Zen and the Art of Massage

Just wanted to post a little something to say I’m in the process of moving to Toronto. My husband recently was hired by FreshBooks and is really loving the job and the environment so far.

Of course this means my days as an Ottawa-based RMT are over! My current plan is to take a few weeks off after the move, which should be scheduled for somewhere around the 26th of January. After that, who knows? I’m going to be on the look out for a good business opportunity, and see from there.

Also, just in case: If any of my current clients have found my blog and are reading this, you should be receiving a letter in the mail with some details about my last day at the clinic and who will be replacing me. I sent a small batch of letters just before Christmas and a much larger batch yesterday.

After three years at it’s previous location, I’ve decided to just move my massage blog onto the main page of nyxie.org. Why? Well, I really never did anything with the rest of the website, and I also wanted to play around with all the new features in Wordpress.

All of my old posts are still here, of course. The old blog at /wordpress/ will be removed shortly; please update your links to point to nyxie.org instead. My RSS feed is now located at nyxie.org/feed.

Hopefully having a new toy will encourage me to update here more frequently.

My blog has started to get a bit more traffic recently, mostly due to people looking for advice, practice exams, and other information relating to Ontario’s OSCE and MCQ exams for Massage Therapy. Rather than reply to each email and comment I’ve received, I will instead put up a general post for those looking for such information.

First: You need to be aware that per CMTO policy, I am not allowed to give you any precise information about the exams. I cannot tell you exactly what I got in a station or how I decided to approach the information provided on the stem. What I can do is give you some general advice that might help you focus your attention for studying for the exam.

1. - If you have been the ‘last minute’ sort when studying all through massage school, do not do that now! You absolutely need to put in the hours for these exams. I went a bit over board and studied almost every day for nine weeks straight for my school board exams (which are a school-created test run of the MCQ and OSCE), and then continued to study at least 3-4 days per week for my real MCQ and OSCE, which I wrote at the end of May and beginning of June, respectively. You don’t need to be quite as crazy as I was, but you do need to put in the hours.
2. - When studying, focus on what you don’t know, not on what you know. Seems simple, right? But the truth is, when faced with a huge exam like this, people tend to just choose some areas to study and ignore the rest. While I do think that there is no way anyone could possibly review all 2 or 3 years of their education in a few short weeks, I also believe you need to study the most difficult stuff, and use your memory on the easier things. In my case, I spent a lot of my time studying the nervous system (anatomy and physiology, as well as treatment), because that was what I found the most difficult. Things like the effects of certain techniques or how to apply stretches clinically, that I didn’t study at all, because I knew it from doing it so many times.
3. - If your school uses Rattray’s ‘Clinical Massage Therapy’ book, study it cover to cover. I’m not joking. It’s like the CMTO bible for the OSCE.
4. - For the MCQ: read each question carefully, and remember, if it seems hard, you’re probably doing well! Easy questions are usually only given if you answered the previous question incorrectly. If you’ve been getting a lot of correct answers, you’re going to have a lot of hard questions.
5. - For the OSCE: Read the stem VERY carefully. They are precise about what it is they want you to do. You might have been taught a treatment/assessment/interview questions/etc a certain way at school, but you MUST do what the stem is telling you to do! I spoke with a number of people after my own OSCE and found that they had not done a number of things their stem had asked them to do. Instead, they just did things from memory. The CMTO is asking for specific things for a reason, so make sure you do them!
6. - Keep your stress level down. I know, easier said than done, right? Just remember that you’ve been studying hard for the last few years, you know your stuff, you just need to be able to spit it out for the examiners to grade it. If you make a mistake, just correct it and move on (or ignore it and move on, depending on the situation). If you leave a station feeling like you just bombed it, take a deep breath and remember that failing one station will not usually cause you to fail the entire OSCE.
7. - Both orthopedic and non-orthopedic conditions will be tested. If your school has told you otherwise, they need to be updated to the latest exam model.

Good luck!

The rest of last semester went fairly well. However, my final Oral Practical was very stressful, so I felt I needed to take some time away from Massage Therapy. So that’s why I haven’t posted anything since November.

Christmas gave me a needed break. I had some time to think about what it is I’d like to do with myself after graduation.

I still have a lot of passion for working with chronic pain clients, and have interest in continuing to work in this field. That said, I know that getting that sort of work will be difficult, especially as a new therapist. So what I’m considering doing is trying to find work in a general, clinical setting for 2-3 days per week and then slowly building a hospital or home-visit type practice for chronic pain patients on the side. To start, I think I will only be able to work 3-4 days per week, in order to give my body some time to get used to working that amount. I do a fair amount of clinical and hands-on work right now, but it’s not the same as seeing multiple clients a day, so I know I need to ‘ramp-up’ to a full time practice once I’m certified.

This semester is mostly for review. We’ve covered almost everything the CMTO requires us to know for the written and OSCE exams, so now it’s just a matter of practicing what we know and studying as much as possible to review the last three years. When I looked at the exam criteria, at first I thought it was a lot of information I needed to review. Then I realized that there are some key areas I need to focus on, and others I can skim over, because I know the material quite well already. For example, I know I need to review the anatomy of the central nervous system, because I’ve forgotten a lot of the finer details of brain anatomy. I also know I need to review my palpations, because (like most RMTs) I have a general feeling for muscles but don’t have all of their origins and insertions memorized any longer. By contrast, I don’t feel I need to spend a lot of time reviewing MT legislation, Standards of Practice, or Ethical issues, since I know those quite well. I also don’t feel I need to spend much time on the micro-anatomy of muscles, as I also know that quite well.

I’ve made it a personal goal to try to update this journal more often over the next few months. We’ll see how that goes.

This quote is from the latest issue of tricycle, a Buddhist magazine. They’d interviewed B. Alan Wallace, a Buddhist practitioner and scholar. I found it thought-provoking and so I am sharing it here.

We mistake what Buddhists call the Eight Mundane Concerns for the true pursuit of happiness: acquisition of wealth and not losing it; acquisition of stimulus-driven pleasures and avoiding pain; praise and avoiding abuse or ridicule; and desire for a good reputation and fearing contempt or rejection. The point to mention is that there’s nothing wrong with the ones on the positive side. Take having: would you be a better person if you didn’t have that sweater you’re wearing? No. There’s nothing wrong with acquisitions, but there’s something wrong with thinking they’ll bring you happiness.

Genuine happiness is simply tapping into the true causes of happiness as opposed to things that may or may not catalyze it. And that’s basically the difference between pursing the dharma and pursuing the Eight Mundane Concerns. Some people actually meditate to serve the Eight Mundane Concerns—solely for the sake of acquiring the pleasure that they get in meditation. They’re taking meditation like a cup of coffee, or jogging, or massage. That’s not bad or wrong, but it’s very limited. Meditation can do something that a good massage can’t do. It can actually heal the mind.