I had a positive connection with my spa manager and we would talk about my future plans. She knew that I wanted to go to school to learn massage soonish and she totally supported me. At that time I was considering going to school for however long I needed and then either stay at work part time or go back with my diploma. Even though it was hard work as an attendant and I saw how it was for practitioners I still really enjoyed the place. I never thought I would want to open up my own practice, let a lone work by myself. To work at the spa the practitioner had to have at least 2200 hours of training. So I had my goal.
I also decided to set a foundation of ideas of what I wanted to learn from the school that I would go to. I described it often to people that I was building myself a house. In the past I have had experiences that were like the roof of the house, but I didn’t have the walls or foundation to really get what those experiences were teaching me. So learning about the body was me putting down the cement for the foundation.
After I had my first shiatsu session I decided to take an introduction shiatsu class at a local acupressure school in Victoria to see if it was what I wanted to learn. I also took another class that was on a style of healing I had never heard of before called Jin Shin Do. Both classes made me feel happy but I liked how shiatsu focused on the whole body not just the emotional issues.
Jin Shin Do focuses on 45 acupressure points. The practitioner will pick a few to work with during the session and they may hold only 2 points for an hour. (Later when I went to the school I finally ended up, there was a Jin shin do therapist across the street from my school; I have a link to him on my links page. I went to see him a few times and found it to be very healing.)
So after the introduction class I was certain I had chosen the right healing path. I decided to apply to the school the introduction was located at. They of course accepted me. This was in the spring time, but I was not to start classes until September. The summer went by and I was looking forward to starting class.
A week before I was supposed to have my first class I got a call. The fulltime shiatsu program was canceled. There were not enough students. The owner of the school gave me two options. I could take the part-time program starting October 3rd, a month later. That program was still filling up and there was a slightly better chance of it actually happening. Or I could learn Jin Shin Do. I would have to take the anatomy course with the Jin Shin Do students though.
I decided not to take the Jin Shin Do program since it is not used at the spa and I had the intention of going back. My manager at the spa was again very supportive. I was suppose to work only one day a week in September but they allowed me to go back to full time during that month as I waited to start the Shiatsu part-time program.
The anatomy class at the school started to make me feel uncomfortable since most of the students were practitioners of other healing fields so they already knew stuff. One classmate even started taking over the class, by talking about how she could see auras and that she could teach us that. Everyone else in the class was impressed, including the teacher, and she said she would give the floor to that student the following week. I am not saying that seeing auras is a bad thing. I just felt like it was inappropriate to talk about this when I was still trying to figure out about the meat of the physical body from a western perspective.
In the middle of September, after I had taken two anatomy classes I heard the owner talk with someone else about how there were still a chance that people would sign up any moment. But I knew right then that the program was not going to happen. I talked with the practitioner who had originally suggested I work at the spa about how the program wasn’t going to happen. She asked if I had considered Vancouver since she had a friend who had a school there. She gave me his information and website.
My husband and I decided that we could make it work. He would stay in Victoria with our cat, and his already established career, and we would see each other on the weekends. So I emailed the school, and called him the next day.
The owner of the school said no. He believed that it would be unfair for the current students to allow a new person in after they had already established a bond. I was going to be three weeks behind after all. I was crushed.
Later that day I went to a friend’s house and talked with her about my dilemma. I told her how there was another school in Vancouver, but I had little hope that they would allow a late person to be accepted as well. But my friend suggested I call them anyways. The secretary knew of the situation of my original school, since they had a connection with the Victoria school and the owner was totally understanding of it and was ok with people transferring. The following day my husband and I went over to meet the administrator, as well as to check out the school.
The funny thing was the first two schools were only 1000 hours. The first school had said I could take more classes afterwards to make up the full 2200 hours and so I had thought that would be ok. I didn’t want to have to move out of Victoria after all. The final school was actually the best since its program was a FULL 2200 hours based on western perspective of the body. I started school, a week later, on October 3rd.