Is Technique Everything?

In the course of about 200 or so hours of continuing education courses, I have been harboring some questions. The big one is “How much technique can you learn in a CE class?”

With new online technology, massage therapists can take most if not all CE courses online, rather than attend traditional classes. Given Bill Gates’ prediction that most higher and supplemental education will be taken online, especially for college and graduate classes, I wonder if can we really do it all on the screen and keyboard?

Anatomy, physiology, and the more “book-based” aspects of massage therapy, certainly lend themselves to online classes and testing. But can it replace going to the smelly-uck lab and actually seeing a cadaver?

I don’t think I would quite get what Erick Dalton taught me about working on the quadratus lumborum, without that hands-on, stand-by wonderment of watching him work.

For me, the fearsome QL often presents as a thick mortared wall of bricks, which have weathered traumas by melting together with other lumbar muscles and formed their own biological magma. Trying to find individual fibers, the tendon, or even just some active circulation can leave me breathless.

Dalton, rather elegantly tall for a massage person, sat on the edge of a table. His subject was laying sideline, facing away. Dalton relaxed and rested his elbow in the divot between the iliac crest and the lower ribs. He slowly pumped into the QL, making it softer and much more muscle-like.

I don’t have his long humerus, but the technique gave me ideas for my more short and wide arms. But it wasn’t just technique: he also gave a word or two of wisdom. “Why hurt yourself working on a muscle? Do what is comfortable for your body.” That advice was worth the course alone.

So what about hands-on teacher-supervised attempts to copy a technique such a lymphatic therapy? Can you really learn the “scoop” from a course online?

I can tell you when I worked as a medical writer at a newspaper people were questioning the qualifications of doctors who took weekend classes in Las Vegas watching others do cosmetic surgery. In teaching hospitals, surgical techniques are learned by watching, assisting and then practicing surgeries under the watchful eyes of a very scary chief of surgery.

Not that we therapists are surgeons, but the value of hands-on, monitored practice cannot be denied. Of course surgeons who have already completed training often learn new techniques solely by watching demonstrations. It’s up to them to decide if they are able to do it after a class.

If you ever want to start a food fight in the doctors’ dining room, just ask out loud if new techniques in surgery need to be proctored. Most community hospitals end the debate by requiring proctoring and a number of procedure assists before surgeons can go solo. What those surgeons do outside the hospital, of course, is their own business.

Let me ruin that argument by adding another CE experience. While taking a class with the dean of cranio sacral therapy, Dr. John Upledger, I realized that no matter what I did I could not feel the cranio-sacral rhythm. My course-mate gleefully picked out the rhythm on the first try. Baffled and feeling dense, I took my six CE hours of cranio-sacral and decided it was not for me. Sometimes when practicing with another therapist, I give it a try. Blank. Duh.

My course-mate loves practicing cranio-sacral and uses it constantly in massages. Great class!