Adrian School of Massage

       WHEW!   It has been far to long since I posted.  As previously discussed, the world seems to have taken the news that I am now a student as an opportunity to throw my personal life every curve ball possible.  On top of....life, we have run smack dab into the middle of holiday season! I'm not complaining, I love Thanksgiving and Christmas! Add the fact that the two only a few weeks apart, sprinkle in a couple family birthday celebrations and BOOM two months will just fly by.        The problem is as a student, we are in one of the more intense classes.  NMT (neuromuscular therapy) is a wonderful tool to have and isn't offered by all massage school's.  While I am thankful for the opportunity to learn this modality, it is a lot to take in.  We also have started working on writing our own Case Report.  We have known this day was coming since the very beginning and I am very excited and interested in my t...

    It has been eight months....EIGHT months since I started this journey at ASM enrolling with Class 04.  Much like my wedding day, the day I gave birth to our sons, and many other important days in my life; it feels like time has gone so fast and yet like it all began so long ago.  Class 04 students are officially the seniors now that the school has welcomed Class 05.  A new group of people glowing with excitement and promise to be awesome massage therapists. I look at them and see myself, excited and slightly terrified to start this new season of life.     I have had the opportunity to spend some time with these new students serving as a TA (teaching assistant).  I found the TAs in our class very comforting. They knew what we were feeling and would give us their honest opinion on what we were in for along with other tips and tricks they learned along the way ;-) They were also just pretty cool people to get to know <3 I had hoped I would h...

    What is Cancer? Cancer is when a normal body cell mutates and replicates uncontrollably.  The oncogene is the gene that has been given credit f or  in certain circumstances, transforming a cell into a tumor cell.  Thus the oncology unit at ASM that educates  it's students on the pathology of cancer and appropriate manual practices for these patients.    Recent studies show that c ancer will affect 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women  in the United States.  That is a large population so chances are very high, that as massage therapists we will work with someone with a cancer history or in treatment for cancer.  That is why it is so important for us to know how to safely and effectively work with these clients.       Information on how to work with this demographic has changed so much in just the last decade! Years ago massage therapists were told not to do bodywork on cancer patients in fear it would accelerate the ...

    YOU are our hero!  You were with us as we made the decision to go back to school. You supported our dreams and agreed to take this journey with us. We see you, love you and appreciate you <3     We are half way through our one year program. It has been awesome and hectic. I am enjoying my time with everyone at ASM. I'm learning so much and really getting a lot out of the process.  I look forward to applying all I will have learned into my daily life as a massage therapist.  With that being said. I'm exhausted!        As mentioned before, massage is most frequently a second career so most of the students are working all day and in class three evenings a weeks. I am also in student clinic, so I am spending time at the school giving massage on top of classroom hours.  When I'm not in the classroom or clinic I am studying....or trying to.  Because I also have kids to care for, laundry to get done, dinner to ge...

    Ask any student what word sends fear straight through their bones and they will tell you mid-terms....and that is only because they haven't made it to finals yet. Any time you are asked to regurgitate everything you have learned in one shot you are apt to turn into a puddle of nerves. Especially in a unit like skeletal/muscular anatomy. It's a LOT of information in such a short amount of time. I was worried in effort to cram the new information in I had to be loosing previously learned information out the other side of my brain.      We were told that the written portion of our test would include the bones, muscles, origin/insertion and other facts we have covered in the unit. We would also be partnered up for a manual portion where we would draw muscles out of a hat and locate them on our partner and demonstrate the action they perform. While the manual portion scared me the most I can appreciate that this is a huge part of what our daily lives as massage ...

     Here it is, the class we have been hearing about since day one!  "Just wait until you get to Skeletal/Muscular Anatomy!" "No, THAT isn't a muscle test, you haven't seen anything yet!" "Only a few of us passed that quiz" "start studying the muscle origins and insertions NOW!".  The senior class has knowingly or not scared the crap out of us!     So our first day rolls around and just walking in the door you could smell the fear ;-) We had previously had the pleasure of meeting our instructor Kathy Davis as a substitute for our A&P class. It was nice having a sense of who she was and her teaching style from that preview. She also has the unique experience of being a teacher and student at the school! So she knows first hand what we are all going through. With that, she started right out explaining the importance of all this information in our career.  The requirement of this knowledge is something we will need and use daily, not j...

    By now you know I am a nervous Nelly and my own worst critic.  I regret to inform you that going into my first day of clinic was no different. I asked a million questions, looked and reviewed the schedule 100 times, thought through my client intake, massage routines and SOAP note procedures YET I was still so antsy I got very little sleep the night before.     Before even attempting to lay down for the night I reviewed the student clinic dress code. I wore my black athletic pants and Adrian School of massage t-shirt. Since I live in flip flops all summer I made sure I dug out a pair of socks and set out my tennis shoes. CHECK! Next I packed my bag for the day. I needed my massage products, product holster, and bolster. For clinic we use linens provided by the school so my sheets got the day off CHECK! I packed a second bag with a bottle of water, a snack, my computer (should I get some down time I could blog;-) and my notebook in case I needed a quick remin...