Labor of Love Expo at SWIHA – A different kind of Labor Day Celebration
Labor Parties
When we hear the word ‘labor’, most people think of work. Hard work. For those of us who are blessed to be employed at a place and doing work that we love and enjoy, the word ‘labor’ is not automatically equated with our own jobs. In my mind, ‘labor’ means sweating through a not-so-fun, physically demanding task. Like when I am mowing my lawn or mopping my floors. 
For moms who have experienced childbirth, ‘labor’ takes on a whole other meaning. For me, with my first child, those memorable uterine contractions lasted about 36 hours from the beginning of, “Gee, I think something is happening….” to the delivery of my big bouncing baby boy. Yeah, ouch.
We have heard of labor unions, labor relations, and the Labor Party. Politics aside, as a nation we are getting ready to celebrate that uniquely American holiday honoring all workers and their families: Labor Day. Officially the holiday comes on the first Monday of September. The day marks a number of things; the last weekend before school starts in a lot of states, the beginning of the NFL and college football season, and for much of the country, it is simply the traditional signal of the end of summer, except here in Arizona, where summer temperatures can last another month…or three.
It is an official Federal holiday, and employers mark the day by giving their workers a paid holiday–or sometimes even two days off. With the unemployment rate at 9.5% nationally according to the US Department of Labor, anyone who has a job may find it to be a day to simply celebrate t
he fact that they are employed in these times at all.
For retailers and businesses, Labor Day like so many other holidays, is an opportunity to peg a special sale to the event. What would we do without another Pre-Fall Blowout Weekend Save On Values 20% Off Everything New Super Expanded Labor Day Sale?
Labor of Love
Toe Reading at SWIHA
Well there is a business that is reaching higher: Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. It’s a unique and timely event called the Labor of Love Expo. This event is an opportunity for graduates of Southwest Institute of Healing Arts who are holistic health practitioners to promote their professional products and services. SWIHA is dedicating its Friday, September 3rd Gifts and Graces event to the Labor of Love Expo. Doors open to the public at 5 pm. Many of SWIHA’s practitioners are gathering together in one location for one evening only for this open house event. You can come get a sample of what these holistic practitioners have to offer and experience a wide variety of modalities such as Toe Reading, Reiki, Massage, Reflexology, readings, and so much more. Be prepared to learn, laugh and enjoy treatments at NO COST! Some vendors will have products and gift certificates available for purchase. There will be door prizes, give-aways, and lots of special offers.
In addition, Motivational Speaker, Humorist and Story Teller Kent Rini will appear with an inspirational talk from 6-6:30 pm. He is widely known for generating good laughs and “Ah-ha” moments.
This is a truly unique experience demonstrating what holistic healing is all about. The Labor of Love event is so appropriately named. Why? Because whether they are Massage Therapists, Toe Readers, Life Coaches, or offer other modalities, holistic practitioners both love what they do for a living and put a lot of love into their work.
Bring your friends and family for an incredible evening of healing, fun, relaxation and enjoyment. Please RSVP for Labor of Love here. It’s sure to be an experience like no other, and SWIHA wants to share the love.
~Merry L.
$100 Dollar Reward
Limited-time $100 Offer
A couple of months ago I got a therapeutic massage from a student massage therapist at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts’ Massage Clinic. I had been operating a video camera and doing production for two days, taping for a Whole Foods Cuisine online class DVD. I needed some relief for my shoulders, back, legs, hands and arms. The experience was relaxing, rejuvenating and soothing to my sore muscles and joints. At $33 dollars for an hour massage, the value goes without saying. Yes, that is the student price–an hour massage with a SWIHA LMT (Licensed Massage Therapist) is also a bargain at just $45. While the student masseurs are still learning, they are professional and practiced in holistic techniques and traditional technicalities. The student therapists practice a wide variety of massage, energetic and spa modalities and, if you like to think of the experience as mutually beneficial, as you get your massage you are assisting them in completing their internships while indulging yourself at the same time. I call that a “win-win”.
You’ve probably heard of the benefits of massage; Relaxation, increased blood circulation, alleviated muscle tension, improved skin tone and elasticity, treatment and prevention for certain types of injuries and illnesses and reduction of stress-related health problems. Available at SWIHA are massage therapies that you have probably heard of; Swedish, Deep Tissue, and Shiatsu, plus more. Also offered are a myriad of Spa and Energy therapies that go hand-in-hand (pun intended) with massage therapy; Aromatherapy, Reflexology, Reiki and much more. The professional practitioners who offer massage as well as these therapies and specialties go through vocational training to obtain licenses and certificates, and then are required to take continuing education classes in order to maintain their certifications and licenses.
“In Arizona, massage therapists are required to take 25 hours of Continuing Education (CE) classes every 2 years.” says Lisa Richards, Placement Manager at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. “The requirements vary from state to state. 12 of the 25 hours may be taken online. A massage therapist cannot keep their license if they do not complete the required 25 hours in the state of AZ. It is illegal for a person to work as a massage therapist once their license has expired. If that happens, the therapist may have to reapply as though they have never held an Arizona license.”
“Many of the classes at SWIHA may be used towards National Certification’s continuing education hours (48 hours every 4 years).” says Mary Donnelly, Director of Student Operations at SWIHA. “The AZ Board of Massage Therapy has made past recommendations of Southwest Institute of Healing Arts to massage therapists for their continuing education hours because of its solid reputation and 17-year history in the Valley. SWIHA is also nationally accredited, and has the widest variety of CE classes in the state.”
For those who are considering a career as a massage therapist, here is some more great information from Southwest Institute of Healing Arts about Massage Trends and the Career Outlook for Therapists.
For Continuing Education students, SWIHA has an amazing offer. It’s a:
That’s $100 towards any program class, on-campus or online, when you register by August 31, 2010.
Here’s more details.
This is a great offer, but it’s not only about license requirements. The $100 gift may be used for any of SWIHA’s individual class costs. Continuing Education classes also may help an LMT reignite their passion for their trade or help them to overcome a problem they may be having with their career. Sometimes a therapist needs to learn a different way to approach massage because of injury or disability. SWIHA offers CEU’s in many of these areas and tries to stay current with the education needs of the professional therapist. Some examples are “Hand and Wrist Maintenance” for therapist self-care, or updates on current subjects of interests such as “Medical Massage, Oncology Basics”).
CE’s are also a good way for a therapist to boost their earning potential. If the LMT has a more exotic or unusually effective modality (like La Stone Therapy, which is the use of soothing hot stones to create a deep, relaxing massage), the therapist can make more money per session by adding to their repertoire of therapies.
All in all, CE’s are an awesome idea. And if you are interested in the $100-dollar offer, you will need to act fast.
You can register for classes by clicking HERE.
The economy is chipping away at pretty much everything, including college and university tuition. Students heading to the three public universities this fall will face steep tuition hikes, according to this Arizona Republic Article. SWIHA is not immune, but considering the tuition at public and private post secondary schools, this $100 offer from SWIHA comes in order to offset a slight $1-dollar per hour tuition increase, from $13 to $14 an hour for all classes beginning September 1st. So take advantage of this great offer now.
In the meantime, I am heading back to SWIHA’s massage clinic very soon. La Stone? I think I need one of those.
-Merry L.
Suzie McLaughlin, SWIHA Science Liaison contributed to this blog.
Smarter Than The Average Coach
There once was a time when a coach was a guy in shorts who blows a whistle and yells at the sports team, saying things like, “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.” (-Yogi Berra)
But the term ‘Coach’ is being used a lot these days in reference to a variety of things. And I’m not talking about a fancy handbag.
Nowadays, coaches work in many areas of non-athletic teaching, directing, training and instruction. Among the coaches of today you’ve got ‘Fitness Coaches’ who are personal trainers, ‘Business Coaches’ (also see ‘Executive Coaches’ and ‘Corporate Coaches”) who are human resource developers and ‘Dating Coaches’ who work with people specifically to help them succeed in romance and relationships.
A ‘Transformational Life Coach’ can work with a client on a variety of issues, from personal growth to spiritual subjects, time management to money matters, and more. The goal is to help the client find balance, gain self-awareness and improvement in their life. These ‘Coaches’ work with various forms of ‘Life Coaching’ to help their clients effect positive changes in their lives. It is not therapy, but a practice of helping people achieve personal goals with a forward-moving focus.
The Life Coaching Program at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts has something exciting going on. It is launching it’s Life Coaching Foundation Online class on August 2nd. We’ve just finished the DVD that online students will receive. It contains videos of techniques, tools and exercises that Life Coaching students learn about in class, being demonstrated in real-life situations and coaching sessions.
One video that I found particularly interesting is called “Mini Sessions”. It shows four different situations in which unplanned Life Coaching can happen spontaneously anywhere, anytime, and then be moved into a ‘Mini Session’ or be scheduled into a full Life Coaching Session. One of these sessions, “Relationship Crossroads” is now on SWIHA’s YouTube Channel. I think this video is captivating because it starts out with two friends catching up over coffee. Now, most good friends or close family members who, like some of us, want to explore their feelings and discuss their issues or their personal situations in order to seek improvement will go ahead and just talk about it. But what if one person is a professional Life Coach and the other person begins asking advice? That situation can be handled smoothly and respectfully and this is an under 5-minute illustration of how. It is just one fantastic example of the value this class holds for anyone interested in starting their journey to becoming a Life Coach.
So please click the YouTube link, watch the video and leave a comment to let us know what you think about it!
-Merry L.
Holistic Health and Our OWN Show
We have all heard it.
In the grocery store. At a restaurant. In line at the movies. That familiar broken-record mantra. Whether it is directed at ourselves if, like me you happen to be one, or aimed at some other busy mother, it sounds exactly the same. It tends to ramp up as the seconds tick by and and the repetition gets no response: “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom! MOM!”
Most of the time a child is offering this particular chant simply in order to try to get the attention of his or her mother. Meanwhile, the mother is trying hard to focus on something else in that moment. The child has something to say which, he or she believes, is immediately much more important than whatever silly thing mom is concentrating on.
If you are a parent you can surely relate. If you are the mom being targeted and you know it is not an emergency that you must tend to immediately, like: “Mom. Mom, Mom! MOM! I gotta pee NOW!” (Uh-oh, better handle that one right away…) but rather you know it is more like: “Mom. Mom. Mom! MOM! I want that!” then it is tempting to just try to tune out the insistent drumming. While you know the child won’t get his way by throwing a tantrum, even that ramping up of volume and energy can only be soothed quiet and tuned down for so long. If you are not the mom being targeted, the endless echoing of the same word hints of nails on a chalkboard.
But lest we judge that mom and that child, harken back for a second if you can to when you were 3 or 4 years old and really needed your mom’s attention and you were not getting it. Or perhaps a bit easier, remember when your children were or a significant child in your life was at that parroting age. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it happened at least once.
Now fast-forward to adulthood.
Have you ever felt like that? As grown-ups must we always politely clear our throats calmly say, “May I have your attention please?” when we have something really big to share? Have you ever had something to say that is outrageously, urgently important that requires immediate attention, and needs to be heard NOW? All you want is for someone to listen! But as an adult we simply cannot engage in the type of behavior punctuated by repeating the same thing over and over and over again.
Or can we? Do you ever feel like sometimes that is what it takes? What if you had something to say that only has a very short time to be heard that was really important, for all of mankind? And you had a just a brief chance to say it again and again, and the more you said it to, the more people actually did hear it and had an opportunity to pass it along? What if this information was something that could drastically improve the health and wellbeing of everyone? Wouldn’t you want to say it over and over?
This brings me to the latest video created for Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.
SWIHA is supporting Dr. Lynn Rice and her program”Holistic Options” in the Oprah Winfrey Network “Your OWN show” contest. This is a chance to help gain attention and raise awareness and support for holistic health care. Your vote for Dr. Rice’s video is an opportunity for those who believe holistic modalities are an important part of a national wellness revolution. This program could be the platform from which to change the way health care and education is practiced and delivered in this country. This is the time join in with the voices raising up to help Dr. Rice’s message be heard, and make your own voice heard.
This is urgent, because we only have until 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, July 3, after which, the voting ends. Please click THIS LINK and vote as much as you can. Share the message with your network. And don’t forget to tell your mom!
~Merry L.
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