New and prospective patients often ask me what style of massage I do. I find this a particularly difficult question to answer. I have training in swedish massage as is required in Ontario's massage schools. Deep tissue massage was also taught in school. Since then I've completed advanced training in craniosacral therapy with Robert Harris of the Cranial Centre (http://www.cranialtherapy.ca/) here in Toronto. Prior to ever becoming a therapist, however, I studied martial arts.
In eastern cultures, martial arts and healing arts are often taught in parallel. For example, I can remember reading on a korean hapkido web page that orginally, advanced dan rankings in Hapkido (which I currently study) require certification in both massage and acupuncture (I'm afraid I can't find the link as I write this... I'll keep looking!). As far as I can tell, the healing and martial aspects divided somewhere in the middle of the last century as eastern martial arts spread west and began the process of commercialization that's culminated in martial arts "brands" in the last couple of decades.
As part of a personal path, I felt that a massage therapy career would enhance and be enhanced by my martial arts training. Being self employed would also give me the freedom to train even more intensely (It hasn't quite worked out that way... The realities of small business keep me occupied more often that I'd expected!).
I've always thought of myself as a bit of a jack of all trades. Miyomoto Musashi in his Book of Five Rings said: "Be knowledgeable in a variety of occupations, and learn the thinking of people who work in them." (http://www.bookoffiverings.com/) Aside from having had a few career paths myself, having a massage practice is also about relationships... Getting to know people and developing an understanding of how and why they're on the table. A massage career is certainly great for a martial artist for that alone.
Martial arts at its foundation is about movement and rhythm. This is an aid to me in a number of ways. In solo practice, I learn about my own bio mechanics, my personal ability to move. In joint practice, I learn about how others move. It's particularly useful to see different body types in motion when they also come from different vocations and athletic backgrounds. After years of this kind of observation, I can often tell what a person does for a living (within some broad categories. ie. working on the phone or computer, physical labour, driving), and what they do for fun in their spare time. It's also helped me develop an profound sense of efficient posture and bio mechanics (the move efficient someone is able to move and the more integrated the rhythm of their movement, the better their posture and bio mechanics tend to be).
Even greater tools available to me through martial arts training, are an understanding of leverage, and a functional knowledge of anatomy. Leverage is learned through grappling practice (both standing and on the ground), and helps me as a therapist to apply force efficiently when necessary while remaining sensitive to the tissue response, and safety of the patient. With so many years training with different people, with different body types I found that when we studied anatomy in massage school, I was able to put labels to structures I already had a feel for and thereby increase my palpation effectiveness in both martial arts and massage. Combining those two sets of ideas gives me an intuitive sense of how to work on a patients body that goes well beyond anything that can be learned in a textbook. It's also made my style of treatment somewhat unique. I've been told it reminds people of either shiatsu, or osteopathic styles of treatment, even without distinct training in those disciplines.
I can't imagine doing one without the other. I feel I could study bodywork style after bodywork style, and collect tremendous knowledge, but without the parallel martial arts path, I'd have difficulty integrating them into a coherent personal style of treatment.
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