Legal Definitions

Baaaa!

Ready for a sheepish confession to complete this silly pun?

It turns out that the Department of Health website links that I was complaining about earlier work just fine - if you're using Internet Explorer. If you're a Firefox user such as myself and you want to see these links, you'll need to open up a different browser.

The waiver at the bottom of my intake form is based on
the legal definition of massage therapy, and looks like this:

"I have listed all my known medical conditions and physical limitations and will inform my massage therapist of any change in my physical health at the start of each session.

I understand that a massage therapist must be aware of any and all existing physical conditions to ensure appropriate treatment.

I further understand that a massage therapist neither diagnoses conditions nor prescribes treatments, nor performs thrusting joint or spinal adjustments.

I understand that this massage does not involve touch of a sexual nature, and that I may halt or end the session at any time if I feel uncomfortable."

Basically what this means is that massage therapy:

- does affect the body, and could harm you if the therapist doesn't know about certain health conditions beforehand

- is not the same as seeing a doctor - we can't diagnose or prescribe, nor are we chiropractors

- is not sex work, and should not been seen as a way to work with sexual energy/needs

and

- is something that you, as the client, are ultimately in control of - if something isn't working for you, please let us know so that we can change it, or stop entirely if that is what you need.

For a more in-depth accounting of what massage therapists should and shouldn't be doing, there is a longer list of laws, as well as information about how and when to make a complaint.

I hope that this helps ewe ;)

Adventures in Marketing

I am SO excited - we've finally decided to put an ad on myballard.com, the fabulous blog of all things Ballard, which I've been enjoying following since I moved here last summer. I'm going to be making a coupon for my fellow Ballard-ites to clip out with a deal that is even better than the Sunshine Special that I'm currently running (see the flyer above.) That's how much I love the Ballard.

Damien Jones, my fantastic partner in many ventures and recently titled "VP of Marketing," has been working tirelessly on different ideas for promoting my massage practice. My old ways of yellow pages and sandwich-board sign on the sidewalk just don't fit here, even in the relative small-townish-ness of Ballard. While he has tried out ads on Facebook and helped reorganize and "Google-juice" my website, I have been talking to other massage therapists and small business owners.

The most helpful of these has been Laura of Laura Bee Designs, who generously met with me over coffee to discuss our respective businesses. She had many good suggestions, my favorite of which was to start a blog - hence the creation of onehappyduck. It also quickly became apparent that her success has come out of a genuine warmth and enthusiasm as well as a good eye for design. I was inspired to trust that the quality of the service I'm providing, given the encouragement of some good promotion, will eventually build back up to a practice that is thriving at least as well as my old one in Bellingham.

Which is to say, "thank you" - to all the people who have given good suggestions and encouragements, come in for massages and written reviews. I am so grateful to be doing this work and to have so much support in making it happen.

Sidewalks, cherry blossoms and herbal remedies

On Thursday I decided that Green Lake was too crowded, and that instead I would take short run in my own lovely neighborhood of Ballard. It was sunny and warm, and all down my street were cherry trees bursting with beautiful white and pink blossoms. There's something particularly joyful about cherry blossoms to me - I always notice them when I'm running in the spring and they make me feel like a whole world of possibilities is unfolding.

Unfortunately, I only made it about a block from my house before I met an uneven wedge of sidewalk with my foot and fell, hard, onto the cement. Fortunately, I did so in front of the home of a wonderful woman who came out and put icy wet towels on my bloody knees while her husband joked with me and offered to walk me home.

Things this reminded me to love:
- icy wet towels
- calendula cream, which soothes cuts, scrapes and burns, and arnica cream, which helps reduce bruising and inflammation
- living in a neighborhood that feels like a small town, in the best way
- the amazing things the body does to heal itself (how convenient that I'm learning about blood right now in my Anatomy & Physiology class!)
- cherry blossoms

Checking up on healthcare providers

If you've ever been curious about whether a healthcare practitioner is behaving properly, you might be interested in knowing that the Washington State Department of Health has both very specific guidelines about allowed and prohibited behaviors for different classes of practitioners*, and also that you can search providers' credentials to see if there have been complaints filed against them.

Practitioners should ideally have their license numbers on their promotional materials, but if they don't, they should at least be willing to provide them if you ask. You can also look them up by name, but this might not work quite as well if the person doesn't go by their legal name, or if it is a very common name.

If you were to look me up by name, though, you would find that I am licensed as a Massage Practitioner (MA00016246) and that I am registered as a Nursing Assistant (NA00193321).

*The legal parameters for massage therapists are usually listed under Licensing/Certification, then Massage Therapists, then Laws, but it appears that the link is currently broken. This may have something to do with the fact that there are only two employees working for the state who handle ALL of the licensing, which also means that it sometimes takes months for new practitioners to receive their licenses after they've submitted their applications and money. *sigh*

One thing that is always surprising about massage is how hard it is for people to make the time and allow themselves to be taken care of. I understand financial difficulties, but it's clear to me that money is not the obstacle for many people.

Case in point: gift certificates.

Some people call right away, and make use of their gift certificate within a week or two. Most schedule a massage within a few months, depending on their often busy schedules. And a handful of people I don't hear from for six months, a year, or ever.

While plenty of people have said that this is just a lucky situation for me - making money without really working - it always makes me sort of sad. When I sell someone a gift certificate, they have found me and decided that my work would be a special gift. I have all intention of making their gift a special one - I think of us as co-conspirators in making their loved one feel good. So when they don't appear, I feel a little like I've promised to do something and not followed through.

I don't usually take it personally - I know that people get busy and lose track of things and sometimes just have their own reasons for not wanting to be massaged. I trust that they will make it in when and if they are supposed to.

It did become an issue when I started planning to move to a new area, however. I moved my home in August, but continued to do massage in Bellingham until the end of 2008. So last spring I went through my gift certificate log and contacted everyone I'd sold an unredeemed gift certificate to, to let them know that I'd be leaving the area, and that they might want to nudge the recipient.

Some of these people had purchased the session years ago, but I contacted them all because my conscience was going to poke at me relentlessly otherwise. Sidenote: since 2004 my conscience has had backup - in Washington State it is illegal to put an expiration date on any gift certificate or gift card that has been paid for with money. (Donations are different.)

So, while I'm not taking it personally, and you can technically wait as long as you want (assuming the business still exists) to cash in your gift certificate - why wait? If it feels selfish to lie on a table and do nothing while someone else works to make your feel better, think of how much easier it is to be kind to other people, to focus, to stay healthy, and to appreciate the world around you when you are feeling more relaxed. I think that you might actually be doing us massage therapists and everyone around you a favor.

Visiting Bellingham

I'm going up to Bellingham to visit some of my favorite clients there, and perhaps to visit the ducks at Lake Padden.

Or go to Boulevard Park.

Even though I am happy to be here in my little house in Ballard, surrounded by wonderful people, Bellingham has a special magic about it that is nice to return to.

I'll be there Friday and Saturday of this weekend, and am tentatively planning *two* other weekend visits in May - the 15th/16th and the 29th/30th. So if you want a massage in Bellingham, or know someone who might, please pass the word!

Erector spinae & Brian Utting

About a month ago I finally treated myself to a satisfying continuing education class. The last couple I'd taken had either been disappointing (Breathworks) or good, but in an eat-your-vegetables kind of way (Professional Ethics for LMPs.) I spent the money because it was a class on Deep Tissue Massage of the Paraspinals, and I thought it would be a good mix of my favorite area - the neck - and the one I sometimes find the most frustrating - the lower back.

Also - it was taught by the Brian Utting, founder of the Brian Utting School of Massage, the only school that paralleled my beloved Brenneke in overall reputation and quality of instruction. (Before, of course, they were both bought out by Cortiva and turned into franchise schools, but that's another story.)

Anyway, I'd been longing for the warm, interactive learning environment I'd had at Brenneke, and hoped it would be a tiny sliver of those days.

Ah, such alchemy. While we bubbled and chatted through the morning, after lunch a calm settled over the room as we practiced our new techniques. Busy, content bees, we tended our sighing, yielding blossoms.

That is to say - it was amazing.

So my "take home," or most useful bit of information and technique I gained from the class, and the reason I started this post to tell you about has to do with the erector spinae.

In the illustration you can see what Brian said that surprised me - the erectors (iliocostalis, spinalis and longissimus) are ideally wide, flat sheaths of muscle. This is surprising because more often than not they feel like one big, heavy cable alongside the spine.

Chronic tension pulls the muscles taut and they roll in on themselves, then get stuck together as the tension limits movement and squeezes out the lubricating interstitial fluid, and - voila! - one ropy mass of muscle all glued together.

We don't notice what we're missing because the erectors are still able to do their main function - holding up the spine. The difference is that one long, linear slab of muscle connecting essentially two points is really only good for that one job.

What those wider, more flexible sheaths allow is what you see in belly dancers as they twist and undulate - a whole range of movements. We learned a technique for slow unraveling - a gentle, rocking finger friction along the spine - and I've been having fun integrating it into my massages.

Thanks, Brian.

p.s. there's a lot of questionable continuing ed. out there, and the Therapeutic Training Center is offering quality instruction at better rates than I've seen nearly anywhere else!

health = happiness = ducks

I feel that my aspirations in this world are relatively reasonable; I want to help people stretch and grow into happier, healthier beings. I want to write and travel and learn as many words in various languages as I can possibly retain. And someday, I want to build a house and have ducks.

Ducks can be serene and beautiful, but more often than not they're bobbing their heads in the water or wiggling their tail-feathers. They're pretty silly and don't seem to worried about it. I'm not sure how many languages they quack, but they fly long distances and somehow make it back home. They always make me feel happy when I see them, and it's amazing how much of health stems out of happiness.

So I'm starting a blog that appears to be about ducks, but is really about finding the things that make for happiness and health and overall well-being. I hope you enjoy following me, as I waddle and drift and nibble these topics.