200 Hours

Six weeks into my final term of this 2 year remedial massage therapy program, (at the Massage Therapy College of Manitoba) and I have completed the required 200 hours of practice time!  Yay.  Of course I will continue to practice, (otherwise how can I expect to pass all these exams?) but it's nice to have the 200 behind me.  In addition to this 200 hours of both supervised and unsupervised, (but in school) practice time, we also work our way through four rounds of clinic, three different outreach programs, at least two events, a thirty hour (or more) practicum and a ten hour case study.  This adds up to an additional 200 hours of massage time with the general public. Four hundred massages and counting. Wow hey?!?

An intense two years to be sure, but well worth it as we end up feeling confident and comfortable in assessing and treating musculoskeletal based concerns by the time we graduate.  Good news for the graduate, Great news for the public ;)  It is astounding how much there is to learn about the body, astounding.  Daily I am blown away.  Why we spend any time looking for aliens or any other spacial bodies, is beyond me, considering what we have yet to learn about our own beings.  

I have been entranced by the human body, it's structure and function over these past almost two years.  Granted, I came into this with very little knowledge of anatomy and physiology, having always just accepted and believed that bodies work.  What little I did have going for me, centered almost entirely around the process of childbearing and delivery, and even that was less text bound and more experiential.  One day in my freshman term, I met my radius.  I was captivated.  Never in all the time I had been alive (and it feels like it's been awhile now haha), had I thought to wonder how it is that my forearm can pivot like it does.  It's actually an amazing little bit of machinery we have there.  Did you know that the ulna doesn't move, and the radius does all the dancing about?  Go ahead feel your bones ;)  There is a special ligament, positioned ever so cleverly, that allows free spinning of the radial head to accommodate that fancy twisting we do with our forearms. Good thing too, cause if we only had anatomical positioning (palms up folks), there would be no keyboarding!  It was during freshman term that I realized I am a bit of a bone junkie.... the skeleton is just the ultimate puzzle! (and if you know me, you know I love puzzles)

That same term we had to learn all sorts of interesting things about the way the body works, aka: physiology.  One of my favourite aspects of this learning, was and is the sheer beauty of the way we are.  There is gorgeousness to be found in the design and symmetry all throughout our beings, down to the cellular level.  During our study of how red blood cells are transported around (limited learning I might add, this is just to give us a basic understanding of what is happening inside), I discovered the following factoid in my A& P text:

      "Hemoglobin is made up of the protein globin bound to the red heme pigment.  Each heme group bears an atom of iron set like a jewel in its center.  A hemoglobin molecule can transport four molecules of oxygen.  A single red blood cell contains about 250 million hemoglobin molecules, so each of these tiny cells can scoop up about 1 billion molecules of oxygen!" (do I need to officially reference my textbook in my in my blog? Human Anatomy & Physiology-Marieb & Hoehn)

Did you catch that?  We have jewels in our core and we are moving around trillions of molecules of oxygen with every breath we take. (breathing... a whole other subject of import) The average red blood cell takes about 60 seconds to complete a circuit, the circulatory system, you know our whole body.

60 seconds.  Trillions.  Astounding.

These are just a couple of the cool things I have discovered in the hours and hours of sitting at a table, wait until you hear about the stuff I have learned while working at the table for the last 400 hours :)

Week One of Twenty

It's late August, the kids are still enjoying summer vacation, the city still feels hazy and lazy, but a few of us are back in full swing!  This was the first week of my final term of a very long two year program, the goal of which is to produce viable remedial massage therapists.

What a full and exciting week it has been!  I attended the last of my 'summer babies' birth on Saturday, arriving home just 24 hours before I was due to be at a sporting event as a therapist.  Incredible timing.  The event was a marathon in Lockport, we had a tent set up by the river, and ended up working with a fantastic physiotherapist who works out of a Stonewall clinic. The four of us were in a really nice rhythm with each other, had a happy little vibe going on. The physiotherapist was happy enough with our work that she invited us to come work with her team at the MS Biking to the Viking event this weekend coming up!
Great opportunity, nice connection.  It all came together very easily, as I have noticed the best things seem to do.  

Then Monday, back in class and right to it! We spent this week on the hip, reviewing, learning and working on new stuff.  Psoas Release anyone?  How about those Glut muscles? Done and Done.  Seems to me that Gluteus Medius needs more attention than it gets. Our instructor showed us a simple and useful way to strengthen this important and undervalued muscle.  I'll see what I can do about making some sort of a clear diagram or written description in a later post.

We also had Remedial Exercise class, which looks like it is going to live up to my expectations.  Yay!  I am glad to hear we are starting with a focus on flexibility.  He also laid out the Fitness principles for us in a really clear way, definitely post worthy as well ;)  Principles that have application on a broad level.  So  much of what was discussed has direct application to the process of childbirth and I appreciate that sort of connectivity.  

This whole week has felt like one 'yes' marker after another, in terms of the Universe giving me a nod that I'm facing the right way. Moment after moment just clicked into place, perfect connections at perfect times, words being said that had just been said. (unbeknownst to the second sayer).  It felt like everything was a yes this week.  Even the hard stuff, was hard with a positive and attainable conclusion.

Odd little connections too.  Emily is in drama camp this week, and she is playing princess Echo.  A greek nymph, from whom we got the echo found in the hills.  One of the very few baby girls I witnessed being born this summer?  Named Echo.  Never had I heard that name before, now my daughter is that character... odd. Lots of little markers like that.

As I was walking in to class this morning, I passed by the building that appears to house a bunch of women who are coping with either emotional or mental challenges (or both) of some kind.  Usually one or two will ask for change and another one or two will wave or say hi, or want to have a fairly non sensical, but non threatening chat.  This morning there was one lady sitting out front, with a big grin on her face, she called out a  cheerful 'hello' and I sang it back to her.  She grinned even more, so did I.  And I thought to myself;
"it doesn't have to be hard, in fact, I don't think it's supposed to be.  So many people 'endure' life and all it's                challenges.   Fighting to get through each day, and wearing that survival as success.  Really though, if we just  allow life to happen, flow with our own current instead of trying to manage our path, there is no fighting or surviving.  There is instead living."
Something like that.  Here is this woman, in a situation most people would think devastating, and yet she had a bigger, more genuine smile on her face, in response to a hello, than most of the people I see on the street rushing about 'living'.  Always, it's what you choose.

Then during our business class, our instructor said "the more that we make sure everyone around us is okay and taken care of, the more we will be ok and taken care of"  Bingo!  Just be our most awesome selves, take good care of our fellow humans, and live our lives.  Fully and with Joy.  It was a good class, I'm looking forward to more.

Then there was clinic.  My first client?  A guy named Ed, who was eager to chat.  What did we chat about?  Well health and health care of course, as is almost always the case in clinic.  Turns out his daughter is an RN.... in one of the maternity wards in town.  Of course.  I didn't pursue trying to figure out who she was exactly, it doesn't matter, just that was enough. If she happened to be one of the many nurses I worked with over the summer, it would not be any more significant.  The point being made to me is that I am facing the right direction..... good enough for me!