Answer to concerned mother by: Hans Albert Quistorff LMP
The question involved what field of massage allows work on clients clothed.
There are several:
Movement therapies is one. These involve guiding the movement particularly of the extremities to obtain proper function. Somatic Movement is the term commonly used.
Another that I closely integrate with that is Structural Relief Therapy. It is based on the work of Lawrence H. Jones, DO. It involves finding the stress points of ligaments and tendons which are the symptoms of structure imbalance and positioning and holding the body parts involve for a minute and a half to two minutes so that the proprioceptors reset. This can be very profound work; I have had clients report that after a half hour of this they are more relaxed and stand taller than after an hour of Swedish massage.
Then there is CranioSacral work which involves restoring the cranio sacral rhythm. I incorporate some of this in every session because if this is not functioning the client is not well.
As your son experienced many schools are being bought up by a few large corporations to teach for the spa industry and to get therapeutic skills one needs to go to the continuing education instructors or search out technical schools that pride themselves on producing therapists and not just practitioners that are licence able.
Thank you for your comments. My son is in a school where there are only 3 men to 16 female. This is the first time the school has had men in a long time. Each has been getting comments from the teachers and the owner like "are you sure this is the career you want to go into? Or "well, with that attitude you won't go far." This was from a teacher that was stating that unless you made your clients "friends" you wouldn't get many repeat customers. This after ethics class that stated the opposite. They talk about a safe environment and then fill it with gender bias. It is very distressing for me as a parent to see this type of thing going on.
