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Discussion:
Massage Courses Ireland
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Massage Courses Ireland
[20-Nov-2006]
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posted by: jaya14
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Massage Courses Ireland
Brandon Raynor's School of Natural Therapies offers 5 and 10 day intensive massage courses in Ireland. The next Raynor massage therapy course in Ireland will be in early 2007.The massage courses are held at the Yoga Base: 15 Grantham Street, Dublin 8.
Raynor Massage courses in Ireland are comprehensive and totally suitable for beginners to a career in massage as well as already practicing massage therapists looking to continue their education. It's is a form of deep tissue massage and acupressure with techniques from reflexology, aromatherapy, therapeutic massage, Hawaiian and Thai massage.
The Raynor massage course in Dublin is held from 9 am to 5pm, Monday to Friday
For more information please see http://www.brandonraynor.co.uk or call +44 20 7193 4108 or email info@brandonraynor.com for a free information kit.
People can get fully insured and set up their own business after completing our massage courses in Dublin.
How to choose the best massage course for you.
Searching for the right massage course can sometimes be confusing-there are so many different massage schools with different styles and massage courses of different lengths, and very different emphasis in their training. Massage is an art too that has been practiced in many cultures for thousands of years, so which cultural perspective does your massage course bring to this art? Will it be a Western anatomical approach or will it be an Eastern or Hawaiian approach or a combination?
Unfortunately, all too often people evaluate massage courses on irrelevancies like the number of class hours, or the titles attainted on completion of the course-without giving credence to the most important considerations. What you really need to do before considering which massage course will be best for you is to ask yourself "what am I hoping to achieve from my massage training?" If you're like most people then the answer to this question will be that you want your massage training to provide you with the foundation to become an excellent massage therapist. So first you need to consider what it takes to be an excellent massage therapist, because this is what your customers will be considering when they decide whether to come and get a massage treatment from you or the next practitioner down the road. The next step is to learn what you need to know about the massage industry and analyze your prospective massage course thoroughly to ensure that it meets your intended goal.
What does it take to be an excellent massage therapist?
The two most important aspects of being a good massage therapist can really be summed up as "do you care?" and "are you effective?"
1. A caring attitude
It's very important in the massage industry that you have a caring attitude towards your client and are able to portray this to them in friendly, yet professional manner. A massage therapist who is unfriendly or who doesn't look a client in the eyes and show that they actually care about the person isn't going to get very far in the massage industry. Similarly when a massage therapist watches the clock while they are giving the treatment then the person on the massage table, feels like they are being neglected. Whilst many of these qualities are inherent, it's still important that your massage course provides adequate training in this area.
2. Is the massage technique effective in dealing with your patient's problem?
Many people will come to you with specific issues such as a frozen shoulder, neck problems, lower back pain or headaches that they want dealt with, while other people want to increase sporting performance, deal with chronic stress or get help with emotional problems. A good massage therapist will be equipped with the right training to help with all of these conditions. This also includes knowing contraindications and making sure that your massage treatments do no harm.
This is how most people evaluate a massage therapist on, so these are the qualities which any good massage training program should emphasize.
Facts you should know about the massage industry
Unfortunately, today, in the massage industry, many students are not adequately prepared for the real-world, as many massage training programs don't emphasize the qualities I just mentioned and don't necessarily have the best interests of their students at heart. Many massage schools have political motives behind their programs, whereby they drag their training out to be longer than necessary in order to make more money. Many massage schools are also more concerned with trying to get respect from Western medical practitioners rather than properly training their students for the real world of massage therapy. For this reason many of the massage schools place a much greater emphasis on naming anatomical body parts, rather than actually teaching their students how to massage properly. Sadly much of the emphasis on anatomical learning also has a monetary incentive because it's cheaper to get qualified anatomy teachers than it is to get excellent massage therapists to teach classes. Any 3rd year medical student can teach an anatomy class and get paid $12 to $15 an hour whereas a good massage therapist can easily earn $65 - $100/hour in their own practice and so cost a lot more to hire. Not only that, but excellent massage therapists are in short supply.
How to perform a thorough analysis of your massage course
Since you are making a considerable investment of your time, money, and it involves your career as a massage therapist, you need to carefully and thoroughly consider how and what your prospective massage course is teaching and how it's relevant in making you an excellent massage therapist. To properly evaluate your prospective massage course you'll need to go deeper than simply how many hours the program is, rather, you need to consider the following:
Does the Massage school provide massage industry relevant training?
Anatomical learning accounts for many hours in many massage courses, however it's not only boring to most people, but in the real world of massage therapy it has very little relevance. Excellent massage therapists are trained by "feel" not by knowledge of the anatomical parts, in fact this very knowledge often interferes with developing a good sense of feel. In addition to this people come to you to solve a problem or to feel good, they are not interested in and are often intimidated by technical anatomical jargon. Anatomical learning has it's place and it's great if a person finds it interesting and enjoys learning about it, but the point is that it's often overemphasized in many massage training programs. The effect of this is that it can be very limiting in that students are trained to see the body only in that western anatomical way without giving respect to the age old philosophical models of the East such as Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine which have thousands of years old histories of massage, compared to Western massage therapy which is just over a hundred years old.
What massage technique is being taught and how effective is it?
Many massage courses focus solely on the Western technique and claim that it's necessary to have training in Western anatomy to be a massage therapist. Before accepting this blindly, just consider for a moment that Western medicine is a relatively new science and is still learning by trial and error. Many age-old cultures (Native Hawaiian kahuna, Chinese Medicine practitioners, Thai massage practitioners, Japanese shiatsu therapists, Ayurvedic massage therapists, and Turkish massage therapists) have been using massage for thousands of years to effectively heal the body. The attitude that a Western approach is necessary is really quite ludicrous and prejudiced and it unfortunately denies their students training in some of the most effective, time-tested, proven massage techniques.
Most of the traditional anatomy of India, China, Japan, Hawaii, Thailand etc... all involve understanding subtle meridian type energies or chi. Western medicine has no knowledge or recognition of this subtle system and how it can be effectively used to treat most ailments, so there is no need to learn it. It is the opinion of many practitioners that the best way to learn massage is by learning to feel and manipulate the life force or "chi" along the meridians.
The Best Way to Learn Massage
In Traditional China they never used to dissect the human body because they said that once the chi has left then they are not interested any further in the body. Most Chinese and Japanese and Thai massage is based on the movement of chi in the body along the sen lines or the meridians. In my opinion, and in many traditional healers' opinions, this is what makes an excellent therapist and has nothing to do with Western anatomical learning. Sometimes, also the emphasis that many massage schools place on anatomy as opposed to Chinese medicine etc means that students are taught to think in a certain way, that may lead them to miss the big picture of the human being they are working on and only see them as separate anatomical systems, rather than as a complete whole being.
Instead of trying to "feel the chi" they analyze with their mind what muscle it is etc... These are two different parts of the brain that are used. One is the analytical and the other is the sensory. To "feel chi" actually one has to turn off the analytical side of the brain and go into a state of consciousness of pure feeling. This is why I believe good massage is more of an art than a science. In Japan, traditionally, the best shiatsu massage practitioners were blind people because they had the best sense of touch. This still continues today. For example, one of my best shiatsu mentors learnt at the Tokyo Shiatsu School of the Blind.
Furthermore, people with low IQ's but who have a caring sense of touch can be better massage therapists than those with a lot of intellectual knowledge but little heart energy. However, these intellectually disadvantaged people would fail at many modern massage schools. I read of a dyslexic man failing massage school because they wouldn't let him take his test orally. Such narrow minded bureaucratically focused people that ran the massage school didn't see that just because he couldn't write properly, didn't mean he wouldn't be a good massage therapist.
That's why I believe that the whole emphasis of many massage schools is off-track, emphasizing intellectual knowledge rather then feeling chi and developing a compassionate and respectful way of touching people. They are trying to be like some doctors caught in the "ivory tower syndrome" where they feel better than their patients and bamboozle them with jargon that the person doesn't understand with the main goal being to gratify their ego rather than care for their patients.
What massage training technique is used in the massage course?
It's also important to consider the training technique used and how effective it is. Many massage schools get their students to learn to massage by teaching a routine. They repeat the same set of movements for each client. 2 strokes up the back, 4 strokes down the leg, 2 across the arms, a fancy cross over stroke etc...It is a very mechanical way to learn massage. They don't tailor the massage session to the individual by finding where the persons' tights spots are and trying different technique to effectively get rid of that tightness or teach how releasing one tight area such as the legs will help another area such as the back. This is what is often referred to as assembly line massage therapy and if you look at many massage schools programs this is how you'll find they get their students to learn to massage. Hundreds of hours of anatomy and rote learning massage routines that turn out mediocre therapists, whose massage feels OK but is nothing memorable and not very effective. It's very important that a good massage school teaches their students to see their customers as an individual with a unique set of problems rather than as purely a bunch of muscles, bones and ligaments.
How relevant is the length of the massage course?
It's important to remember that quantity does not equal quality. A massage course should not be evaluated on whether it is 5 days, 100 days, 1000 days, or a lifetime. It should be evaluated on the results, because everyone knows who has been through high school or primary school that one teacher can teach you a lot if they are passionate about what they do and believe in it while with others' classes, you cant remember anything about what the class was about after you left. I know in my own experience of home schooling my 7 year old son that 1 or 2 hours a day of hands on attention is worth a lot more than a week at regular schooling.
I hope this information makes your choice of massage school a lot easier. I wish you well in whatever massage course you choose to take and hope that you enjoy the success that many of our students have enjoyed in the massage industry. I would naturally be very happy if you choose to learn massage at Brandon Raynor's School of Natural Therapies "we are a real world, down to earth massage therapy school and sincerely do the best we can to provide you with the best possible massage training.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.
Best wishes,
Brandon Raynor - Naturopath, Massage and Shiatsu Therapist, Ayurvedic and Chinese Herbalist
More About Our Natural Therapies and Massage Courses see www.brandonraynor.com or www.brandonraynor.co.uk
<b>About Our Massage Courses</b>
Because we design our massage courses to be practical, hands-on and individualized, you will start massaging straight away and can quickly develop your sense of touch so as to detect tension and blocked energy in its many forms, layers and channels in the individual patient's body.
Read more at http://www.brandonraynor.com
About Our Massage School
Brandon Raynor started teaching massage courses in Sydney, Australia in 1997 on a part time basis. By 2000 he had started to teach full time and was running massage courses in Brisbane, Australia also. The Raynor massage school expanded to include teaching massage courses in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and the Gold Coast by 2001.
Between 2002 and 2006 The Raynor massage school has grown to have held massage courses in London, Dublin, Boston, Philadelphia, Vermont, Montana, Idaho, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, California, Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Ottawa, Cape Town, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hobart, Launceston, Singapore and Kualu Lumpur, Malaysia.
Our massage therapy school continues to grow and hopes to soon have more massage courses in Japan, Hawaii and Germany. We also intend to launch a Diploma of Naturopathy correspondence course in 2007 basing on Eastern Ayurvedic and Chinese Medical theories and including herbal medicine, flower essences, wholefood nutrition and a whole lot more.
see www.brandonraynor.co.uk for more details
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