SWIHA Blog

Top 5 Ways a Career as a Licensed Massage Therapist Can Help You Create a Life You Love

Posted by Suzie McLaughlin on 10/16/17 2:00 PM

As a licensed massage therapist, I can’t imagine why more people don’t choose the career of massage. According to a very reliable source*, the massage industry has boomed in the last ten years, doubling its yearly revenue from $6 billion to over $12 billion since 2005. Yet, while this is true, skilled massage therapists are still hard to find. I often hear from those who work in the SWIHA Success Center that there are many more listings for massage therapists positions than graduates actively seeking those positions. 

With this in mind, let's consider the top five ways a career as a licensed massage therapist can help you create a life you love:

#5 - You get to create own schedule!

One of the reasons I became a licensed massage therapist is because I needed a career that had flexibility so I could be more present for my son. I now have the luxury of creating my own business and setting my own schedule. This is not to say that being an entrepreneur hasn’t been challenging; however, I have found that all my hard work and determination has made the experience worth it. Having more time with your family or being able to shuffle things around in your schedule to better suit your needs is certainly more appealing than a 9 to 5 job! When you own your own business, you get to call the shots.

 

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Topics: Blog, Massage Therapy, SWIHA, holistic health care, Certified Massage Therapist, Licensed Massage, Healing touch, Licensed Massage Therapist

25th Anniversary Blog – How to “Hold Space” for an Emotional Release – Stories of Healing

Posted by KC Miller on 9/5/17 11:06 AM

Shortly after SWIHA was founded, a guest massage instructor came to our modest campus to offer training on a technique known as “positional release therapy.” In this type of therapy, the body is positioned in strategic ways so as to release the muscles and tension stored from past injuries, accidents, and traumas. Within the first few hours of the workshop, one of the students had a reaction to the position in which her body had been placed. She began to cry and then shake; finally, her left hand involuntarily contorted into a claw-like cramp. The guest instructor (who had over 20 years of experience) stood by in confusion, looking as if he had never seen an emotional release before. Immediately stepping up to the table, I offered the student a guided visualization, taking her to a “safe place” and instructing her to concentrate on slowing her breath to calm her mind.

As the guest instructor look on incredulously, he commented, “In all my years, I have never had THAT happen on my table!” Luckily, I had the grace to not say what I was thinking, which was: “And you never will… because you don’t know how to ‘hold space’ for others!” Even if I had shared what I was thinking, this instructor probably wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about.

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Topics: Massage Therapy, Polarity, cranial unwinding, Reiki, Hypnotherapy, Trauma, Emotional Release, Cranial Massage Therapist, Vulnerability, Cranial Therapy, 25 Years, Anniversary, Safe Space, Holding Space, Soul Contracts

Life Coaching Corner: Not everyone will understand your journey! Can you trust them with your dream?

Posted by KC Miller on 7/31/17 5:00 PM

After twenty-five years of helping people to discover their gifts through life coaching and other holistic practices, I’ve heard an awful lot of stories about how some friends and families of our graduates weren’t exactly thrilled hearing them announce they were becoming a Healing Arts Practitioner of any kind. And yet, most who have made the “leap of faith” say they wouldn’t go back for anything!

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Topics: Life Coaching, Reiki master, Massage Therapy, holistic entrepreneur, Guided meditation, Reiki, Yoga Teacher Training, guided imagery, integrative healing, integrative healing arts practitioner

Have you ever gotten a Message during a Massage?

Posted by KC Miller on 7/24/17 10:30 AM

As my husband and I journeyed to Breckenridge, Colorado, for an early birthday getaway, the annual upcoming in-service training that I am scheduled to give for the Licensed Massage Therapists (LMTs) that work in the SWIHA Healing Arts Clinic was very much on my mind. In fact, so much so, little nagging  ‘yeah but’ thoughts were floating around in my mind...thoughts like: “Do I really have anything to offer our LMTs after all these years,” “Am I getting too old to teach our amazing practicing therapists anything new,” and “Who do I think I am to be the one serving as the presenter?”

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Topics: Life Coaching, Massage, Massage Therapy, Holistic Healing, Hypnotherapy, Spirit guide, Holistic Healer, Spirit Releasement, deep-tissue-massage, intuitive messages, trance-massage, thai foot-massage

Maureen Ihle: A Cancer Survivor Finding Purpose through Holistic Nutrition, Wellness, and More!

Posted by Kate Ferguson on 7/14/17 5:00 PM

Maureen Ihle has always been dedicated to helping people, and yet it wasn’t until she enrolled at SWIHA that she realized that doing so was her life’s purpose (INSERT: www.blog.swiha.edu/life-coaching-corner-are-you-brave-enough-to-be-an-entrepreneur). Maureen shared that before she firmly found her path at SWIHA, she was struggling both personally and professionally. It took clearing away some of those personal cobwebs to ultimately see where her path was leading her.

“I was working at a job that was very unsatisfying. I had gained 30 pounds the year before I enrolled and was at my highest weight ever. I didnt know where I was going in my life, and I certainly had no idea of how I was going to get there. I knew I needed to do something different with my life, and I knew I wanted to help people, so I started looking at psychology programs. I looked at a lot of programs at other schools, and nothing seemed to quite fit until I found the program at SWIHA. As soon as I saw the program, I knew that this is what I needed to be doing with my life. I am so passionate about life coaching and helping other people find their purpose.”

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Topics: Holistic Nutrition, Massage Therapy, Mind Body Wellness, Psychology, Hypnotherapy, Mind Body Transformational Psychology, Holistic Healer, breast cancer

Life Coaching Corner: Create Impeccable Word-of-Mouth in Your Business

Posted by KC Miller on 6/26/17 5:00 PM

When building a sustainable business as a holistic practitioner--be it through life coaching, massage therapy, or any other modality--what others think of us IS our business, especially when what they say is ABOUT our business. Word of mouth, or viva voce, can make or break a business or a practitioner’s private practice. Viva voce is a Latin phrase that means “the living voice.” With today’s digital media platforms—such as Yelp, Facebook, and Google+—there is sudden room for the world to publish exactly what they think about your business… quickly and often without recourse! Once a “bad” review is registered, it is nearly impossible to reverse the rating that shows up on your business' page.

Naturally, we want to do all we can to create positive word-of-mouth to help grow our private practices and holistic businesses. For guidance on this matter, we can turn to the wisdom in Don Miguel Ruiz’s most famous book, The Four Agreements, which has sold around 5.2 million copies in the U.S and has been translated into 38 languages.

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Topics: Life Coaching, Massage Therapy, holistic entrepreneur, entrepreneur, Holistic Healing

From Student to Teacher: Lisa Saylan’s Journey through Reiki Training

Posted by Kerry Burki on 6/9/17 5:00 PM

It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. For Lisa Saylan, what is also true is that when the student is ready, that student will become the teacher! After nearly 1200 hours of education at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, Lisa Saylan took the bold step forward and became a dedicated—and very busy!—instructor for the college. For the last seven years, Lisa has been teaching a wide variety of courses at SWIHA, including massage, reflexology and Reiki training.  Even as a teacher, Lisa says she continues to learn from her students and clients. In fact, she describes herself as a “lifetime learner.”

Lisa learned first-hand that the human body is capable of healing itself when balanced, relaxed, and properly nourished. As a former elite triathlete who suffered from muscle fatigue, tissue damage, and stress, Lisa personally experienced the benefits of massage and other healing modalities during her competitive years and while recuperating from a significant cycling accident.

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Topics: Reiki master, Massage Therapy, energy healing, Reiki

5 Reasons to Start Using Energy Healing in Your Massage Practice

Posted by Staff on 5/8/17 4:37 PM

Ask the average person about the benefits of massage therapy, and they will surely be able to list off a few of its many perks, from alleviating the aches and pains of everyday life to lowering stress. Massage has become an increasingly popular service in today’s wellness-centered climate, with more people than ever seeking it out to resolve their physical ailments or to carve out the time to unwind. Yet despite the growing interest in the world of massage, energy work—one of the practices that complements massage best—largely continues to go unrecognized by traditional therapists.

At times referred to as “energy medicine” or “spiritual healing,” energy work involves moving above and beyond the physical to understand the aspects of the human energy field. By addressing the presence of our “life force” in a way that chooses to honor and awaken it, we can create holistic balance.

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Topics: Massage Therapy, energy healing

Openhearted Work Through the Toes & Into the Soul

Posted by Ravynn Rohner on 2/13/17 10:51 AM

Toe Reading is a unique and captivating healing art, which uses active listening, powerful, soul-searching questions, and deeply skilled insight to help people create change in their lives. It is the art of sitting before someone and witnessing their very being, their life story. Toe Reading is based on the theory that each individual records a holograph of the story of their life and stores it within the body. The position and shape of the toes contain this story, which can be read by a skilled practitioner.

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Topics: healing pain, Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, transformational, Toe Reading, Massage Therapy, Great Graduate, spiritual Studies, SWIHA, Reflexology, Hypnotherapy, Blog

Living Holistically on a Spiritual Adventure!

Posted by Kerry Burki on 12/2/16 8:56 AM

Stephen Hubbell says he was drawn to Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) due to his curiosity in exploring the healing arts, and he was on a spiritual adventure! He elaborated by saying, “My adventure’s purpose was to find a way to bring my spiritual relationship more fluently into the physical world in an applicable way to help and heal people, as well as myself. I was most interested in the Polarity Therapy program at SWIHA when I first found out what Polarity Therapy was.” He went on to graduate from the 750-hour Massage Therapy program, in which he was certified in Massage Therapy, as well as in Polarity Therapy. “SWIHA has been a huge part of my transformation.”

As far as massage goes, Stephen continues to stay focused on studying and applying for his massage license in the state of California. He plans on combining massage, polarity, and astrology together to form the perfect business trine. In the meantime, he really enjoys giving his friends short massage sessions to help them feel better. He is currently doing astrology readings for both individual and couples sessions.  “I enjoy working with clients on a longer term basis. For example, it’s awesome to work with someone for three months at a time so that I can really help people free up their minds and their lives for more enjoyment, love, pleasure, etc.”  To supplement his energy work, he is currently working at Camp Cedar Glen, which has awesome programs like archery and rock climbing, and there he helps maintain the grounds and campsites and enjoys being immersed in nature!

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Topics: Massage, Massage Therapy, Polarity, Great Graduate, Certified Massage Therapist, readings, astrology

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