Massage School Memories

 Going to massage school, this massage therapist learned a lot about dealing with “tense” situations and people. The other day my local association asked for some massage schools memories and it made me laugh.

Warm Fuzzy? More like shrieking students levitating on the practice tables.

 My first scream came during the first class. We were supposed to practice a simple effleurage of the leg. My practice partner, whom I had just met, swooped up my inside leg, aimed right for my crotch and at the last possible second – and I mean the last possible second – swooped laterally to finish the stroke.

 “That was very uncomfortable,” I recall saying.

“I have to do the whole muscle,” she said.

That night our first student quit. He didn’t want to take off his necklace for a demo, and the teacher said he had to.
“I never take it off,” I recall him saying, as he backed out of the room, never to be seen again.

 

Some classes later, what was left of us were learning face massage. My practice partner this time was a very talented Asian man who had been doing acupressure for years and was kind of annoyed by the namby-pamby Swedish stuff we were learning.

Suddenly two hands formed a V and thanars pushed straight across and down across my cheeks, with what felt like the full weight of his upper body. The next day I had a business meeting in Los Angeles. I felt like I had a fiery helmet glued to the front of my sinuses. I did not think harmonious thoughts of world peace.

I will admit I performed some of the mayhem as well. Something large, rubbery and unmoving presented itself in the upper trapezius of my victim. I pushed on it with my ulnar, steamrolling down toward the spine of the scapula. Move, I thought. Move!

My practice partner’s shoulder came up off the table and pushed back right into my arm.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I have a right to protect myself,’” she said.

Somehow, come graduation about 18 months later, our hardy group was able to stand and walk to the stage to get our certificates. Our horrors had become vignettes.

“Remember that time I said your stomach was just like Play dough?” one of my classmates whispered to me.

“Yes,” I said. “Just remember, next time I do an effleurage on your leg, I might just ‘have to do the whole muscle.’