MYOFASCIAL MASSAGE
Introduction and Practice
Scientific awareness of the nature and role of connective tissue in the structure and movement of the body is relatively recent. While the basic anatomy and functioning of the bones and muscles goes back centuries, our present understanding of fascia and how inextricably it is connected to our whole body and our overall healthy functioning and wellness has evolved only within the last 50 - 60 years. It is still evolving and is still a bit controversial.
Numerous approaches in today’s world of bodywork and massage include an appreciation of the human body’s web of myofascial tissue and present ways of working with it to help clients function and feel better. Ida Rolf, John Barnes, and other bodywork teachers have established a lasting presence in the massage therapy industry. But many MT’s practicing today still have only a limited and vague idea of what myofascial tissue is and how to work with it.
In this twelve-hour Continuing Education Course you will learn the nature of fascia and its relationship to muscle and other tissues. This information will then be the basis for learning and practicing hands-on methods of working with fascia that will boost the effectiveness of your massage practice. I will base much of this course on the work of my teacher, David Lauterstein, and his recent publication, The Deep Massage Book (Complementary Medicine Press, 2011).
Participants will:
- Review the characteristics and distribution of fascia throughout the body.
- Review basic principles for manual manipulation of the muscle-fascial complex.
- Learn basic myofascial strokes for the major muscle groups.
- Rethink session design to understand how working differently (than Swedish) can enhance general full-body or specific massage applications, such as deep tissue, trigger point, sports and muscle-energy techniques.
- Experience giving and receiving a hands-on treatments incorporating a myofascial approach.
(Participants will give and receive massages based on the above approach and should bring: hand cleanser, cream-type lubricant, a set of massage linens and one hand towel.)
LYMPHATIC MASSAGE
A Gentle Technique for Enhancing Superficial Lymph Drainage
Do you have clients who need a boost for their lymph system?
Do clients sometimes ask what kind of massage would help with their efforts to detox, to accompany a cleansing diet, or ease the discomfort of monthly water retention.
Looking for a technique that is easy on the hands, thumbs and shoulders?
Lymphatic massage activates the vascular structures designed to move up to 80% of interstitial fluid into the lymph vessels.
Participants in this training will be able to:
- Describe the anatomy and physiology of the lymph system
- Identify the locations of major lymph node clusters.
- Identify the major superficial lymphatic watersheds.
- Apply the recommended manual lymphatic stroke in proper sequence.
- Identify contraindications and describe the rationale for lymphatic massage in healthy clients.
NOTE: This is not a clinical lymphatic massage course.
This 6—hr introduction to lymphatic massage will prepare therapists to assist their clients possessing generally healthy lymph tissues through transient situations of fluid retention, mild toxicity, stress, or diet change, providing them relief of discomfort, boosting immune system function, and bringing deep relaxation.
Career Care:
Injury Prevention and Career Longevity for Massage Therapists
Pain while doing massage and injuries related to the job are common among massage therapists. Some have estimated that as many as three quarters of MT’s report experiencing musculosketetal symptoms related to doing massage. Thumbs, hands, wrists, shoulders, and backs are the usual locations of these problems. The severity of these conditions vary. Sometimes the pain or discomfort is a distraction that prevents us from giving the best session. It can be severe enough to temporarily prevent the therapist from working. Therapists even decide to leave the profession due to such injuries.
Can we avoid or at least minimize pain and discomfort arising from our work?
This class will give you information and tools to change how you work, how you shape your practice, and plan your career in ways that can prevent injury, help you remain effective and productive, and prevent burnout and unwanted career loss.
In completing this class you will:
- Identify biomechanical actions that can cause injury and discomfort.
- Identify steps you can take to avoid potentially harmful actions and methods for implementing these steps into your sessions.
- Practice, through role-play, those specific steps applicable to your problem biomechanical actions.
- Identify the types of future skill/knowledge development that fit your biophysical and personality characteristics.
This class includes practical exercises that simulate your real-world actions and solutions. Bring to class 1) an awareness of those sessions and actions that involve your particular pain/or discomfort, 2) a set of linens for receiving a brief table massage session, and 3) a hand towel and your preferred lotion/oil .
Shiatsu and Thai Massage
Spend a fun day exploring the ideas and hands-on work that are the basis for Shiatsu, Thai Massage and Chinese Acupressure. In this course you will learn ancient concepts behind these types of treatments, experience hands-on practice of several techniques (many of which you can easily incorporate into relaxation table massage sessions.
Asian Bodywork treatments are becoming more and more commonplace offerings by massage therapists in a wide variety of settings. Destination spas and resorts routinely offer treatments such as Thai Massage, and Shiatsu. Acupressure is offered at the shopping mall, chair massage routines are increasingly based on Shiatsu techniques, and TV and magazine articles featuring these approaches have piqued the curiosity of the massage-receiving public.
Satisfy your own curiosity and acquire knowledge and techniques you can share with your clients!
This 6-hour course includes:
- An overview of the theories behind Shiatsu, Acupressure, and Thai Massage.
- An overview of the meridians, acupressure points, sen lines, and marma points.
- Instruction in the use of manual pressure, stretches, and other techniques to effect relaxation, pain relief, range of motion, and improved over-all health. This will allow a therapist to use palms, elbows, forearms, knees, and, feet, which, with proper body mechanics, can prevent wear and tear on thumbs, fingers, wrists, and shoulders.
- A simple Shiatsu routine that you can customize for your own clients.
- Handouts summarizing the concepts, meridians, and techniques.
Wear comfortable clothing suitable for floor-mat work (Yoga apparal, for example).
Assessment of the Shoulder Girdle:
Individualize Your Therapeutic Approaches for Clients with Shoulder Pain
Do you sometimes feel a bit lost when trying to help clients with shoulder pain?
Is your knowledge of anatomy and kinesiology of the shoulder a little rusty?
Do you possess techniques you don’t know how to apply to shoulder problems?
Even when clients report you have reduced their pain, do you wish you were more confident about what you did that helped?
Enjoy a 6-hour workshop full of methods for understanding the major conditions that cause shoulder pain and performing step-by-step, hands-on assessments of the most vulnerable joint in the body.
Our shoulders are designed with amazing freedom of movement. They provide the platform for all the work (and play!) done by our hands and arms. There are 25 separate muscles that originate or insert on each scapula. Shoulder joint injuries and syndromes are notorious for referring pain to distal areas in the arm that are not part of the problem. For all of these reasons this structure (which we often take for granted) can be injured fairly easily; but sorting out which soft tissue injury is causing the pain is not so easy.
Doing this successfully requires a clear understanding of the shoulder’s anatomy and function. Using this knowledge in the treatment room then requires systematically applying joint mobilizations and palpation, while listening carefully to feedback from the client.
Massage techniques that we may be skillfully and confidently using on other parts of the body may fail to help reduce shoulder pain if we haven’t identified the involved muscle or tissue. Some shoulder pain syndromes respond little, or not at all to massage, making it a waste of yours and your clients time to be rubbing or poking around without good information and a plan.
Participants will be able to:
- Review the anatomy and kinesiology and contraindications for the shoulder girdle.
- List several ways to categorize by process of elimination, the basic types of shoulder pain.
- Perform basic assessment protocols for the shoulder using joint movement (passive, active, and resisted), and palpation.
- Identify methods to evaluate and validate the results of your sessions.
- Experience these assessment tools through practical, hands-on simulations.
(Participants will give and receive massages based on the above approach and should bring: hand cleanser, cream-type lubricant, a set of massage linens and one hand towel.)
Working with Meridians
The Traditional Chinese Medicine concept of meridiansoffers massage therapists a useful approach to a client’s diverse presenting problems, their unique physical, emotional, environmental and lifestyle influences, as well as their immediate session goals. This can be a powerful tool for customizing practical therapeutic protocols that the therapist may already be using.
This 6 hour class will review the basic principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, especially as it relates to the flow of Chi within the body along pathways called meridians. The class concludes with hands on practice in applying the information.
By completing this course:
Participants will learn about the 12 major meridians including—
- Their characteristic functions
- Their associated organs and physiological systems
- Associations between them
- Ways they may be out of balance
- Their specific pathways
- Locations of major acupressure points
Participants will practice massage applications for the meridians and points including —
- Compression
- Stretching
- Traction
- Myofascial strokes
- Acupressure point work
Participants will be provided with handouts for future reference, and lists of books, professional journal articles, and online tools and reference material.
(Participants will give and receive brief massages based on the above approach and should bring: a set of table linens, hand cleanser, lubricant, and one hand towel.)
Connecting the Dots: The Links between Reflexology and Acupressure
Many massage therapists and clients know the benefits of focusing on the points on our feet and hands and that they are connected to our whole body and our overall healthy functioning and wellness.
Less well known is that those powerful points are connected via a network of channels (called meridians) to tissues and functional systems all over our bodies and that knowledge of the Traditional Chinese Medicine meridian system can extend and enhance the effect of foot and hand reflexology.
In this six-hour Continuing Education Course you will learn how to combine these two bodywork systems boost the effectiveness of your massage practice.
Participants will:
- Review reflexology of the feet and hands.
- Review acupressure treatment of the back, head, arms and legs.
- Learn basic features of TCM meridians.
- Rethink how working the feet relates to general full-body or specific massage applications, such as deep tissue, trigger point, and chair massage.
- Experience giving and receiving a hands-on treatment combining these approaches.
(Participants will give and receive massages based on the above approach and should bring: hand cleanser, foot and hand reflexology lubricant, and one hand towel.)
Sports Massage – An Overview:
(When Swedish Doesn’t Cover All the Bases)
Has it been a while since you applied what you learned in massage school about Sports Massage?
Do you need a refresher on working with athletes?
Are you unclear as to how to work differently before, during, or after sports events?
Do you have regular clients in your relaxation/Swedish massage practice who are athletic and you would like to know more about how to address those needs?
Even when clients report you have reduced their pain, do you wish you were more confident about helping them achieve their athletic goals?
Enjoy a 6-hour workshop full of information and hands-on practice for reviewing the major considerations and approaches for the athletic body.
Working with athletes is not the same as massaging clients who come for relief of stress or every-day musculoskeletal discomfort. Athletes’ bodies are not simply more muscular and just digging deeper will not always provide what they are looking for.
Athletes often are more knowledgeable about anatomy and biomechanics than the typical massage client. And they usually know their own tissues and are discerning about specific treatment results. They often have multiple tissue injuries and challenges.
Successfully assisting them in achieving their performance goals requires a not only a clear understanding of anatomy and function, but also of when to apply (or avoid) specific approaches.
Participants will:
- Review the principles from anatomy and kinesiology appropriate for athletic clients.
- Identify precautions and contraindications for sports environments.
- Differentiate situational types of Sports Massage: Pre-event, Post-event, and Maintenance.
- Practice modifications of basic massage strokes and movements for Sports Massage.
- Practice communicating effectively with the athletic client.
BUILDING BUSINESS WITH ONSITE CHAIR MASSAGE
Many massage therapists and clients know the benefits of making massage available to more people by bringing it out of the clinic or massage studio and into the workplace, healthfair, trade fair and other convenient venues.
Less well known is that providing massage to people who are clothed, often in full view of the public, and to a market that requires a shorter, more affordable, session requires a technique based on acupressure rather than swedish massage. Such an approach accessing the powerful points connected via a network of channels (called meridians) can affect tissues and functional systems all over the body and bring about relaxation and stress relief in the same way as foot reflexology affects the entire body.
In this six-hour Continuing Education Course you will learn how to perform an acupressure-based chair massage routine that will allow you to expand your client base, introduce the benefits of massage to people who have never received a session and boost your massage practice.
Participants will:
- Learn a 15-minute acupressure treatment of the back, neck, head, arms and hands.
- Experience giving and receiving a hands-on treatment using this approach.
- Learn the many ways a chair massage is different from regular massage.
- Review the possibilities for marketing chair massage.
- Understand how to communicate the benefits of chair massage to potential venue hosts.
- Review principles used by event planners that will allow the therapist to work with key individuals at venues where chair massage may be provided.
- Obtain samples of forms with which to streamline consent, scheduling, and marketing.
(Participants will give and receive massages based on the above approach and should bring hand cleanser. Massage chairs will be provided, but therapists who have access to a chair are encouraged to bring it, in order to gain practice with it and to receive consultation on proper adjustments.)
The Instructor
Approved Texas CE Provider (#CE1656)
David Washburn, MT, MTI, is a massage therapist with over 30 years of experience and over 1300 hours of basic and advanced training. He has studied Shiatsu with Randall Cummins of Chicago, Thai Massage with Lotus Palm School of Toronto, Ayurvedic Massage with Mark Nasralla of the Crossings Spa in Austin, and Deep Massage and Zero Balancing with David Lauterstein. He specializes in myofascial massage, sports massage, lymphatic massage, and chair massage. Before moving to Wichita Falls he owned a private practice and worked at world-class spas in Austin, Texas, and is a Certified Zero Balancing practitioner.