills and team players…and LMTs who are passionate about their work. Those qualities are just as important to them as technical skills.
An experienced LMT working full-time at Massage Envy can earn an income, before taxes, of approximately $35,000. An LMT working full-time at Coldwater Creek could gross, before taxes, somewhat more.
Massage Envy and Coldwater Creek both respect that employed LMTs may be practicing elsewhere and that in some cases clients met at one of those firms could follow the LMT to other locations. They do, however, expect such client movement to not be the result of unethical practices, such as offering the client a special deal to move.
Both presenters reported that their respective businesses had not declined appreciably since the beginning of the current recession. They were clear that there are still many potential clients who have yet to fully appreciate the many health and well-being values to be derived from massage and, consequently, represent potential business for LMTs. They noted that massage continues to receive positive attention in the media.
Working as an employed LMT in a facility such as described here can be a professionally growthful part of one’s career development. See the story of OSM graduate Jason Minnix.
To get additional information about either of these businesses go to their websites.
• Coldwater Creek, The Spa: www.coldwatercreekthespa.com
• Massage Envy: www.massageenvy.com
Thank you to Coldwater Creek and Massage Envy for making this presentation.
CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY – DANCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND SPIRIT
Posted on | November 17, 2011 | Add a Comment
This article was written by Amy Stark, LMT, describing her experiences in a recent two-day “Craniosacral Therapy I” workshop at Oregon School of Massage. Amy is the Oregon School of Massage Student Services Coordinator; she is also a life coach.
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CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY - My Experience of the Dance Between Science and Spirit
“First thought, best thought”
We began Craniosacral Therapy: Introduction by entering a space that was clearly intended to invoke mindfulness and attention to the senses. A double-circle of artful Soul Cards lay in the middle of the room, surrounding a purple-glass vase with lovely purple and green flowers. A few small candles were lit and the soundscape was neutral. It was evident that the instructor, Jeremy Manalis, took great care in providing an environment that was conducive for awareness and safe for exploration. Little did I know that we also were being prepared to learn a technique that was as subtle, yet as powerful as the environment itself.
After we were welcomed with a thorough overview of the course activities, we were asked to share two thoughts that came to mind: what we would like to feel when we left class on Sunday and what we might be fearful of when approaching the work. At one point, a classmate questioned her first thought, which was met by Jeremy with a warm and gentle smile and the phrase, “First thought, best thought.”
Movement and Unwinding
The method through which Jeremy expresses his instruction is grounded in Hugh Milne’s work in Visionary Craniosacral Therapy using the Liquid-Electric model. Rather than a more manual and agenda-focused therapy, the Liquid-Electric model was explained as a following of the natural rhythms and movement of the craniosacral system to restore balance and calm to the central nervous system.
My felt experience of craniosacral work has evolved over time. It began with a chiropractic student who practiced the work with me during my pregnancy; I remember laying there thinking, “This is bunk…there’s no way anything is happening in my body.” Eventually I received a combination of Shiatsu and Craniosacral Therapy from a colleague: Jolene Kelley. Her style infuses gentle presence, intuitive awareness and extraordinary communication. At one point in the session, she held my right ASIS while supporting my sacrum. I immediately felt an incredible urge to move, to rock and stretch, and asked Jolene to hold my feet so I could feel more grounded.
This is something I had only experienced once before in massage school while receiving Myofascial Unwinding – the desire to move on a massage table! Sometimes, it feels as though there’s an unspoken rule that you’re supposed to “relax” and lay still while re- ceiving a massage. This was not the case – I was encouraged to move as my body felt appropriate. After a few minutes of rocking and stretching, I noticed a lightening of the sensation and a relaxing wave wash over me. It was incredible work which inspired me to find out more.
That’s where Craniosacral Intro came into play. What I really appreciated about the way in which we learned the work was the sheer amount of time spent on integrating mindfulness with science – learning about the system with which we’d be working from a variety of as- pects before laying hands on each other. I was pleasantly surprised to experience an anatomy lesson on the bones of the skull, intertwined with the “personalities” or energy that each bone represented within our bodies. Jeremy also introduced a style of yoga, yin yoga, which was much more restorative, and brought subtle movement awareness to our systems; grounding our spinal columns, feeling Earth’s gravity pulling and supporting us all at the same time.
Practicing and Patience
I discovered another thing about myself through practicing the work; patience and quiet pays off. Before taking the second class offered at OSM, Craniosacral Therapy Level 1, I decided to exchange with colleagues to help me connect more with the work. I learned a lot through those trades; in one, a lesson of full disclosure of health history and being fully present and aware of the body in your hands, in another, patience for myself and for the client as their process unfolds in its own, unique way.
As I traded, I noticed something very different about myself as a traditional, Western Neuromuscular Therapy practitioner; my mind was calm when I participated in this process with a client, it was in a place of curiosity and connection, creating a balance between scientific knowledge about the bones and tapping into the deeper knowing and intuition of my body. At one point, as my hands supported my partner’s pubic bone and sacrum, my mind kept saying, “There’s nothing happening here, just move on,” while my hands were like glue, waiting for something to unfold. I decided to trust my hands, to release the need for something specific to happen, and breathe. Immediately following that breath, my partner began to unwind, to cry, to release. Patience works.
Chaos Before Order
We began the Level 1 weekend with 3 questions, spoken to us during our group meditation: “What does your body feel like today? What does your body need? What do you want to get out of this class?” My body felt electric and orange, huge and external. My body needed cooling water, coming to center, going inward. When I heard the third question, there was silence, nothing. So that’s what I gave as my answer – I wanted nothing from this class. I wanted stillness – nothing – embracing the void.
Throughout the weekend, I felt free to move as my body wished, to roll with the tides, to undulate and to stretch or shake. Over the past year, I’ve really embraced the movement my body wishes to express and have felt incredibly liberated. On the last day, as Jeremy, lectured about the zygomatic arch technique, a decompression, that could impact the way we “face the world,” how our spirit expresses it’s bravery and strength or weakness and fear, I felt in my gut that this was going to be something big for me because I had experienced severe facial trauma when I was in a car crash at the age of 15.
My partner began by working with my temporal bones via the ear and the first sensation I experienced was tension and discomfort. As I communicated my experience to her, we realized it was because she didn’t have support for her arms to fully relax, so that tension was being communicated through her arms. Jeremy brought her a pillow and immediately, her arms re- laxed and my face began to unwind through my neck.
I rolled all over the place, stretched, yawned, hummed; my partner even began to hum with me and it felt like the small vibrations created with the sound were loosening the tension in the intricate connections of my skull. Once the humming stopped and she moved to my zygomatic arch, she brought my face to the midline. I began to feel a great emotion welling up within my body, my face became heavy, sad and full of tears. Almost instantaneously, with a flow that felt just right, my body became a great huffing, sniffing, buzzing beast on the table. I convulsed and cried and shook. I began to see images of myself after the wreck, as we waited for the ambulance; I had gotten out of the truck and was pacing, swearing, angry at the driver, living in severe survival mode. My face bloody, I looked in the mirror and picked out pieces of glass, staring into the eyes of a frightened animal.
I was still huffing, rhythmically, and said, “I’m going to pass out.” Just then, still on the table, I heard a voice coming through; it was Jeremy. “Open your eyes, look at your partner, she’s here with you, I’m here with you, the whole class is here with you.” It was at that point that I connected with my breath and knew I needed to come back from that place and let it pass through me. I looked up and saw my partner’s glowing face, her sincere, brown eyes, and felt an intense and incredible energy buzzing throughout my body. As I continued to calm my breath, the buzzing began to subside, my eyes looked through a haze of tears at the ceiling tiles – just staring past them. I was calming, cooling, coming to center.
Finding My Midline
It wasn’t over yet; my partner asked if I wanted to experience the maxillae technique, where the practitioner puts two, gloved pointer fingers into your mouth to provide a fulcrum for the maxillae to unwind upon. I had a bit of a headache after the previous release, so thought it would help. As she worked with my maxillae, my neck began unwinding again, fighting for a place in my body. My head throbbed, and I asked her to get Jeremy over again, as we couldn’t find a place of relief.
As he came over, he acknowledged me and held my head. I began to move, to roll, which is when I heard his voice explaining that my head was in balance, yet it was having a hard time connecting to my neck. I said, “My neck and head need to create a relationship.” Moments later, Jeremy moved my head to a place where he said, “That’s your midline, hold it, feel the stillness.” I realized at that moment what I hadn’t been aware of before: in all the permission I gave myself to move as I wished, I never gave myself permission to be still, or to move from that midline and centered place. I had often segregated the two as if they couldn’t co-exist.
Relief washed over my body and stillness came. Jeremy stepped away, giving me permis- sion to take care of myself and skip the trade with my partner. I laid there for quite some time, feeling into my midline, feeling my center, connecting with my neck and head, talking to them about their relationship. When I felt it was time, I sat up, wrapped a blanket around myself, and meditated in my power for about 20 to 30 minutes. I felt as though I was an old, wise woman, sitting on a mountaintop. My bottom melted into the table, into the legs, into the floor. My heart felt huge, expansive and somehow calm in all the bustle of the class. I moved a little, but always around that midline, around that center, like a maypole being wound and unwound repeatedly.
The Path Ahead
I learned to trust my body, trust the perspective of my teacher and partners, to allow space for the uncertainty of my head settling into comfort with my neck. I trusted my intuition that day, my knowing that this was a safe space and I was willing to be completely present with my process and feel into it. I embraced the change that came over me, the connection to my classmates and teacher and took a risk that unfolded and fostered a connection within my body.
Perhaps my experience may be a bit more dramatic than that which typically happens in a classroom, that the sense of safety I felt was from within, and yet I feel that it was an expireence worth sharing. Ultimately, there is so much more to this work than I can express. I look forward to the path ahead; learning about the dance between body and mind, spirit and science, bones and fluid. This is a dance that speaks the language of my soul.
Contact Information
Amy can be reached at: as@oregonschoolofmassage.com She is also in private practice integrating bodywork and life coaching. About her practice contact her at: www.coach.massagetherapy.com
Jeremy Manalis, MA, LMT, the OSM Craniosacral instructor can be contacted through his website: www.jeremymanalis.com
Jolene Kelley, LMT, (referred to in the article) can be contacted through her website: www.jolenekelleylmt.com
Other Resources
Soul Cards – Deborah Koff-Chapin – Center for Touch Drawing : www.touchdrawing.com
MASSAGE FROM A SOMATICS PERSPECTIVE – Oregon School of Massage
Posted on | September 27, 2011 | 3 Comments
By Ray Siderius, Director
In the 1960′s Thomas Hanna, a philosophy professor and Feldenkrais trainer, started using the term “somatics” in a unique way. Commonly used to mean physical, or “related to the body,” Hanna used the term to refer to “the field which studies the soma: namely, the body, as perceived from within by first-person perception.”* A variety of practices are now considered members of the “Somatics” field: Alexander Technique, Authentic Movement, various body psychotherapies, various forms of massage, Continuum, Feldenkrais, Hanna Somatic Education, Lomi, Rosen Method, and Sensory Awareness…to name a few.
(A more extensive list of somatic practices, with clear descriptions, can be found in Discovering The Body’s Wisdom, by Mirka Knaster.)
To the client experiencing them, these practices may appear quite different from each other…and seem to be based on quite varied concepts. What they all have in common is that principle of learning by experiencing the body from within. Don Hanlon Johnson, author of several books on somatics, writes, “Bodily experience, in the eyes of those practical teachers, is the most basic place to look when trying to resolve human ills, whether disease, emotional unrest, or spiritual malaise.”*
Massage training programs vary a great deal in the degree to which they, in the sense we are using the term, are “somatic.” Some teach massage and the related health sciences (e.g., anatomy and physiology) as information and technique to be learned and practiced without intending to engage the learner’s inner experience. Oregon School of Massage (OSM) has throughout it’s history included the “somatic” approach to teaching and practicing massage. Theory, scientific study, the wisdom of experience and personal awareness are interwoven in the curriculum. This is another way of saying “integration of mind, body and spirit” is foundational to our program.
*Both of these quotes are from Johnson’s, Groundworks, Narratives of Embodiment.
FINDING YOUR FIRST, OR NEXT, JOB…THE “HIDDEN” JOB MARKET
Posted on | September 9, 2011 | Add a Comment
By Ray Siderius, OSM Director
Oregon School of Massage graduates and students…here’s a piece of news that has come my way recently.
In an August 5, 2011 Harvard Business School blog John Lees reports on an often unstated reality about how jobs are actually filled. While he acknowledges that there is a lack of detailed research he also claims that some studies show one third of jobs are filled by word of mouth, with subjective evidence that the proportion is much higher. These unadvertised jobs are taken by someone who is already known to the employer.
The employer, or contractor, may be thinking, “Who can I find quickly…and without the risk of taking on someone I don’t know?” If there is a job candidate who is already on the employer’s radar that candidate stands a good chance of getting the position.
That means a job possibility which would be of interest to you may be simmering in the mind of someone right now. What does that mean to you…start networking now. Students, I contend that if you start you professional networking while a student you can have a job waiting for you when you get your license. As Harvard Business School blogger Lees says a good question to be asking is, “Who else should I be talking to?”
I personally know the “Hidden” job market exists; over one half of the instructors that OSM hires is someone we already have our eyes on.”
Oregon School of Massage students and graduates, be watching for a Massage Connections presentation on The Hidden Job Market.
PROVIDENCE HOSPICE presents at OSM MASSAGE CONNECTIONS
Posted on | September 9, 2011 | Add a Comment
Report by Ray Siderius, OSM Director
Staff at Oregon School of Massage – William Pleau, Chiropractic Physician
Posted on | August 31, 2011 | Add a Comment
Meet another of our experienced OSM instructors. (From information provided by Dr. Pleau, edited by Ray Siderius, OSM Director.)
Beginning Fall Quarter 2010 William Pleau, DC, filled a pathology instructor position in Salem OSM. He is now covering that role in Portland also. When we learned of Dr. Pleau’s extensive background in massage and, especially, neuromuscular therapy (NMT) we asked him to develop an NMT series for OSM. To date several segments of that series have been offered. (Every quarter OSM offers an Introduction to NMT and one of the segments. See the Fall 2011 schedule for “NMT Introduction” and “NMT-the Spine”: http://oregonschoolofmassage.com/ce.php)
Given that at OSM we refer to each rather informally in the rest of this article I’ll refer to Dr. Pleau as “Bill”.
Bill says “It was through involvement in martial arts that I developed an interest in massage. I saw it as a way to help me improve my athletic performance. Experiences with my own injuries helped me to realize the healing effects of bodywork. What started as an interest quickly became a passion.”
He practiced massage for ten years in the Denver area and taught at Colorado School of Healing Arts* for 6 1/2 years. “After practicing massage and teaching I decided I wanted to take my education further. I wanted to have a physician’s level of understanding of the human body and of health and disease. I considered various physician education programs and settled on chiropractic because of my passion for manual (hands on) medicine. ”
In 2006 Bill graduated from Metropolitan State College in Denver, with degrees in biology and chemistry. He completed his chiropractic studies at Western States Chiropractic College in 2009 and shortly thereafter began a practice in Beaverton. He is currently working on a post-doctorate Diplomate in Internal Medicine. He lives in Beaverton with his wife Annie, and their son Oliver.
Regarding his philosophy, which he says has not changed since starting as a massage student in 1996, his goal is “to meet the patient/student/client where they are in their life and start by responding to what they perceive as their immediate needs. While doing so, we educate them about the causes of their problems and with their informed consent, begin to address those underlying factors as well. Then, as the relationship develops and trust is established, we continue opening doors for our patients/students/clients that lead them to higher levels of self-understanding and self-responsibility. Communication is of course, the foundation. We have to build a rapport and understand them so they may understand us. We help them create a vision of what they would like their life to be and then work to reveal their path to realization of that vision.”
Chiropractic and massage (and other forms of bodywork) are inherently synergistic. Every time I put my hands on someone’s body, I’m really doing both. As related professions, we have a responsibility to understand each other and work together for the good of our patients/clients. And we need to be better about communicating the value or our synergistic relationship to patients. I’ve worked with individuals who’ve reported to me that chiropractic didn’t help them but massage did and vice versa. We need to help patients understand that both chiropractic and massage are necessary and work together for attainment, restoration, and maintenance of optimal health. Massage therapists and chiropractors need to be familiar with each other’s philosophies and methodologies, and continue to strive to find more efficient ways to communicate and network with each other.
You can learn more about Bill’s chiropractic practice, and make contact with him, at: 503-608-9160 or http://www.foundationnaturalmedicine.com/
*OSM considers Colorado School of Healing Arts (www.csha.net) in Loveland, Co a valuable contributor to the field of the massage education.
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