a community of practitioners

What are you NOT learning in massage school?

Hey Friends,

One of our fellow members, Jane Johnson, posted a compelling question and I would like to ask for your opinions.

Do you feel that your massage program is thorough, and prepares you entirely for a) licensing requirements and b) a professional career?

Are there any topics, modalities, or resources that you wish you got more of from your school? What about business information - could you use more help with basic business, marketing and tax concepts?

Jane is a massage author looking for hot topics, and as your Massage Students page administrator and Student Resource Coordinator at ABMP, I want to know too. What would help to augment the training that your massage school provides?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gary W Addis, LMT on December 1, 2011 at 6:19pm

Some people need to hear it, some people need to read it. Touch, certainly, but it's kinda hard to isolate a muscle by touch alone--wall charts, skeletons and textbooks sure make the locating easier. And for studying, having printed material is essential: you cannot study between classes stuff that exists only in the mind of an instructor.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Cohen on December 1, 2011 at 7:43pm

Try deboning a chicken with your fingers. You will never doubt what is under your fingers that you are pushing on. The bones are there although shaped a bit different and the soft tissue is all identifiable.

Gary W Addis said:

Some people need to hear it, some people need to read it. Touch, certainly, but it's kinda hard to isolate a muscle by touch alone--wall charts, skeletons and textbooks sure make the locating easier. And for studying, having printed material is essential: you cannot study between classes stuff that exists only in the mind of an instructor.

Permalink Reply by Gary W Addis, LMT on August 6, 2012 at 1:28pm

There seems to always be time wasted on ridiculous textbooks--two pages of useful material hidden within 40,000 words of filler material. A textbook named Critical Thinking was the worst example.

Been nice if everything I studied directly related to massage therapy. But mine? Well, I did choose the degree program, which added things like college math, two classes in composition/communication, the Critical Thinking stinker, etc.

I was taught Swedish, Deep Tissue, Shiatsu and other Eastern, NMT, PNF, Pregnancy, Sports, Geriatric-- a full quarter of each. I would have liked an intro to cranio-sacral, a course in manual lymph drainage and more emphasis in orthopedic evaluation and treatment.

Above all, the schools need to weed their curriculum, toss out the nonsense, replace the bad textbooks with works by established experts that include training DVDs--but useful DVDs. Frankly, some of the DVDs bundled with Pearson textbooks are a waste of plastic. Ludicrous, when so much free first class videos are available through youtube.

Especially useful would be a class that teaches students how to avail themselves of educational material on the internet. My school did a good job teaching what they teach. However, I dare say I learned more outside the classroom, through abmp webinars by Ben Benjamin, Tom Myers, Til Luchau, Erik Dalton, Doug Nelson, Thompson, et alial.

And the price needs to be reasonable: when I graduate in a few weeks, newly licensed, I will be burdened with $34,000 in student loans. A couple of years ago, that would have bought 4 years in a major university!

‹ Previous
1
2
3
Next ›