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Originally Posted by Redlemon
According to salary.com, "A typical Massage Therapist working in the United States earns a median base salary of $45,400, according to our analysis of data reported by corporate HR departments. Half of the people in this job earn between $36,763 and $55,665."
My schooling, including equipment, cost about $12k, and it took 9 months. It was 600 class-hours.
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Good to know. Sounds like it takes about the same investment as teaching high school and pays off about the same amount (at least, in my experience). I guess you have to have two incomes to make it work with kids?
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Originally Posted by Redlemon
Quick and overly-simplistic guide to the healing arts: massage will be for relaxing overly-tight muscles. Physical therapy will be for strengthening weak muscles. Chiropractic will be for realigning bones that have moved out of place. Sometimes you will need more that one of these in series, and it will help in those times to have them talk to each other to maximize the healing.
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Thanks for the explanation. I don't know about them talking to each other (in diff countries), but my chiro did tell me that he didn't see a skeletal problem with my back pain. So that confirms what you are telling me here:
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Originally Posted by Redlemon
The type of pain you are describing sounds like "splinting"; this is where a muscle is injured, and the surrounding muscles go into a spasm in order to isolate and protect the injured muscle. If the spasm is released or bypassed, the original muscle's pain comes through again.
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This is very interesting, thank you. It feels like maybe one of my spinal erector muscles (I think that's what they're called) was originally injured, if this is the case... and the surrounding ones flash into action to protect it, I suppose. So what you are saying is that in PT or deep-tissue massage, the goal would be to release/bypass the spasm in order to get to the deeper injury? (Dunno if I mentioned this, but when this "splinting" thing happens, it feels like someone has just punched me very hard in the lower back, and my back feels like it's crumbling for a millisecond before I straighten up and regain control. I also feel a lot of pain when I am flat on my back, when the "arch" is flattened a bit...)