Nurturing Your Life Today With Infant and Child Massage Workshops. I'm sure you and your child will enjoy the calmness it can bring.

Infant Massage Workshops are excellent for Expecting, New, Step and Adoptive Parents with children Newborn up to 1 year old and Foster Parents of children up to 7 years old.

Why Infant/Child Massage?  Because they enjoy and benefit from massages just like adults do and because I discovered massage can be that tool that helps you navigate through your new parent journey and helps to begin a lifelong journey of bonding with your child.  Let me tell you my story.  Licensed Massage Therapist are required to take additional training throughout their career.  When I was viewing the selection of massage classes an Infant Massage class piqued my interest.  I have grand children and thought lets see what I can learn that might be beneficial to them.  As fate would have it for some reason (that I can’t remember now) I needed to care for my grand daughter in the evening and bath her and put her to bed.  Her Mother had complained about having a difficult time with her at bedtime so I expected a challenge.  She was indeed fussy so I applied the Infant Massage techniques I was learning and to my surprise she calmed down and was soon asleep.  I was not sure if her quicker resolve to sleep was the result of the massage or a long day so each bath thereafter I applied the techniques and received the same outcome.  Soon I informed my daughter of my observations and told her I stumbled upon an arsenal  that she needs to learn so she could also get the children to bed with less of a fight.  As time went by I noticed my grand daughter appeared to wait for her massage at bedtimes and as she grew older she would ask for a massage.  I saw she enjoyed her massages and to my surprise I also noticing she and I had formed a bond. At that point I knew I had to share these wonderful techniques with others outside my private circle.

Expecting parents are encouraged to take the class before their child arrives so they have time to master the techniques before their lives get busy with a newborn.  With this knowledge they are able to begin the massages on the day of birth as long as the child has no health issues vs learning and starting the massages after the child is weeks or months old and, if the child is born premature they will be armed with a massage technique for Preemies that they can apply. 

For the workshop; parents can invite their angels/the people who will help with the child/children such as the Grand Parents or in the event the family is expecting  multiple births such as twins, triplets, etc; they can invite their close relatives, and/or friends.  

The workshops are held once a week for five weeks.  Each week a new area of the body and specific massage techniques are presented.  During the week the parents and helpers are expected to practice the techniques on the child/children or on a soft bodied doll so the techniques become second nature.  There is also a weekly Q & A meeting that parents are encouraged to attend to ask questions, express concerns, seek clarity, give comments, and feedback in an effort to increase their confidence and mastery before we move on to the next area of the body. Each family is awarded a certificate of completion.  I am am thinking about creating an annual get together for our graduated families if the feedback from the families indicate an interest.

The emphasis and focus of the workshops are to:

• Help calm the baby so you can get more sleep, thereby minimizing your sleep deprivation & exhaustion.
• Lower or eliminate postpartum depression and new baby related tensions.
• Increase your confidence, relaxation and peace of mind.
• Decrease parents stress and fears.
• Decrease your child’s stress.
• Help parents understand their baby’s fussing, crying, colic, constipation, teething, & gas issues.
• Strengthen your family by forming the foundation of a lifetime of bonding and communication.
• Get Dad’s involved and help activate Dad’s parenting hormones.
• Help parents understand their child’s language of crying.
• Allow Preemies an opportunity to experience the benefits of the gift of touch.
• Improve the child’s circulation, weight gain, immune function, and growth.
• Sooth the child’s sore muscles.
• Teach the child and the adults appropriate touch & respect.
• Enhance the child’s brain development, digestion & elimination.

It is our hope and prayer that a class of this magnitude can also help avoid “Shaken Baby Syndromes”.

We look forward to seeing you in the upcoming workshop.