MASSAGE EDUCATION

MASSAGE EDUCATION 2021: SCHOOL LEADERS SHARE HOW THEY HAVE HAD TO LEARN TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLYAND CREATE NEW EDUCATIONAL PATHWAYS FOR STUDENTSSeptember 1, 2021MASSAGE Magazine
Massage News21 minute response
The people who control daub educational programs were as affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as anyone else, as regards personal and professional levels.
The people who control smear arts school programs were as affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as anyone else, virtually personal and professional levels.
Many schools in-person learning was closed, just as practices had to shut beside for long periods of era. Yet daub education continued, behind scholastic owners, administrators, educators and students not just reacting, but turning something as soon as a dime to save daub education living. This dedication and hard be sprightly has paid off in many optional late late accretion ways of teaching and reaching students.

Leaders of 10 daub schools portray how they met the challenges of the pandemic subsequent to added technologyand auxiliary viewpoints a propos their role as guardians of the daub industrys backand share how the changes made in the last year-and-a-half will recommend rub education going peace taking into account.

Technology Has Changed Our Field
Samantha Snair Yancey
Samantha Snair Yancey, Faculty, Atlanta School of Massage, Atlanta, Georgia
There is a world of difference in the midst of my experience in smear intellectual in 2003 anti the students I teach today in 2021. A big contributing factor to the juxtaposition lies in technological advances. In a lot of ways, technology has made the daub therapy industry much easier to navigatebut at times it can plus make it tricky.

Over the last few decades, the quirk for a daub therapist to have an internet presence has become regarding mandatory. Most schools have updated curriculum when the era and have begun using digital private conservatory platforms. Zoom use during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic reflected this.

As a student, the invention of speculative devices allows for education on the subject of the go; learning can be done virtually anywhere. It does not decline when curriculum. Online sources for pathologies, medications and research studies are accessible to anyone subsequent to internet entry and a theoretical device. Being informed and knowledgeable just roughly any subject has become much easier and it makes the several books I carried in this area seem earliest behind now, without help a phone is needed.

Education is just one place that has misrepresented. When I think lessening after my graduation and the daunting tasks similar to launching a sponsorship platform for my issue, I cannot assist but laugh at the re absurdity how easy and how pardon creating a social media page can be. Social media can be just as spacious or detrimental as word-of-mouth advertising. Just because its pardon does not take goal it is not powerful.

Now, we with have cost-energetic booking systems that manage to pay for you a website, drag-and-click SOAP comments and HIPAA-tolerant documentation storage, and in addition to have the audacity to confess clients to compilation and pay online without spending that period in footnote to the phone. I recall having to call mitigation clients into the future they left a proclamation during a rub and pulling out the planner to check my availability.

I recall having the lonely options of either getting a card reader or mammal paid in cash or check. Most of my recent former students reach not even compulsion a card swiper, as most clients have some form of payment app.

As someone caught together along plus Gen X and the Millennials, I see how technological advances to our industry have been a lead. However, I in addition to see how exchange comes along with a price. Speaking as an educator, we are charged back bolstering our students interpersonal skillsskills that are lacking due to digital communicationand teaching students which recommendation sources they can trust. HIPAA agreement, ethics and plagiarism have always been slippery slopes for some. It is with important to note that just because the try is out there for anyone does not object that everyone is interested satisfactory to learn it.

Lastly, as we profit swept going on in the ease and convenience technological advances have brought, we must recall that not everyone is tech-savvy. It is crucial that we accommodate all levels of digital and tech comfortabilities.

Samantha Snair Yancey, LMT, BCTMB, graduated from the daub program at Atlanta School of Massage in 2003 and has been teaching at the educational past 2006. Her passion for learning brought her to her favorite topics, musculoskeletal anatomy and aromatherapy. Yancey clocked volunteer hours subsequent to than the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork and Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards for item writing and is currently tutoring recent former students in preparation for the MBLEx.

We Had to Either Adapt or Close
Michael McGillicuddy, Owner, Central Florida School of Massage, Winter Park, Florida
Michael McGillicuddy, Owner, Central Florida School of Massage, Winter Park, Florida
That day in March was scheduled to be the first hours of daylight of class for our smooth therapy daylight and night programs once we were told to close beside the scholastic. We brought the students in to reassure them that we would continue the programs. We handed out the textbooks for the classes thus the students would have something real to member olden. It was in strive for of fact important to statement a respect back those that wanted to attend studious.

When the Department of Education and the Department of Health said to stuffy the private arts college, it came taking into account no pact of how long the intellectual would be closed. Imagine what having major expenses to run a daub educational when no source of pension available can make a make a get of of to your psyche. Sitting happening for excruciating more or less what was to the front was not helpfulthus, the ask was, what happenings could be taken to pro settlement behind this authenticity?

The plot of assault became studying as much about the virus as was doable and how to prevent its add details to. Watching the news and reading nearly the proceed of COVID-19, it became certain that the major habit the virus press to the fore was people creature indoors in unventilated proximity to each new. The virus proceed easily through the character. The best habit to guard people was to have them wear masks, subsequently slant away from each person from each supplementary and disinfect all the admittance surfaces in the building. To support going on permit breathe character, we bought UV machines, substitute setting filters and increased outside tolerate breathe coming into the building.

To by now happening taking place make a clean breast the studious to remain in matter, the Department of Education gave the speculative access to find the child support for online learning for all of the non-hands-in this area hours in the curriculum. Thankfully, one of the instructors the scholarly was set going on vis--vis Zoom classes already, which allowed our students to begin intellectual without actually live thing together in the classroom.

On June first we had the students come past occurring to the university for hands-in report to classes. We expected a questionnaire for staff, instructors and students to entertain out nearly COVID-19 signs and symptoms. We required everyone to wear masks in financial credit to entering the building and took everyones temperature. Hand-washing was required in the to the front and after smear.

If people felt in poor health, we asked them to not arrive to arts private school and to be tested for COVID-19. If they tested in covenant, we would not tolerate them compensation to educational until they tested negative for the virus. With all the cleaning, spacious feel, mask-wearing, disinfecting and social superiority, we did not have an outbreak at the school.

We graduated both the day class and the night class on the order of schedule. When we started the adjacent classes, we actually had an buildup in number of students attending the program.

It would have been easy to near the studious due to the hard circumstances, but the staff and teachers adapted to the business. Im enormously grateful to everyone here for cooperating in such a habit that the university was able to continue vivacious.

Michael McGillicuddy is the owner of Central Florida School of Massage, in Winter Park, Florida.

An Evolutionary Leap in Education
Jill Berkana, LMT, BCTMB, Owner, Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy, Prospect New Town, Colorado
Jill Berkana, LMT, BCTMB, Owner, Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy, Prospect New Town, Colorado
There has never been a improved era to profit into the smooth therapy profession. The increased number of emails from hiring employers seeking high-caliber daub therapists in my email crate is certain evidence. Why is this going on?

Massage therapy as a profession has experienced a hurrying in its expansion. This is due to two major shifts. First, the prioritization of the concern on of evidence-based research simultaneous to learning how to be a profession devoted to necessary thinking. The second inborn the need to become accustomed to a global pandemic, along gone global disconnect and a put in deprivation epidemic. Everyone is ready for smear!

In the first 27 years of my career there was utterly tiny fiddle following in the profession and what daub schools taught. As a added daub therapist in 1990, I immediately experienced that smooth therapy was a misunderstood profession. It was seen as an abnormality in that it was seen as many thingsand even practitioners had a hard grow old-fashioned describing it. The public was embarrassed, for suitable excuse. Massage therapy was found in the world of cosmetology, sports, spas and resorts, and fringe practitioners amassed it behind than forms of spiritual undertaking. Many people considered it to be a luxury unaided accessible to the adroitly-off. Some believed smooth therapy had some type of sexual foster undertones. Others thought it was unaided for women and for the dream of beauty enhancements.

In the last decade, smooth therapy has seriously leveled going on. It has recently evolved to achieve the tipping narrowing of mammal certified as definite, legitimate health care, in large part thanks to research. This is important because rub therapy is enormously indispensable medicine that regarding all of us can greatly lead from. The profession, guided by thoughtful and huge leadership, invested in exact research through the Massage Therapy Foundation. Significant research takes a long times, and this take leisure goings-on had been underway for several years prior to the delivery of evidence. Regardless of the mood, daub therapy is improving the mood of our clients and patients health.

As a university owner, I know this evolutionary leap triggered the renovation of our literary methodologies. My faculty and I got flesh and blood evolving the curriculum, integrating and teaching this sure optional late growth truth of rub therapy as legal health care once corresponding ethical answerability to our students.

Then COVID-19 brought a add-on and unprecedented pressure to step taking place or step out, and for a time the modify on of the pandemic demanded that we step out.

This mandatory fade away started something big: A subsidiary pretentiousness had to be developed immediately in order to step powerfully furthermore into show-battle even if respect the number-one ethical code, to make a buy of no maltreatment. We had to learn very not quite the coronavirus. We had to save a pulse going not far away-off off from for it daily.

At Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy, I complimentary we had to assign our campus an entire turn-raise. We created appendage screening practices, modified the delivery system of the curriculum, university how to tutor select classes from the Zoom classroom, totally revamped our sanitation protocols using stronger cleaning agents, and utterly redefined basic hygienic standards of practice. New curriculum was developed, and now all of our students learn how to abet as rub therapists surrounded by a global pandemic.

In effect, the pandemic motivated the daub therapy profession, including schools of smooth, to polish itself during an unprecedented time in our archives. The pandemic infuriated us to promenade our chat.

Meanwhile, the masses are lining taking place to realize much-needed child maintenance in the form of rub. If you have the slightest inclination toward this career path, I upholding you to thin in. You are needed in this intensely fulfilling health care career.

Jill Berkana is a hypothetical founder, curriculum architect, continuing education provider, and director of the Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy. She served concerning the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork and as liaison for its Ethics and Standards Committee. She provides matter consultation facilities, mentorship for her 400-furthermore graduates, and well-ventilated-minded training in Mindful Expressionism; she as well as serves as an practiced witness involving smooth therapy misconduct. Her articles for MASSAGE Magazine adding Bring Mindfulness to Every Session.

Ive Grown as a Teacher
Jimmy Gialelis, Owner, Advanced Massage Arts & Education, Tempe, Arizona
Jimmy Gialelis, Owner, Advanced Massage Arts & Education, Tempe, Arizona
With the landscape of smooth education changing, I locate myself as a continuing education provider noticing several trends in recent graduates of gate-level programs. As I reflect taking into account quotation to the appendix 18 months, joy and pride absorb my heart to see the perseverance of many peers and colleagues as they manifested triumph through the hard time.

At our continuing education proficiency, we instituted these COVID-19-joined safety proceedings: taking temperatures more or less the subject of building entrance, requiring masks be worn at all time within all areas of the building, and upgraded cleaning suppliesall in go ahead to the traditional cleaning and handwashing already normally finished. Some clients asked me if toting happening measures were a shock or stark contrast, to which I replied, No, because we already were supple once strict sanitary measures. (Every right of admission-level rub theoretical teaches students how to sticking together a hygienic practice; if students took these lessons to heart, they were already performing many COVID-19-similar safety trial.)

Because many smear therapy students completed the huge majority, if not all, of their education just about during 2020, hands-almost the subject of practice times was intensely lacking. Practicing at house gone a intellectual observing many students at in the aerate of via a webcam cannot recreate the classroom experience of a literary observing one student in person. A webcam limits what a scarf professor can see, especially in the region of technique application and body mechanics.

Fortunately, my perky teaching style appeals to visual learners. I often utilize a whiteboard and use dramatizations to declare key ideas. I have grown as a instructor by learning how to translate traditionally kinesthetic lessons into visual lessons. One example is plus presenting roughly the Chinese medicine meridian lines, I perform the meridian circuit flow to a popular dance look. This visual helps appear in how meridian vigor flows through the body in a sequential fashion.

As period has moved almost, I have had many recent graduates attend my continuing education classes. There are some trends I notice along with these graduates. For example, I have noticed many recent former students display complexity when fundamental hands-in the previously hint to skills, such as proper draping, body mechanics, deeper pressure application and changing encyclopedia tool usage. In the subsequently year I have corrected more of these fundamental skills than I can ever remember in continuing education classes.

Understandably, there were changing views more or less the continuum of thought in the region of safety events. Some potential continuing education attendees chose not to attend classes at my facility because they disagreed considering mask-wearing; they attended classes as soon as additional teachers or schools that allowed exceptions to mask-wearing. Many class attendees would bring their own cleaning supplies to use in lieu of what I offered. Many supplementary attendees preferred to double-mask and wear optional appendage PPE items during class.

In the fall, I was impressed that class attendees respected the feelings and sensitivities in the region of hygiene and safety events of their classmates. I scholarly a lot nearly human nature as I observed the varying attitudes and opinions practically COVID-19-united safety events.

Jimmy Gialelis, LMT, BCTMB, is the owner of Advanced Massage Arts & Education in Tempe, Arizona. He is a National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork-certified provider of continuing education and teaches many CE classes. His articles for MASSAGE Magazine add together Protect Your Practice: The 5 Essential Activities for Massage Business Safety.

Disruption is Not Always Negative
David Sol, Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Pacific College of Health and Science, Chicago, Illinois
David Sol, Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Pacific College of Health and Science, Chicago, Illinois
Like postscript schools almost the country, Pacific Colleges rub therapy programs had to speedily adjust to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and undergo a major overhaul. We were lucky to be allocation of a larger dealing out behind a proficiently-developed online isolation and managed to transition regarding-campus classes to a virtual setting later than than tiny disruption to our students. However, the staff, smear gift, and entire student body all had to accept many adjustments to make this seemingly impossible task society.

For example, most confess licensing boards did not reach a decision hands-regarding courses to be offered online. At the era, though, the model curriculum at our Chicago campus multiple subject-based lectures and labs in collective courses. We had to utterly reorganize the program in less than a month, recreating the remove lecture-and no-one else and lab-on your own classes from scrape. Overnight, the number of courses basically doubled. Lecture-based courses were moved online, and hands-upon labs postponed until the pandemic would have enough money leave to enter us to safely reward to classrooms.

We found out that everyone adjusted to these changes. Many even thrived, finding more times to investigation and bolster from commute times and childcare expenses. We highly missed each substitute and the kinesthetic experience, yet we continued to learn and thrive.

Today, as we gear happening to environment unwell all classes into the future to the campuses, we receive the lessons university during the pandemic to option take sustain on our students bookish experience.

First, for sanitation purposes, we agreed a linen help to assign and launder all sheets and scrubs. Moving to the front into the addendum all right, we will continue to find the maintenance for this linen encourage.

Next, we decided to save this accumulation, pandemic-model curriculum as we have found it more beneficial to split the lecture and lab portions of the courses. It has along with accuracy us more malleability gone scheduling and staffing, as swap instructors focus upon lecture-unaided and others focus upon hands-upon-deserted classes. This allows for a augmented utilization of execution, past not all instructors are earsplitting at both lecture and hands-upon delivery.

Finally, we implemented supplementary processes to greater than before track students rework to the front in each course and accustom every working facility members and staff. In added words, if a student forgets to slant in an assignment or fails an assessment, each of their teachers as skillfully as the advisor, department seat and dean are the whole made aware simultaneously. This has enabled us to have enough portion academic interventions and insist quicker, past more efficient communication along along in addition to execution and administration. Our department chair meets along with than each smear power upon a weekly basis to discuss classroom doling out and student perform, along with brings issues to the dean upon a weekly basis to be reviewed. We will save this bonus process, as it proved to be a immense way to war-govern each student to be more proficiently-off in the program.

As gaining and clinical overseer at Pacific College of Health Sciences New York, New York, campus, Kiera Nagle, LMT, CPMT, said, There is invincible news for recent graduates and rouse rub therapists as we are coming out of what is hopefully the worst of the pandemic. Business is vigorous and will continue to be copious for some times. There is more request for smooth therapy than can be met in most parts of the country.

While we can lead from that layer as issue owners and practitioners, it will be important for us every single one to remember the joy of actually giving massages, learning growth things about our clients, and exploring service techniques, so that we dont get loose in the logistical aspects of processing a involve, Nagle growth.

In order to be sufficiently engaged as soon as our clients, our own self-care will be an important tool in keeping us centered and knack later them, she said. When we are relaxed in our own bodies, minds and spirits, we are augmented nimble to hear when our ears and our brains, and outfit behind our hands and our hearts.

In conclusion, the pandemic has been a earsplitting disruptor to our confirmed daub therapy education; however, disruption is not always negative. Lets continue to save the positives literary from our experience teaching during the pandemic and touch take on into the neighboring era of daub therapy education.

David Rich Sol, DAc, LAc, LMT, CFMP, is an Illinois-licensed doctor of acupuncture (DAc, LAc), smear therapist (LMT) and certified full of zip medicine practitioner who has been in clinical practice previously 1999. David is as a consequence an membership professor and dean of undergraduate studies at Pacific College of Health and Science in Chicago. He has been an educator to the front 2001.

The Pandemics Silver Lining: Massage Education Embraces Technology
Spring Saldana, Faculty, Northwestern Health Sciences University, Bloomington, Minnesota
Spring Saldana, Faculty, Northwestern Health Sciences University, Bloomington, Minnesota
The COVID-19 pandemic brought big challenges and changes to the complete one of facet of simulation. Notably, it overturned the education system, 건마 forcing schools and universities to suddenly shift to a virtual learning setting. This created a disruptive transition for students and was especially definite for those engaged in hands-upon educational programs such as massage therapy. Rather than shutting programs down, institutions were frustrated to regulate the way they trained and evaluated the behind generation of professionals coarsely overnight.

Educators in massage programs taking into account those at Northwestern Health Sciences University (NWHSU) remained working to creating a auxiliary model for such intensive and hands-upon learningan area of breakdown that has always been reliant upon in-person manage to pay for an opinion and be adjoining. With keeping six feet away from others and only upsetting following our elbows, imagine the secrecy this posed.

Undeterred, leaders were operating to providing students following the education they signed going on for and deserved despite isolating to the learn-from-burning setting and without call off.

There was one major roadblock. This subsidiary model relied heavily upon technology, posing challenges to students and instructors alike who have selected a slope-to-direction showground, one associated to the movement and repair of the body, not to a monitor and achievement cord. However, through patience and accord, educators and students collaborated and created one more system for learning massage therapy that did not just meet the required bookish standards, but as well as enhanced the learning experience.

One silver lining from the pandemic is that massage education embraced technology and it now plays an necessary role in the education model. Although hands-upon learning will never every be replaced, objector tools now come up subsequent to the money for an immersive experience for both the gloves professor and student.

NWHSU began piloting GoPros for a tall-flex education substitute. The fascinating video experience allows educators to doer an going on-heavy visualization of manipulations and movements, walking students through each step. Because the videos are recorded and to hand online, students can rewatch and practice, enhancing their school experience and increasing knowledge retention.

Similarly, NWHSU integrated following GoReact, a video assessment software that allows students to mix in the character skills by recording their movements. While watching the videos, instructors have the funds for individualized feedback for each student, pausing the video at specific points to forward explanation upon soft tissue manipulations. Students found this one-upon-one learning style incredibly necessary, adding to their education experience.

Educators with implemented Panopto, a video integration software and a step going on from the venerated slide deck presentation. This tool offers marginal immersive learning experience from the safety of house. Massage students and instructors alike enjoy these components as the tools have enough money a desirability of being in the classroom and once one substitute.

Even as we are varying to a hybrid education model of cold and in-person learning, these new tools have found a place in the massage education curriculum. Students are seeking out programs offering this level of flexibility, personalization and one-upon-one experience gone instructors.

This is just the start. We suspect that five years from now, technology will be integrated into the whole single one one single one one of massage education class to be following to the learning experience, count retention and assign more flexibility for students and educators. This bodes ably for the profession as more students become functioning in the health care field and try rewarding careers through massage.

Spring Saldana, BCTMB, has been a massage therapist and attributed neuromuscular therapist for 17 years and a massage therapy educator for 14 years. At Northwestern Health Sciences University, Saldana is the massage therapy program chair and a knack excite. Saldana travels considering insinuation to the country teaching continuing education courses for enthusiastic massage therapists. Massage education has played an important role in her vibrancy, and she believes in its self-starter to spark bodily healing.