By Jennifer Shaw, Austin Massage Therapist and Guest Blogger
If you’re a massage therapist, you are probably acutely aware of the state of your wrists and forearms. If you didn’t learn how to take care of them in massage school, you probably figured it out pretty quickly along the way. Have you shared this wisdom with your clients? While your clients may not injure themselves trying to uninjured others, so to speak, they are threatened by wrist strain, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis from their work, too. Many massage therapists have seen videos like the Mayo Clinic’s Forearm Stretches for the Office, but so have your clients.
I find crawling YouTube and Vimeo regularly for new techniques and tricks to be helpful and informative – sometimes I even find videos I think are worth sharing with clients.
Three wrist videos your clients probably haven’t seen.
1. Yoga Wrist Therapy by Steven Earth Metz. (He has a lot of good-quality videos.)
2. Aikido Exercises & Stretches : Reversed Wrist Aikido Stretch and Aikido Exercises & Stretches: Twisting Wrist Aikido Stretch submitted by Expert Villiage. (See the sign that says Austin, Texas in the background?)
3. Screaming Hand Stretch by Dina Prioste from Get Exercised. (She’s pretty animated. Your clients will be paying attention.)
A word to the wise…
If you decide to share some public-video, wrist-knowledge with your clients, be sure to select at least three videos on a relevant topic from, as far as you can tell, reputable sources and disclaimer. Remember to stay within your scope of practice. Massage therapists are not chiropractor, physical therapists or doctors. You can share information, but you cannot prescribe. Here’s to happy wrists for massage therapists and clients alike in 2011!