What is Advanced Massage?

The Diploma in Advanced Massage offered by the VTCT (Vocational Training Charitable Trust) at Cardonald College is taught by the Principal of the Glasgow School of Shiatsu. It is designed to allow qualified therapists to develop and enhance their massage skills. The Diploma teaches Acupressure and Neuromuscular Techniques which can be used in conjunction with Aromatherapy and Swedish Massage techniques to give a deeper, more therapeutic massage.

Acupressure

Acupressure is a Japanese technique which relies on the Yin Yang principles of Oriental Medicine. The body is a network of energy channels called meridians. The quality of the energy at certain points along these meridians can affect our physical, mental and emotional health. To achieve optimum health Yin and Yang should be in balance. An imbalance of Yin and Yang leads to illness. Yin and Yang are opposite ends of every spectrum and rely on each other for definition i.e., Yin cannot exist without Yang just as light cannot exist without dark. For example, Yin energy is slow, dark, weak and cold and Yang energy is fast, light, tense and hot.

The technique is to apply pressure using the thumbs, palms forearms and elbows to points on the meridians to encourage the flow of energy to these areas. In doing so the therapist directs the flow of Ki (pronounced "key", meaning life energy) to these points to augment weak (Yin) areas or to disperse excessively Yang (tense) areas.

Neuromuscular Technique

Neuromuscular Technique (NMT) is a technique which is particularly effective in dealing with persistently tense muscles and chronic muscular pain. It is designed to reset the 'neuromuscular dialogue'. Chronic muscular tension can be the result of a vicious cycle of erroneous neuromuscular messages which travel between the affected muscle and the brain and do not allow the muscle to relax and heal. NMT resets this dialogue by interrupting this cycle of messages with a very slow and deep massage technique in which the therapist uses only the pad of the thumb and works on a very small area of muscle at a time.