For the 3rd quarter of massage school, we started straight into 2 classes - Anatomy in Clay and Shiatsu. Anatomy in Clay lasted for 4 hours every morning and was awesome. On day 1, we were all given a plastic model of half a skeleton. We were then instructed that our assignment for the next 2 weeks was to build 130 muscles out of clay and put them onto this model, to scale (of course). Sound daunting? It was. The whole goal of the class was to give us, the students, a 3D understanding of the muscles we were working on, rather than just having us learn what they look like from pictures in our books. Let me tell you, the human body is incredible. No way would I have guessed that there are abuot 10 layers of muscle just along the spine, or that 2 of the hamstring muscles actually fit inside one another - it's amazing. And it was really fun to wake up in the morning and then go paly with clay for 4 hours. On the last day of the class, all of us were given 2 stickers and were told to go around and palce stickers on the bases of the models that were the most accurate. My model and Rachel L's model tied with 7 stickers each, so we both got to put our muscle men into the Clinic on display until February! It was really nice to not have to take everything apart like the rest of the students, after we'd worked so hard on perfecting our muscle groups. So yeah, our models are in the Clinic for the public to see, and also for the next class to take a look at, which is really cool.
The other class we had during those 2 weeks was Shiatsu. We had a woman come down from Portland, OR that's been exclusively studying Shiatsu for the last 11 years. Her name is Susan, and she was wonderful. It was her first time teaching at CRSMT, so we were all a little nervous for her, but it was absolutely fantastic. For soem reason I really clicked with the work, and I think that it's definitely something that I'm going to have to get further education in. Shiatsu is a form of bodywork that deals with balancing the life energy that is stored in your body. It uses theories from Traditional Chinese Medicine about energy lines, or meridians, that run throughout the body and are connected to different organs. There are also specific points on the body that can control energy and do things like help with decongestion or even induce labor in a pregnant woman. It's powerful stuff. And I am fascinated by it. It's one of the first kinds of energy work that we were introduced to, and I love it. I felt the energy immediately and seemed to have latched on to the modality more than any of the other students.
At the same time that I was taking these two classes, I had visitors. Mom, Dad, and Karen all came down to Samara to see me for 12 days!!! It was AWESOME! They were able to stay in an extra house on campus, so I could rnn and see them any time I needed (assuming they were home), and that was really nice. I got lots of hugs =)
While they were here, I had a 4 day weekend from school, so we rented a car and decided to see a little more of Costa Rica than the tiny town of Samara. We ended up driving up to a town called Fortuna, which is up beside the Arenal Volcano. It was beautiful! The weather was a little on the sucky side for the most part, but we did actually get to see the volcano, which was neat. We were eating lunch at the hotel and looked up and could see steam coming out of the top! Another awesome thing was that the hotel had on-site hot springs that were lovely.
While we were vacationing, the 4 of us decided to take a tour, and found a 'hanging bridges canopy tour' that sounded interesing. Essentially there were a bunch of suspension bridges and a 2 mile hike through the jungle. Awesome. Book it. We grabbed the camera (Mom let me take pictures on her amazing Nikon!) and headed out. Not only was the walk absolutely beautiful, but we learned a TON about the jungle and saw all kinds of plant and wild life. We saw howler monkeys, macaws, a sloth, and some really cool birds. There was one little white, black, and yellow bird that made a sound liek fingers snapping whenever it flitted around. Cool stuff. We also found coffee plants, leaf-cutter ants, and these 'walking trees' that will actually grow new root systems and literally walk to different parts of the jungle in search of sunlight!
Of course, we also explored the town of Fortuna. I was on the hunt for a pink and white dress for graduation, so we stopped in to every store we saw that had dressed. Dad found the PERFECT dress, but unfortunately it wouldn't have fit anyone larger than a twig, so that was out. I'm still looking, by the way - no success yet.
Anyway, we were hungry and tired of shopping, so we headed back to the hotel and found a steakhouse on the way, so we stopped to check out the menu. Smelled good, looked clean, had decent prices, so we had a seat. Best decision we ever made. The steak was mouthwatering-ly astounding. The place was called the Red Rock Steakhouse, and if any of you guys are ever in Fortuna, Costa Rica, you HAVE to eat there!!! Absoutely amazing food. Amazing!
We made it back to Samara for all the Halloween parties, and then they all left a couple of days later. I wasn't happy to see them go (at all!), but I'm really glad that they were able to come see this amazing plae I've been living in. They also got to see some places I hang out and meet a bunch of my friends here, so that was really awesome.
After the 4 day weekend, we started in on some new classes. Over the next 2 weeks, we had Myofascial Release, Trigger Point Therapy, Structural Kinesiology, and CranioSacral Therapy. That's alot. Let's talk about them in order.
Myofascial Release is a technique designed to basically un-stick the skin from the underlying muscles. What happens is the Therapist gently picks up the slack in the skin and stretches it. For example, assuming you're wearing shorts like me, place one hand on the front of your ankle and one hand on your kneecap, making sure that your whole hand is making as much contact as possible. Gently spread your hands apart until you feel a slight pulling sensation. Congratulations! That's myofascial release. The hardest part about the technique is that you have to hold each position for between 90seconds and 2 minutes in order for the full effect to take place. The results are amazing though - not only is it super relaxing, but it allows the muscles to start freeing-up from the patterns of tighness they've been holding on to. And once the skin is no longer stuck to the muscles, the therapist can have an easier time working the knots out of those muscles, and also have longer-lasting results. Nice right? Also, the class was taught by the 3rd and final founder of CRSMT, Bev, who was amazing.
Trigger Point Therapy is interesting (Bev taught this too). The goal is to induce a pain response. Doesn't sound too pleasant, but it does a world of difference to tight muscles. As the therapist, what we look for is a tigh band of tissue within a muscle, and then within that tight band, we search for what are essentially painful knots. We ask the client to tell us when we've found a tender or painful spot, and then we hold it. The idea is that by holding the pain, we force the body to investigate what's going on, and thus force it to realize that it's adhesed (knotted). In order to get you out of pain, your body will relax those muscle fibers. So we hold the pain until it goes away, and then we dig in deeper and find more pain, hold it until it goes away, etc. This can continue for 3-5 layers of depth, or until there is no more pain to be found in that area. Then you move on the the next tender point. It sounds pretty bad, but it's really not. It hurts, don't get me wrong - it's defined as "Exquisite Pain", and no truer words have been spoken. But even though it's painful, the relaxaton afterward is unequalled, and the effects it can have on the body are amazing.
Structural Kinesiology was a class taught by a woman named Natalie, who was a spitfire. She actually reminded me alot of Chelsea, which was weird and cool at the same time. Anyway, the class focused on posture and how people move. We learned that there are 7 core muscles that keep us upright and standing straight, and that the average person doesn't use all of them. In order to sustain our bodies as massage therapists, we need to learn how to engage and use these muscles so that we don't overtax ourselves, and also so that we can teach our clients things that might help get them out of pain. The whole class was really ebout experimenting with each of the 7 muscles and learning how to put them all together. There was also a huge project in this class that realyl got us thinking about how a person's profession can define how they move. I was assigned the occupation of a Seamstress, and I had to come up with a list of possible pain patterns my imaginary client would have, as well as postural deciations or anomalies that they might be living with. I also had to think of what muscles were affected by their posture, what exercises I could assign them, and what my treatment plan for them would be. It was a really interesting project in that it took us away from "here give this guy a 1 hour massage" to "hey this lady is in serious pain, what are you gonna do about it?"
Also, Natalie gave me the best compliment that I've recieved since being here, and it might even be one of the best compliments I've ever gotten. While taking to her about my project during Office Hours, we started chatting about what I want to do with my degree in Massage Therapy and what modalities I think I'll pursue, etc, when she told me a couple things. She said that as an instructor, she always teaches to the students who are most interested or who are the 'brightest lights', and she told me that she had a hard time teaching to the rest of the class because she was so drawn to me. I was the brightest light in the class, and she was attracted to my eagerness to learn and to succeed. Here's the best compliment - Natalie said that I have a natural healing ability inside me that's growing exponentially by being here and that not only does she expect great things from me in the future, but that once I graduate from CRSMT, she would be happy to call me her colleague. ...not just a student she taught once, or a girl in her class, but a COLLEAGUE!!! It was incredible you guys. Absolutely incredible. For her to say that to me.....geez. She's a professional who's been doing bodywork for over 10 year and who am I? A student who has no clue where she'll be living 2 months from now, where she'll be practicing, or what she'll be doing....and she's going to call me a colleague. Whoa.
The last class of the quarter was CranioSacral Therapy, and man was it weird. CranioSacral is based in science, but is actually energy work. Basically, it operates under the principle of a 3rd pulse. you have your cardiac pulse (blood pressure), your respiratory pulse (how fast you breath), and your CranioSacral pulse. In order to understand the CS pulse, you have to understand the Central Nervous System. Ok. Anatomy lesson - the brain and spinal cord are surrounded by several layers of protection. One of those layers is a fluid that nourishes and acts as a shock absorber for both. This fluid is called the CerebroSpinal Fluid. CranioSacral Therapy operates under the assumption that it is fluid, therefore it moves. The CS pulse is incredibly slow - 6-10 cycles per minutes, and it's barely tangible, so the concept is hard to grasp. It can be felt anywhere in the body, and by resisting the movement of the Cerebrospinal fluid, one can essentially reset the client's nervous system. As I said - it's weird.
The whole session basically involves the therapist balancing their hands on the clients body (for example on the forehead) and feeling for change. To the client, it just feels like the therapist is resting their hands on you. It's really relaxing, but that's about all I felt while in class. Of course, I did get a session with Leesa (the instructor) becuase I'm being objective and experiencing all types of bodywork that I can. I was dubious about going in and wasn't really sure what to expect. For the first 10-15 minutes of the session, all she did was stand with her hands on my ankles, which was odd. Then she told me I was holding tension between my eyebrows and behind my eyes and she helped me to release it - at least, she helped my left eye let go. My right eye was stuck. The wierdest part was that all she did was lay her hands over my eyes and I could feel the releases. She also did some strange neck work and apparectly tried to place her hand on my sternum, but my body rejected her touch immediately and retaliated - I subconsciously didn't want to be touched there. So she put my hand on my chest and then her hand on top of it, and all of a sudden I started having these flashes of traumatic memory, but instead of being back in the scenes, I was just an observer watching what felt like a slideshow of rapid images of things I had previously been pushing out of my head to aviod the pain of dealing with them. The oddest part was that I was consciously okay with the whole process - as if I was ready to let go and she ws just facilitating it. I dno. After that, I don't remember anything until she took her hands off of my head and went and sat in a chair in the corner. I registered that she was no longer touching me, and I remember thinking if was stange that she was sitting so far away, and then all of a sudden I felt my body begin to swell, like I was the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - I was growing bigger and bigger and I couldn't exhale, and I felt like I was too big for tha table. And right as I reached the point of freaking out, the whole thing reversed itself, and I was collapsing inward, unable to inhale, and shrinking rapidly. Again, as I reached the point of panic, it stopped, and I was returned to normal. Talking with Leesa afterward helped me realize that I had experienced the CranioSacral Pulse in my entire body at once, and consciously. It was trippy as hell, I'll tell you what. But it makes me curious to try this modality on someone who's not a student - it's tough to try and get the full effects of the modalities when you're trying to follow certain protocols and make sure you've got the techniques correct, all the while listening to the dogs barking, the monkeys howling, the lawns being mowed, the chickens getting slaughtered...yeah. It's crazy here. So I'm still not sure how I feel about CranioSacral Therapy - It's super relaxing, but I'll have to play with it more to convince myself about the positive effects. Cuz after my session, I was relaxed, but I was also weirded out.
There you have it folks, a novel about my 3rd quarter of massage school. Enjoy!
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