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I am back from my California trip!

More posts coming soon about our crazy adventures in Orange County, CA!

The next few posts will include more about my California trip, but for now wanted to say how happy I am that I went! It was all so good, I could not tell you which part was “my favorite!” Everything was what I was mentally preparing for, and went according to plan except for a few flight delays and a cancelled flight which kept us there an extra night. In the end even that turned out well; we had a great time hanging out with newer Airbnb guests and our gracious hosts who let us stay that extra night in Costa Mesa.

I loved the Pediatric Massage Therapist Certification Course!

I must start out with a post about the most important thing I was there for: my Pediatric Massage Therapist Certification Course! You can read about my plans to take this course in this post I wrote just before leaving for CA. This was perhaps the best experience of the week because EVERYTHING about it was even better than what I was hoping for! It reminded me of what I stand for and deserve as a Licensed Massage Therapist. It also reminded me of what I want to do and why, and goals for the future. I learned the best tips and ideas to achieve my goals I now have for working with the pediatric population in the State of PA. Whether in my own office, the patient’s home, a hospital or other healthcare environment, this class offered great advice.

We also learned techniques and important information to know when working with pediatric patients who are either well or have an illness or disability. We learned about some tools to use in order to keep massage fun for patients, and to keep their attention.

We went over the many possible benefits of massage for pediatric and infant patients, including:

– For infants: improved weight gain, respiratory function, parent/infant interaction, sleep patterns, long-range behavioral and developmental testing scores, and decreased length of hospital stay.

– For non-infant pediatric: reduced anxiety and tension, reduced pain, improved long-range emotional and cognitive development, improved healing/immune function, relaxation for the parent/care-giver, improved focus and attention span.

– For Children with Special Healthcare needs: improved muscle tone, joint mobility, respiratory function, sleep patterns, and gastrointestinal function.

(These benefits are based off research findings from several sources, mainly under the work of Dr. Tiffany Field. She is most well-known from The Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.)

Tina Allen is a great teacher!

The teacher, Tina Allen, was sweet, kind, and willing to do anything to help her students at anytime ever. I am sure all of us in the class wanted to drop everything to follow her around and take all her courses! I highly recommend her class to any Massage Therapist or Healthcare professional who wants to work with or is currently working with pediatric patients. As for parents, a great resource would be Tina’s book, “A Modern-Day Guide to Massage For Children,” which you can buy only through Amazon. (I am holding it in the photo below.)

For a calendar of her classes and more info you can check out the Liddle Kidz Foundation website at www.liddlekidz.com.

I am excited to see how everything I learned comes to be used in the long run, and to see hospitals across PA begin Pediatric massage programs.

I promise more posts to come about some fun things I did in Cali, but for now still catching up on sleep and unpacking. Thank you to those who left encouraging well wishes. We did have a blast!

-Jillian