• May 11 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm  Confirmed
• June 8 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm  Confirmed
• June 19 (Wednesday) 10am - 5pm
• July 13 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• August 10 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• August 14 (Wednesday) 10am - 5pm
• September 14 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• September 18 (Wednesday) 10am - 5pm
• October 12 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• October 16 (Wednesday) 10am - 5pm
• November 9 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm  

The following is a list of currently scheduled classes.  This class is a two-day class worth 12 CE hours for Florida massage therapists.  Each class (unless otherwise marked) currently has a status of 'Scheduled'.  This means that a date has been set, but no one has signed up for it yet.  Once a deposit has been received for a class, the status will be 'Confirmed'.  The current schedule is as follows:

• June 4 - June 5  (Tuesday 9:00am - 5:00pm and Wednesday 10:00am - 4:00pm)
• June 22 - June 23  (Saturday 9:00am - 5:00pm and Sunday 10:00am - 4:00pm)  Confirmed
• August 3 - August 4  (Saturday 9:00am - 5:00pm and Sunday 10:00am - 4:00pm)
• August 20 - August 21  (Tuesday 9:00am - 5:00pm and Wednesday 10:00am - 4:00pm) 

All classes are scheduled to be held at the Hampton Inn at Jacksonville Beach, FL.  Should the location change, that change will be on the website and students notified. 

Note: Check with the hotel for special room rates.  

Maximize your results with less effort. Utilize the science of martial arts and apply it to massage. Body Mechanics and Advanced Techniques for Massage Therapists is designed to reconnect the massage therapist with proper body mechanics and techniques showing how to work without hurting oneself and how to apply deep pressure with little effort.  The class being part lecture, part hands-on practice uses theory, stances, centering, and the proper use of body strength from martial arts and applies them to the art of massage therapy.  Students will learn how to focus their energies and use their body to do deep work with less effort and not get hurt.  This class will help anyone to work deeply with less effort no matter if one is 90 pounds or 250 pounds.  This class is for both the seasoned therapist and the new therapist.  It will show moves everyone is familiar with, but in a new light as well as moves many people may not have seen before (which have been taken from Lomi Lomi, Esalen, and other styles).  The idea is not to dictate how to practice, but to show better body mechanics which the therapist can adapt to what they do.  This is true whether they adapt all of it or just part of it.

I saw an excerpt on a national news broadcast a couple of months ago that disturbed me. A woman had gone to a doctor, who got her in to have a mammogram. The test showed that she had something in her breast (or breasts). Based on this, the doctor had her go through a double mastectomy. Afterward, they found out that it was not cancer. Ooops. How could this happen? Well, there are a lot of reasons behind it, and it follows a disturbing trend.

As the story went on to show, a mammogram has about a 30% margin of error. Thirty percent? That is a huge number. That is effectively one-third. To go based solely on that is absolute madness. Now the next step that should be followed is to do a biopsy. That is where a needle is inserted into the mass and something withdrawn to be tested. This should tell if it is cancer or not. But there also seems to be a large margin of error with this as well. And on top of that, in a large amount of the cases, this test is not being done. People are having radical surgery based on inconclusive evidence.

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Part of the answer to this is that cancer is a scary thing. Another part (and I assume a larger part) is that doctors make money if they cut someone. The trend I see is that when someone has the possibility of cancer, the response from the medical authorities is to remove both breasts even though the problem might only involve one. Then they push the fact that cancer can kill, and they don't want that to happen. So the patient is bullied and scared into having radical, life changing surgery. This reminds me of the woman that stopped in here one day and told me that according to doctors, she had the gene that causes cancer and she has an 87% chance of getting it. So she was going to go have both breasts cut off to be sure. (See the article titled "Editorial" in the October 2012 Newsletter from the Newsletter Archive on the front page of the website.)

Someone I know had stage 1 cancer in one breast. The doctors wanted to do surgery immediately. Instead she tried some other treatments, mostly holistic in nature. Before these other treatments had the time to work, another mammogram was done and this person was told that the lump was getting much bigger and that she needed to have the surgery immediately! Well, she got it done. Afterwards when they looked at the breasts again, they said that the lump was not getting bigger. She could have stayed with the holistic approach and given it more time to work (especially since it was just stage 1 cancer). But the doctors scared her into having surgery. I have only heard from this person once since then.

My mediumship teacher had stage 3 cancer which was cured by a test medicine as part of clinical trial in combination with dietary changes, acupuncture, and Reiki. I wish this person with stage 1 had not let the doctors bully her into the surgery.

The point of the news article was that women need to think before immediately doing what the doctor wants them to do. A mammogram is not conclusive other than to tell there is a lump. A biopsy needs to be done to tell what it is, and maybe this should be done in more than one medical center. And a woman needs to think clearly before being frightened by a doctor who simply wants to pad his income.

It is your body. Weigh all the options before just doing what the doctor says. If I have learned one thing, it is doctors make mistakes and they don't know everything. They also have an agenda, and that may not have anything to do with the care of the patient. So if you are faced with radical treatment, calmly look at all your options before you decide a treatment plan.

by Brian Dean

Speaking of balance, what do you do when you are sick? Do you ride out the illness taking over the counter medications. Do you look for more organic things like herbs and natural solutions? Or do you go to the doctor?

Do all three options work? Yes, depending on the illness.

As one who had the flu last month, I did the traditional thing and went to the doctor. I left there with a prescription for medications (flu remedy and antibiotics) that would get rid of the problem fairly quickly, and make me not contagious to others so I could return to work. Being in the line of work I am in, I can not go to work sick as I have done with previous jobs. I remember working my last day job, and we were coming down to a big time of the year. I had caught a bad cold form my boss (who also was too busy to be able to stay home) which turned into bronchitis. One of the other people in charge went to him and told him that I needed to be sent home so I would not spread what I had. Since I was writing software needed to get through this time of the year (as it was the first time we had been in this situation), I basically told my boss that he could send me home and not get through this period, his choice. Consequently I stayed working.

Doing what I do now, I can't do that. Simply by putting my hands on someone, I could give them what I have, so I shut down.

Meanwhile, back to the topic, I went the traditional route as I needed the illness killed right away. My friend, the acupuncturist went through tons of herbs trying to do the same thing. I think we both spent as much time away from our jobs.

The point here is that both methods work. Combining them also work. For instance, antibiotics kills all bacteria in the body, good and bad (yes the body has good bacteria in it). This is where one should go to the local health food store and get acidophiles which puts good bacteria back into the body. You see, a balance between traditional medicine and herbal.

Before the modern world developed medicines, people would cure illnesses with herbs, teas, and common sense (something that does not seem to be too common anymore). And yes, a lot of people were lost by things that can be cured nowadays. But in that time, we also learned about cleanliness and wiping germs off surfaces, and proper ways to treat people whether we are using modern drugs or not.

But while modern drugs can and have done wonders, we may have gone a step too far. Now we have a drug for everything. I can remember years ago a friend who was starting to lose his hair telling me he would do something about it when they develop a pill to fix it. And while they have not come up with that specific pill, they seem to have come up with one for just about everything else. We have mood enhancers to help us feel better, drugs to calm us so our hyper state does not get away from us. We have drugs lo lower blood pressure so we don't have to worry about exercising and eating right.

All too many of these medications are to keep us in the state we are in. if we weigh too much causing high blood pressure, well there's a pill for that. If we can't deal with the stress at work, there's a pill for that.

The problem is that the pills are replacing exercise and proper diet making us think we don't have to worry about them. They are also replacing common sense. And these newer pills have way too many side effects that one has to be really, really careful before taking them.

The drug companies are making tons of money by giving us pills for everything under the sun from hyper activity to depression. (By golly, let's not learn how to work through our problems, let's just take a pill.) It makes a society that is dependent on pills, one that does not know how to work out its problems. It is far easier to medicate them.

There has to be a balance. We need to learn how to deal with our problems, not just medicate them. We need to balance the need for drugs to stay well and drugs to replace common sense. We need to look back into herbal remedies and use a combination of both as well as holistic healing to stay well. We need to take modern medicine and temper it with common sense and add a dash of herbal cures and holistic healthcare. That is balance.

At Caring Palms, we pledge to do the best work we can at every session.  We not only do this to continue to earn your business, but because we believe that you deserve the best care possible every time you are here.  This is true whether it is massage, or energy work, or classes. This is our promise.  This is what we will continue to do.