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Dear friends,
It’s hard to believe, but already more
than a year has passed since I released the first 5 volumes of my
“Medical Massage” DVD series collection. Today there are a total of
12 volumes available. Using this opportunity I would like to
thank you for purchasing my DVDs, and to express my sincere
gratitude for the many warm e-mails, testimonials etc. Please
feel free to continue to write to me with your questions, commentary
and other suggestions. The collection is an encyclopedia of
massage therapy and practically covers the whole “Medical Massage”
scope of practice (around 60 topics). Therefore I decided to
write a set of guidelines to aid the viewer to learn from my DVDs to
the maximum extent. But that is not to say that these
guidelines only apply to learning from the DVDs. They can also
be useful in learning medical massage in the classroom.
- We must accept the fundamental
understanding that massage therapy is about results.
- We must remember to perform every
second of touch with meaning while keeping in mind that the
meaning of our touch serves the therapeutic goals. Well
served goals leads to results such as less pain, more range of
motion, and less suffering from the side effects of stress.
Simultaneous with hands-on demonstration in my DVD, I give
detailed explanation of abnormalities as well as the goals of each
technique. Please pay careful attention to the
details. The message is in the details.
- Every time we come to the treatment
table to perform massage whether it be orthopedic, full body
stress management, sports or chair massage, the purposes and
goals of the treatment must be 100% clear to us. For
example: our established goals of a 10-15 minute chair massage
treatment is to reduce the side effects of stress to the maximum
extent given the allotted time. For this case we firstly
consider the fact that most of humans carry stress in the form of
higher resting muscular tonus in the neck and upper back.
Therefore the goal of the treatment will be to stimulate muscles
to induce reflexive relaxation, followed by vascular dilation,
decrease in cardiac work, and decrease of stress hormone
production. We must keep in mind our possessed knowledge
about the physiological effect of the step by step, hands on
protocol for stress management chair massage and the inhibitory
regime approach. This mix of knowledge and understanding
also enables us to adjust our energy status to the condition that
will help us to reach better results. Every one of my DVDs
as well my articles that can be found on websites of distributors,
contains literature with detailed explanation of the physiological
effect of massage, the inhibitory regime and other details. I
highly recommend studying the material until you gain a deep
understanding. I recommend carefully viewing DVD volume 10,
where I explain the mechanism of medical massage in detail, and
how the science of massage helps us to understand the energy work
that must be part of the physical treatment. Additionally,
the understanding of energy (Chi) manipulation will help you to
protect your personal energy status from being interrupted or
disturbed by your clients. On each DVD, in fine detail, I
talk about of causes of abnormalities, goals of the treatment,
etc. Please pay attention to these details.
- In order to become better practitioners we have to
adopt the idea that massage therapy is a simple but very powerful
method of treatment, and in order to advance we must understand
more than simply memorize the material. I highly recommend reading
my article “Keep it Simple” that can be found on our web
site. As you know, one’s mindset is crucial to increasing
the natural capability to learn and understand material.
Therefore, when studying these DVDs, try to direct your mind
toward discovering the simplicity of medical massage and its
power. Setting your mind to taking in the understanding of
medical massage will help you learn the proposed material much
better. For example, a person watches as I perform the
techniques, and hears me giving explanation; if this person’s
mindset will be only that the protocols are difficult and
unachievable, it will make learning seem impossible for
him/her. Or if this person’s only focus is to
(unnecessarily) try to identify and note every muscle, tendon or
other anatomical structure in a region I am massaging, it will
block his/her mind from real understanding. But if this
person’s mindset is adjusted to consider that medical massage is a
simple and very powerful method, he/she will immediately be able
to adopt the details, copy the movements and rhythmus of technique
performances, and will be able to study and learn to the maximum
extent.
5. We all agree that
the practitioner considered as “better” is the one who is capable
of delivering faster and sustained results. No one will
argue that a higher level of sense of touch is one of the factors
setting apart the good massage therapists from the less
good. Sense of touch is our capability to see with our hands
what eyes cannot see. In other words the understanding of
physiology, structural anatomy, physiological effect and more,
must be adopted to the level of the imagination. It is
for this reason that I highly recommend carefully studying DVD
volume 10 as well as the related articles of mine. I
strongly believe that this will help you to understand the
simplicity, power and extensive usefulness of medical
massage. As I stated before, it is the understanding that
makes the crucial difference in delivering results.
- During the DVDs’ production I
basically stood on the front of the video camera and passionately
packed each DVD with material. On many of my DVDs topics
within one volume are not related and have to be studied
separately. I highly recommend carefully viewing each topic
separately numerous times, paying attention to my explanation at
the time of hands-on performance, as well as taking notes.
When it comes time for you to perform the first few initial
hands-on applications on real clients, I recommend using these
notes and /or my typed material.
- It is very important to follow the
protocol in the manner as I proposed on my DVDs. Reading my
article “Does Sport Massage Contribute to Athlete’s Recovery?”
will help you to understand the importance of protocol
guidelines. Please keep in mind that all protocols that I
proposed to you on my DVDs were developed by scientists using true
double blind studies, which means that these protocols where
tested against placebo. Application of medical statistic at the
time of the studies insuring us that method not only effective but
also safe.
- It is important for a practitioner to understand in
detail the importance of repeated treatments, as well to inform
clients on the importance of it. In order to reach sustained
results “series of treatments” approach must be adopted by each
massage therapist. More than this, I believe that each of us
must, as a part of treatment plan, introduce the clients to the
theory that will explain and support the importance of repeated
treatment. In my opinion the theoretical aspects of
abnormalities that our clients suffer from, as well as the goals
and therapeutic aspects of massage therapy must be introduced to
the clients in a simple, concise and uncomplicated way. For
example: a client who is suffering from fibromyalgia has to
be explained that all abnormalities that initiated their symptoms
such as pain all over the body, clinical depression, headaches
etc, began on the level of muscles and have to be treated on
the level of muscles. Clients have to be briefed
that due to hormone imbalance, physical and/or psychological
trauma, allergic reaction to toxins, etc., muscles all over the
body started to accumulate tension to the point that
microcirculation was disturbed and as a result, the pain analyzing
system was activated resulting in a pain sensation. It is
very important to inform your clients that prolonged disturbances
of blood supply (disturbances of local metabolisms) can cause
calcium deposits in soft tissue. These calcium deposits have
a consistency like an egg shell, and contained heavy polymolecular
structure which prevents this metabolic waste product from being
removed from the body. Repeated massage treatments allows us
to mechanically break down these pathological accumulations, to
stimulate breakdown of monomolecular structure and further to be
removed from the body. Elimination of soft tissue
calcifications contributes to restoration of elasticity within
muscles and connective tissues which in turn will allow normal
blood supply, increased range of motion etc. Normalization
of blood supply will decrease significant pain sensation. It
is also very important to inform our clients that constant
irritation (bombarding) of the central nervous system by constant
low grade pain causes a decrease of the amount and activities of
serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter responsible for
our waking status. Decreased quantities of serotonin result in
clinical depression. With decreased bombarding of central nervous
system by low-grade pain, the level and activities of serotonin
can be restored and experiences of depression symptoms can be
significantly decreased. If fibromyalgia is a result of hormone
imbalance our clients must be informed that in most cases massage
therapy and special exercise program (exercise has to be performed
in slow motion manner and in no case should be done in a "no pain
no gain” approach) must be a constant for controlling the
symptoms. Clients have to be informed that in most cases hormone
imbalance, when once present, will in many cases cause gradual
accumulation of higher tonus in muscles. For this reason,
receiving massage therapy on a weekly basis is not
only to stimulate normalization of metabolism
within soft tissue, but also to break down the vicious
cycle of re-accumulation of muscular tonus that
causes micro-circulation disturbances, resulting in
pain, and if left to become chronic, possibly leading to
development of depression etc. On each of my DVDs, in
extended format, I explain the etiology, morphology of the
pathologies as well as the importance of repeated treatment.
I highly recommend extracting information on each topic in a
similar way as I introduced in the case of fibromyalgia. By
providing this written material to your clients, you make them a
full partner in stimulation of healing processes in their
body. Additionally, I believe that the formation of a
handout of short information will further contribute to your
understanding of the topics.
As I stated in the
beginning, understanding and not memorization of the material will
lead you to becoming the therapist that delivers results.
Remember, massage therapy is about results. If you will have
additional questions or suggestions, please feel free to write to
me.
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