Service Learning: Massage Therapy
For my service learning, One of the things i learned about was my moms massage business. She has been a massage therapist for about three years and i served as her practice dummy when she first started. i had already picked up a few tips and tricks over the course of her learning her new profession. When she went to school she received a book of course work to study. For my service learning i studied a few chapters of her course work and did a little bit of "hands-on" learning. She had me read through the basic techniques of Swedish Massage, including "efflourage," "petrissage," and "tapotement," for example. Efflourage is the long, gentle strokes intended to warm the tissue up. Petrissage is the squeezing and moving of muscles to manipulate them to a state of relaxation. Tapotement is the "karate chop" or chopping motion, intended to relax deeper muscles. We also covered a few chapters in the art of Ancient eastern therapy or "Traditional Chinese Medicine." We talked about things like "chakras," and the meridians of energy that flow through your body, and "Chi," or "The Life Force". Over all i developed a better understanding of how a massage therapist thinks and the way the go about doing their business and i developed a better understanding of the techniques involved in professional massage therapy.