Massage School: Starting your hands on practice hours

 We have been released to start our 30 friends and family hours! We have been working hard in class learning our anatomy and physiology. We have practiced different techniques on our classmates and now they are letting us take these new skills out of the classroom! And who better to be our guinea pigs then those that love and trust us the most.
    While I am obnoxiously excited about this opportunity, I'm a little nervous about fitting it all in. This is 30 hours of work on top of work, other duties and classroom hours. For my schedule, I am finding it works best to get as many of these hours as possible scheduled on the one day off I have during the week while my boys are in school. This way I don't have to miss another evening away from my family or fill every weekend up. Fitting these hours in is a good stepping stone to finding extra hours we are going to need when we start student clinic.
    By now we have our own sheets and massage products. While we are encouraged to purchase our own tables it is not a necessity. Our school has students clinic space. While our 30 friends and family hours are not scheduled like our clinic hours, we have been allowed to make use of the schools space and tables as long as we have coordinated with whom ever is covering the student clinic.
    Along with our 30 friends and family hours we are to give and receive massages to licensed professionals. Part of me wants to get this done right away so I can get some feed back. The other part of me is scared to death to work on a professional right now! I mean, having been through this process themselves I'm sure they will be understanding of the fact that I'm learning and have a long way to go, but still.....it's pretty nerve racking.
   Another question you may have, how am I going to find 30 volunteers to get these hours done? First of all, I haven't found to many people turn down a free massage ;-) Secondly you are able to use the same person up to 5 times to complete these hours. So instead of having to find 30 different people you could work on six people 5 different times! You are even allowed to use your classmates.  There are pros and cons to this approach. I personally am trying to get a good variety during these practice hours because every body is different. The more practice you can get on different body types the better you will be able to adapt to these differences!
    So....who wants to sacrifice their body for my education? ;-)

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