It was fun! Mostly… except for the Ethics. I know it’s necessary to keep the NCBTMB certification up to date and happy, but it was painful. The instructor was not happy or excited about her job. It made the opening session difficult and made me doubt whether I had made the right decision to spend an entire weekend in a conference room.
That being said, I loved the videos she showed. They were from a series called “Doing The Right Thing” published by The Chuck Colson Center. I hope in the future I have the opportunity to view the remaining three interviews that we did not cover in this class.
I did very much enjoy Jim Klopman and his class on Energy Systems in Massage. I have to be honest and say that I almost didn’t sign up for this class. Having taken a Reiki initiate class in the past and not getting much out of it, I figured it would be the same. This was definitely not the case. He gave us some very usable exercises and tests to do and demonstrated the “energy” components very clearly. I was shocked when I actually felt what he described and was even more surprised when I got sick and dizzy from one of the exercises. The longer the day went on the more astonished I became at the effects that we each got to feel and perform on a partner. I will definitely be using some of the techniques he taught during this class and will be revisiting my Reiki manuals. I still don’t know what it is, but there’s something to it.
Jay Jones also came in to teach us a thing or two about Fascial Unwinding. This was my first experience with Fascial Unwinding and I’m glad I took this class because I’m already using it with clients. We focused on the shoulder and with this technique added to the Rotator Cuff class I took a couple of years ago I’m finally starting to feel more confident when working deep in the shoulder.
So that was the educational part of the two-day meeting. We also had lunch on Saturday and the formal business meeting. I ended up volunteering to help manage the new AMTA-Alabama Chapter Facebook Group. If you haven’t already, you should head on over there and join! I’m also writing up an article for the Alabama Kneads newsletter. It’s about a first time World Massage Festival goer’s experience. I hope they can use it. If so, I will link it up here somehow, but I won’t know for sure until September.
Anyway, I met a lot of massage therapists from around the state. I think networking is important. Knowing who you’re “in business” with and being able to speak intelligently about what we all do is important. I hope this new Facebook group and finally having the opportunity to participate in the state chapter fills that place that I’ve been looking for since I left massage school and lost all my colleagues to “the real world”.
I guess that’s about all I want to say about AMTA-Alabama Chapter meeting in August. I’m looking forward to the next meeting. I hope it’s close enough and at a time that I can actually go. I’ll post the information here when I get it as to the next meeting. I know it’s probably already in the newsletter, but I didn’t read it closely enough…