Today was my second to last day of class and I think that Melissa and I kinda have senioritis. I don't think it helps that this week we've been learning specific complaint treatments and that very little has been new...sure there has been a new position here and there and there are a couple of things that we learned that I'm planning on throwing into my routine but overall I won't be using a lot of it. The sprained ankle treatment almost made me yell at the teacher, it's just not right. Our information said that we are to ice the ankle for the first 24-48 hours, fair, but then use a warm compress after that. And the treatment itself is to be done in the subacute stage and involves all this ankle movement and compression and stretching. I know that if I had a sprained ankle I wouldn't want any of those things done to me.
It also doesn't help that we've lost Duan to the teacher training program and are now learning from Ratree. She is, like Dao, very very nice, but doesn't pay attention. Her English is pretty good but sometimes isn't in the right order or we lose her point somewhere. Yesterday when Melissa was working on me she missed a whole part of the knee treatment but Ratree wasn't paying any attention and didn't call her on it. I, as the receiver, wouldn't have noticed because the rest of the treatment felt great, but as a person trying to learn as I'm getting massaged I noticed that something was missing. It just would have been nice if she had caught it. Duan would have. Ratree was a little more attentive today, but we were also doing pretty simple treatment, like a treatment for old/sick people which is a lot of really light work with a lot of wiggle room as far as the treatment itself goes.
When I got home from school I sat in a deep, low chair in the common area of my guest house and when I got up my leg/hip got tweaked again and so I decided to go to the blind massage place that's located just down the road from me. Daniela had went and said it was amazing and inexpensive so I decided to check it out.
It was definitely inexpensive, with tip it cost me about $4 US. The girl who worked on me was a tiny thing who liked to give a lot of pressure, which I very much enjoyed. There was absolutely no speaking between us and had I not been getting several massage per day for the past three weeks in class I probably wouldn't have know what to do. I couldn't tell her that it was my right hip and low back that were bothering me and I wish they would have gotten a little more love.
The room had about five other people getting massaged by blind people. I was watching the guy to my left give his massage and was pretty glad I wasn't over there. He was using a lot of knee and elbows in ways that I don't think I could have taken. One thing that this massage was missing, as all the other massages that I snuck peeks at, was the stretching. She did a body twist, which was nice but a little too gentle for me, and a leg stretch but that was it.
One of my favorite parts of the curriculum at TMC is the stretching. The compressions and fine and all, but the stretches are what really makes the whole massage. This massage was a lot closer to what we learn that the massage I got at the place last week, but at least she did a lot of stretches. Sure some of them were not what I wanted and felt a little unsafe, but it was in there.
I'm going to limp the market now. Fisherman pants here I come.
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