Tips from Austin, TX Massage School
“Doctor, heal thyself” is something that you probably hear often. If you’re a graduate of a massage school near Austin, TX, this would also apply to you. As a massage therapist, you are taking care of the bodies of your patients. You use your hands, your own weight, and other parts of your body to soothe away their aches and pains. But don’t you realize that as you are doing this service to your clients, you are doing your own body a disservice? It’s not normal for a person to use his or her own hands to apply pressure on the bodies of patients as often, so this part of your body will eventually feel pain. If you don’t take measures to take care of yourself properly, you might be the one who will need a thorough massage later on because of a painful crick in your neck from crouching low, or an ache in your back that does not seem to go away.
How Massage Therapists Can Take Proper Care of their Bodies
So how can you take proper care of your own body, which is basically your investment or instrument in healing your patients? Whether you’re an expert massage therapist or if you just stepped out of a massage school in Austin, TX, here are a few tips on how you can take proper care of your body:
• Be aware of the risks of being in your profession.
These are the health risks associated with being a massage therapist:
– Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
– Frozen shoulder
– Hypermobility
– Posture dysfunction
– Sciatica
– Tendinitis
– Trigger point problems
These were most probably taught in massage therapy school but before you head out into the real world, you should know exactly how to avoid such injuries in the first place. The longer you’ve been a massage therapist, the higher your risks are of acquiring these conditions so you need to take preventative steps early on.
• Know what the causes are of the most common injuries of massage therapists.
After knowing what the health risks are, you should learn about the common causes of these injuries. For example, since you are using your hands a lot, you are more prone to having CPT as compared to someone whose line of work does not require manual labor. If you don’t do stretching exercise prior to administering massage therapy, you might have trigger joint problems or a frozen shoulder. Knowing what the possible causes are of the most common injuries will allow you to prevent them from happening in the first place.
• Mind your posture when going through a massage session with a patient.
You should have the right tools for the trade if you’re a massage therapist. Get a massage table that perfectly suits your height so you don’t have to crouch or bend too low when working on a patient. Make sure that you’re working in a room where there is plenty of space for you to move around, and apply the proper pressure based on the body type you’re working on.
• Take good care of yourself.
As mentioned earlier, you need to do some stretching exercises before massaging a client. You should also do it after, especially if you are working on one patient after another. Similar to how athletes take care of themselves after a tough workout or a hard game, you should do the same after a long day at work.
Make arrangements with a fellow massage therapist or someone from a massage school near Austin, TX, for example, to get regular massages yourself so that you can take turns working the kinks out of your bodies. Take breaks, hydrate yourself, take vacations or time off, if necessary. Most importantly, do not overbook appointments! Your body can only take so much stress so if you work on the next client feeling tired and that person is not satisfied with your service, you will most likely get bad reviews and that is really not good for business.
Follow these tips because as a massage therapist who takes care of other people’s bodies for them, you also need to take good care of your own health and body.