Any massage therapist willing to improve him/herself needs to periodically take continuing education courses. How do you know what class is the best class to take? Is it the price? What about number of students in class? And is it possible to take a massage CEU class close to home?

I have taken a variety of continuing ed courses, with great variety, and I have been pleased with all the "hands on" time spent in them. The only class I've taken via homestudy was an ethics course, and I could have taken the test without reading the material.

Some hands on classes offer small class size, and others take place in an enormous room with the instructor wearing a headset. You'll find that Center for Barefoot Massage classes throughout the US are small in size, typically with one instructor for 8 students or less. We frequently have classes in Cincinnati, Durham, Albany, Palm Harbor, FL, Colorado Springs, St. Louis, Dallas, San Antonio and coming soon to Virginia and California

For more information on this style of barefoot massage continuing education courses, please check online at http://ashiatsuworkshops.com/. Instructor Mary-Claire Fredette teaches fun, small classes regularly in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The healing touch of massage therapy is cathartic! Because emotional pain can manifest itself in actual physical pain, if a skilled therapist can relieve physical manifestations, it can help cleanse the emotional self as well. Bodywork therapies arose from the belief that the body contains memories of every experience ever felt. According to Gloria Arenson, in Binge Eating-How to Stop it Forever, "Much energy and many feelings can be impirsoned in muscles habituated through years of restraint and posture control. This control is often the cause of specific body types and chronic body tensions."

By working out the knots and kinks in the body, an improvement in both the physical and emotional self can occur. The beauty of the natural body is mind boggling. By releasing tension through massage, the client can feel taller, more relaxed and "open." It can also restore homeostatis (the body's natural state of existing) to an unbalanced body. Dr. Andrew Weil reports that at the top of the list for causes of headaches is muscle tension. The best way to get rid of this common stress related disorder is to practice relaxation techniques or to get a massage.

Massage can also relieve many other kinds of physical pain as well as remove toxins and stimulate circulation of both blood and lymph flow. If the body's built in mechanisms for cleansing itself become blocked or don't function properly, toxins and waste matter build up. To maintain a healthy body, one needs to take out the "garbage" regularly!

There a many different types of massage and bodywork. One technique that I practice regularly, Barefoot Massage, is great at loosening up tissues. In fact, this type of barefoot massage has a tendency to make clients more ooey-gooey than a traditional hands-on massage. Clients report a significant increase in their state of well-being after just one session! And as one client commented, "This was really the most luxurious massage I've ever had."

Want to learn an anatomy based barefoot massage that's intuitive? Study with us at the Center for Barefoot Massage. 

Did you know that the average career lifespan for a massage therapist is under seven years? Bending over at the waist and doing deep tissue work with thumbs and fingers can cut short the career of many massage therapists.

I learned Ashiatsu barefoot massage after I'd been a massage therapist for 3.5 years. Already my wrists ached, my forearms throbbed, and I had developed tendonitis in one elbow. I loved to do massage, but I wasn't sure I could continue to do deep tissue work forever. Eureka! Ashiatsu was the answer to my prayers. I learned how to feel with my feet, to work deeply with my heels and balls of my feet, and my clients loved it! I have had many clients, former fans of hands-on work, transition to barefoot massage and never go back.

Why do I love doing it? Because I no longer hurt! When I first went a week doing only Ashiatsu, I didn't realize that I wasn't in pain, I simply felt like me. Then, about 1/2 hour into a deep tissue hands-on massage, my elbow started aching. I realized then that I would no longer continue to do deep work, especially on large clients, with my hands.

Why do my clients (and many other barefoot clients throughout the states) love barefoot massage? Because deep tissue work no longer hurts. No more of those aggressive little thumbs and elbows into the piriformis or QLs--but the heel feels amazing! My clients love feeling dopey afterwards--they are so relaxed that they often don't want to get up off the table. And the results of barefoot massage tend to last for many days.

Ya know what I'm gonna do here, since this was published in 2007 and there's no way in Hades anyone is going to read it? I'm gonna add some SEO links to Massage Momentum.