Tension is a full-body tourniquet most people don’t know how to shake off. Luckily, relief for the chronically tense is near at hand from the approximately 1,000 massage therapists (MTs) in the Chicago area, according to Anita Schiavi, the immediate past president of the Illinois chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA).
“Relaxation is a process that most people don’t understand. They don’t realize that tension inhibits the flow of nutrients in the body and that tight muscles impede internal systems communications,” said Schiavi, a Plainfield-based massage therapist.
Although massage is better understood and more common in Europe and Asia, its popularity in this country is growing, said Ray Miller, director and founder of the Wellness and Massage Training Institute, Willowbrook. “If one person in 20 gets a massage on a regular basis in this country, I’d be surprised. But it is growing,” Miller said.
His is one of three schools licensed in Illinois to train MTs; the others are the Chicago School of Massage Therapy and Peoria’s LifePath School of Massage Therapy. In addition to running the Willowbrook institute, Miller teaches on weekends at LifePath and, like Schiavi, he is a graduate of the Chicago school. Founded in 1989, the Willowbrook school usually has about 150 students working their way through its 619-hour curriculum, which includes history and business classes as well as training in trigger-point, deep-tissue, structural, Swedish and sports massage. They also study different kinds of body work.
“Kineseology (class) was a killer,” said Al Meo, one of Miller’s students who will graduate in December and who already has a job offer. “It’s the study of muscle movement, and we built muscles in clay to show their origins and insertions. It was the most difficult, but I think it’s also one of the most useful classes.”
Despite the cinema stereotype of a brawny guy in a too-tight T-shirt, Meo said MTs don’t need a lot of muscle.
“You need body mechanics, which means standing and moving during the massage to minimize your stress, and you need to learn the techniques that give your fingers and hands a break, gaining leverage by using your elbows and forearms,” Meo said. Schiavi said most people, like the 41-year-old Meo, don’t study massage right after high school, and she added that a recent AMTA national survey showed the average MT has two to four years of college.
Miller said his average student is in his early to mid-30s. “We have some retirees in our classes and some people who need to perform massage on a family member,” Miller said. “We also have many single mothers and mothers whose children are grown as well as people who are making career changes.”
After 20 years as a corporate credit manager, Ron Bednarski opted for a career change, attending the Lewis School and Clinic of Massage Therapy Inc. in Hobart, Ind. After five years as a practicing MT, Bednarski has three offices in the Ingalls Family Care Centers in Tinley Park, Matteson and Calumet City. He said his offices look like most outpatient settings, and his clients are evenly split between those who need help relaxing and those recovering from injuries.
His clients come to him for help with sore muscles, tender areas around previously broken bones, sinus headaches, rheumatoid arthritis and the side effects of chemotherapy.
“There are dozens of types of massage, but there are just so many ways to move the fingers and the muscles. Rubbing is still rubbing, after all,” Bednarski said. “If I need to combine six different techniques to help someone, that’s what I do.”
Although he said there are many benefits and few limits to the uses of massage, he added that he can’t help people who have skin ailments or open wounds. Schiavi said about 60 percent of her clients, including many post-mastectomy patients, are referred to her by physicians, and she likes that system because other problems already have been ruled out.
“With non-referrals, we have to start from scratch, and sometimes I have to send them to physicians to eliminate some possible causes for their distress,” she said. “For the most part, we can be very interactive with most types of care.”
General practitioners usually don’t know enough about massage to make referrals, according to Schiavi, who said her clients come to her from rheumatologists, neurologists, oncologists and orthopedic doctors. As to the price, Schiavi said that although it differs based on the MT’s location, an hour usually costs $40 to $60 for Swedish massage and $30 to $65 for specific-tissue massage. Bednarski said his charge is $45 an hour regardless of the technique.
And for just $25 an hour, Miller’s students offer massages on Fridays and Saturdays as part of their undergraduate training.
For the novice client, the first step is open communication with the MT about expectations, she said.
“One woman came to see me because she’d had tension headaches for 15 years. So I did some specific, trigger-point work on her neck until the tension was diminished. And after I’d done everything I could for her in one session, she told me she was disappointed because she didn’t get a back rub,” Schiavi said, laughing.
Those who don’t want to disrobe should make it clear they intend to wear their underwear, shorts or T-shirt. Those who don’t like oils should ask for lotion. The same is true for checking the MT’s credentials.
“Ask questions and don’t be overwhelmed by the number of pieces of paper on the wall,” she said. Two of the best questions concern the number of hours the MT studied anatomy and physiology (about 100 is good) and how much training he or she had in general massage strokes (at least 100 hours is good), according to Schiavi.
These preliminaries are important because, despite the AMTA’s annual lobbying effort in Springfield, Illinois doesn’t license its MTs. In the absence of state licensing, some Illinois counties and cities have established ordinances that require MTs to undergo fingerprinting and tests for tuberculosis and venereal disease. Bednarski said this onus dates from World War II when so-called massage parlors sprang up near military bases and co-opted terms like “masseur” and “masseuse,” which still are considered disreputable in this country.
