Inspiring, nurturing and empowering young people with a vision impairment.

Meet Rahel the Masseur!

Student Emma - image is head and shoulders shot with a blue background. Emma is smiling

Article written by student Emma, currently doing Work Experience in the NCW Marketing Department

I interviewed Rahel about her massage course and this is what I found out about it.

Rahel is originally from Indonesia where massaging is a very popular thing to do. Her mum got her into doing massages and her first ever massage was when she was very little at a local therapist’s house.

Rahel went on a massage course on 21st and 22nd January to learn all about doing massages on other people. It was called an introductory massage course and was in a massage therapy centre where she learnt how to eventually do a full body massage over the time that she was there. She did 4 workshops each day and enjoyed it a lot.

She first learnt how to give someone a massage of the back of the legs and feet. Then she learnt how to give a back massage. After this, she learnt how to give an arms and hands massage. She then learnt how to give someone a massage of the front of the legs and feet. The last massage she learnt to give was a head, shoulders, neck and face massage.

She also learnt different techniques for applying different amounts of pressure to massage someone’s body. For doing a light massage, she has to do some holding on the body. Then she has to do something called an effleurage, which is where she has to do broad strokes slowly down the body with her hands.

She also learnt how to do a medium pressured massage which she found harder to do on someone’s body. She had to use her finger knuckles and heels of her hands in order to do this. She also learnt that for a deep massage you have to use your elbows to help apply that pressure.

Overall, from the course, she learnt that she shouldn’t just use her hands, arms and elbows and that she has to use her whole body to massage someone and she has to move around and bend her knees a little bit so that she gets soft knees. This is so that she doesn’t injure herself when she does the massages on people.

In the future, she wants to be able to run a massage course either from home or in a therapist centre. She wants to work in a massage therapist centre first so that she can get used to her new business and working with other people in the community. However, later on in life, she wants to be able to run her business from home independently.

In the future and moving on from NCW Rahel has decided that she would like to apply to RNC (Royal National College for the blind) in Hereford in September. They have a massage department there with a therapist that will be getting her started on it in September. At the moment, they will she is able to do the practical side of the course and she will learn more about massage theory after she has passed other exams like Maths and English.

Every Wednesday afternoon, she goes to a care home near NCW called Crookbarrow View retirement village to practise massages on the elderly people that live there. She also offers hand massages to the students and staff at NCW on a Monday and a Friday.

Rahel, head and shoulders shot wearing yellow framed spectacles
image of Rahel giving a hand massage
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