The World Massage Conference that took place in November this year was the largest event in the history of massage.
Live presentations (or webinars) featuring over 60 top massage experts were broadcast to around 10,000 therapists who were able to learn about new techniques or groundbreaking research from the comfort of their own homes.
One local therapist who ‘attended’ a number of the web presentations was Garry Andrews, a complementary health practitioner and owner of Holistic Health in Weymouth. The conference was hosted in the US, but Garry managed to log in to a number of live presentations although it did mean some pretty late nights!
The seminars were hosted by leading authorities in the world of massage and some of the topics covered included:
o A holistic approach to effective injury prevention
o Massage cupping – the active cup
o Positional approaches to muscle therapy
o Revolutionary techniques for frozen shoulders and frozen hip
o Understanding the Iliopsoas muscle.
Garry is committed to continuing professional development and has so far attended 13 hours of the conference’s virtual seminars.
“It’s an excellent way of keeping up with new techniques and developing your skills”, he said. “I found the seminar on frozen shoulders and frozen hips particularly useful because these are really common problems. I’m sure it’s going to help me with patients in the future.”
The real beauty of the conference format is that everything is recorded so if you don’t catch a seminar live, you can watch it whenever it’s convenient.
“There’s still so much information just waiting for me to listen to and learn about”, says Garry. “The technology is amazing. I can download every presentation after it’s taken place and save it to my hard drive or a CD so that I can watch it again and again. Plus I can access written transcripts and read them in my own time.”
