Hot Stone Training

This weekend I got to go to a two-day course to get certified in hot stone massage. I figured it would be pretty relaxing, but what I didn't expect was to learn so much about injury treatment and triggerpoint therapy. Oh, and who knew that you can freeze stones and do cold stone therapy sessions as well?

As with any massage course, we got to do a lot of hours of trades on each other (after each lecture and demo), so I probably received about five hours of massage while I was there. That's a pretty good bargain for the money I paid for the class, and I of course also get the continuing education credits and the opportunity to do hot stone sessions at work and get paid a bit more per session.

For those of you who are not familiar with hot stone massage, I'll answer some questions you may be having right about now. Yes, we really do stick hot rocks between your toes like the picture above. No, we do not actually leave hot rocks just lying on your bare back like you see in every ad depicting hot stone massage; we have to keep many towels around to wrap hot stones in for that purpose. We do, however, use the stones to rub the oil into our clients. The heat helps melt the sticky points in fascia and muscle so the massage can get really deep with much less effort on the therapist's part. The ice helps set the newly-relaxed muscles in their stretched out state so the treatment lasts for much longer than a normal massage session.

Anyway, that was way more information that I'm sure any of you ever wanted to learn about rocks or massage, but as you can tell I'm feeling excited about learning a new modality. I had a good but exhausting weekend, and I'm SO glad I have a day off tomorrow so I can catch up on my sleep.

--Amy