We are planning a massive road trip in 2022, and one of the things that we'll be putting to the test is to try to develop some of our own essential oils. Several years ago there was a huge rage in the aromatherapy world because mini/portable steam distillation machines were made available and affordable via retailers such as amazon. But, we found very few aromatherapists that were successful in extracting true essential oils from plant material with their new equipment. So, we'll be on the hunt for indigenous plant materials to harvest in extremely small quantities for scientific and educational purposes, and then create further training materials for our aromatherapy and master therapist tools and microtreatments classes on how to incorporate root to seed to plant to bark to flower - natural essential oil plant harvesting and production methods. While we'll be looking around the country for indigenous materials, we recommend aromatherapist to grow and produce their own plant materials if they are going to manufacture their own essential oils.
In planning to pick natural aromatherapy plant materials from the wild, we've done some research and found that multiple sources cited Dominic Price of Wild Plant Protection Charity Plantlife, because it's usually either illegall or strongly discouraged to pick naturally growing organic materials from public or private lands. Dominic states: "it is not normally an offence to pick the 'Four Fs' – fruit, foliage, fungi or flowers – if the plants are growing wild and it is for your personal use and not for sale."
Furthermore, the USDA Forest Services states: "On National Forests, Parks or Monuments, it is illegal to pick or collect plants without a permit. National Forests issue permits for scientific and educational purposes." What's important to remember according to the USDA Forest Service is that:
All living organisms need to reproduce. Digging up wildflowers, picking wildflowers, or collecting their seed will reduce a plant's ability to reproduce and will adversely affect its long-term survival in that location;
Removing wildflowers from the wild can adversely affect pollinators and other animals that depend on that species for food and cover;
Removing wildflowers from our national forests and grasslands prevents other visitors from enjoying our natural heritage; and,
Most wildflowers when dug from their natural habitat do not survive being transplanted.
Permits to collect plants or plant material can typically be obtained at a USDA Forest Service District Office. Permit types vary depending on collection needs and Forest Service personnel will identify whether a permit is required and if so what type. Permitting, if needed, is implemented for the protection of both resource and collector.
Permit types, costs, stipulations, etc. may vary by Forest and Region. The minimum charge for small (commercial and personal-use sales); including other forest products is $20 per permit (FS-2400-1). Higher minimum charges may occur, if necessary, to offset processing costs.
This permit is used to collect fees and to authorize forest product removal that is expected to have limited resource impacts. The permit is a license to a person to allow removal of forest products when such removal would be illegal without a permit.
This permit is not appropriate for:
Product value over $300
Time period of over 1 year.
Special protection needs for aquatic, heritage resources, or threatened and endangered species habitat.
When supply is not limited and value is low, free use of special forest products may be granted to individuals for personal use. Individuals are prohibited from selling or exchanging material harvested or gathered under free use. For botanical collection and bioprospecting, when such use qualifies for free-use, a Forest Products Free-Use Permit is appropriate (FS-2400-8).
Forest Service units may also provide specifications such as:
Specific locations where collection is not permitted, such as Research Natural Areas, Wilderness Areas, etc.
Permit area map.
List of rare plant species, look-alikes, or plant parts that may not be collected.
by Selena Belisle, Founder/Instructor of CE Institute LLC
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Throughout the years, students have constantly asked us about working with animals. Anything from hot stone massage, aromatherapy, stretching to lymphatic drainage has been requested to adapt and apply towards our fur babies and more. This is a largely underserved market which has the potential to explode into a booming business opportunity.
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While self-isolated during the COVID 19 pandemic started, I spent some time to learn about the possibilities of working with our mammalian counterparts primarily in St. Albans, Vermont, USA. While there is plentiful equestrian massage education, other animal breeds such as cows, bulls, goats, sheep, pigs, canines, felines and even cold blooded breeds of aviary practice are largely unstudied.
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To start our study in March 2019, I bottle fed baby goats on a daily basis, multiple times per day from 2-days to 2+ months old. What was determined early on as a practitioner was that if you did not have a relationship with an animal, it was less likely to trust you while it was in need of care or in medical distress at any age. We tested if early nursing and care could establish a potential long-term trust between the practitioner and animal. With this theory, daily nursing and care was provided for almost 80 newborns. These newborns had great trust for their caretaker and usually allowed the caretaker to do anything to them, including positioning the animal at various angles to gain access to various joints and muscles throughout their body with a willing and docile result.
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Over one year passed before I was able to return to care for the newborns that I had extensively nursed 16 months prior. What was found was that without perpetual care, the animals became less trusting and cooperative, despite being their primary newborn care provider. Moreso, when an animal is in medical distress, unless exhausted and dying, most animals are likely to be extremely alert and defensive, shying away from any possible practitioner care. As such, it was determined that to work on mammals such as farm animals, it would be best if the full-time farm hand/caretaker was trained to administer massage or bodywork techniques for pain relief or other medical requirements rather than have a trained bodywork practitioner attempt to work on a strange animal with no established relationship, especially when the animal is alert and able to engage physical defense mechanisms.
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A Brief Synopsis of Massage and Bodywork Care for Animal Species that were Studied for the past 1 1/2 years:
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Goats
The goats were the primary target of this study. Tame goats can be extremely friendly - none were considered aggressive. Baby goats who received constant human care from an early age were easiest to provide massage and orthopedic bodywork. The best position for this care was when a practitioner was in a seated position with the baby goat lying across the practitioner's legs. The goat's front legs should be over one side of the practitioner's lap and the rear legs should be over the opposite side of the practitioner's lap. The baby goat is usually a willing and flexible participant if the practitioner administers bottle nursing with simultaneous massage modality while in the practitioner's lap. Couple day old heifer and bull calves may also be manipulated with the same approach, depending on the animal's nature and personality.
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Dogs
Puppies have little attention span so older dogs may be better candidates for massage and bodywork care. Depending on the breed, most working dogs will lie still enough to enjoy hands-on practice while smaller toy breeds may become distracted and want something different.
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Cats
Cats have little to no attention span at any age - and their personalities will vary greatly. Tame geriatric cats might be the best candidate for massage and bodywork.
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Cows and Bulls
Full grown bulls are typically much more aggressive than a cow; however, all of them have the potential to harm or kill the practitioner when working underneath the specimen. Bulls may even charge or buck the practitioner. It would be wise to work on this specimen's lower extremities in an elevated milking parlor station where the animal could be placed high above the practitioner in an enclosed stall to curtail their physical movement.
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Horses
Almost all horses at any age are skittish. In this study, I had the opportunity to work on a 5 year old male Clydesdale, a 2 year old female Clydesdale and a geriatric paint. The geriatric paint was interesting because she had severe arthritis and would often lie down in open fields and would appear dead. However, if you approached her she would get up onto her arthritic legs, no matter how much it would hurt. Working on a horse's lower extremities would be advised similar to cows - such as to place them in a milking station where the animal could be placed high above the practitioner in an enclosed stall to curtail their physical movement. Working on a large animal's hips could be opposite - by placing the practitioner in the elevated stall and the animal below where a practitioner would usually stand or work within the milking parlor. This opposite placement will allow a practitioner to reach over or through the milking stall to access the animal's hips and spine in a safer position rather than next to the animal where a practitioner might be more easily stepped on, bucked or crushed. Additionally working on an inflexible concrete structure of a milking parlor may be more stable than working with a ladder that is movable and collapsable.
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Getting any animal, especially large animals such as a horse, cow or bull to lie down for treatment would be the best possible scenario, but most of these animals will not lie down with human command unless they are extremely well trained.
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Obviously the practitioner will need to adapt their treatment to their surroundings and available equipment or environment to provide the safest and most effective possible treatment for themselves and the animal. Working in advanced farming situations such as in a milking parlor would require farm-hand training to ensure proper safety measures are taken for both the practitioner and animal. Further education about each animal species is required prior to any attempt to administer massage or bodywork modalities to it.
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Aviary
When trying to separate day-old ducklings from their mother on a farm where there is regular human presence, the mother would attack the human and the ducklings would squeal. Most mothers will continue to sleep on top of their hatchlings after they've hatched so gaining safe access to the hatchlings (to tame or care for them) can be difficult. An aviary mothers' instinct to protect their babies was a common response amongst the aviary farming community which in this study included: turkeys, geese, chickens and ducks. It would be important to note that where this study was conducted, the birds had a hen house that they occupied at night for safety; however wild foxes, bears and panthers roamed the grounds during the day which put the birds at extreme risk for maiming or death. These birds were not caged and could roam the grounds freely. As such, attempting to tame the birds for human care could be detrimental to their survival instincts of living in an open country scenario.
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Working with different species will vary greatly upon the particular animal, breed, size, injury and their disposition towards humans or the practitioner. Even a neutered animal may behave differently than one that is not. The one consistency amongst all of these species is that most animals usually do not provide a welcome mat for human intervention when they are in medical distress or injured, especially to human strangers. The animals we had the greatest success with were baby goats and calves when providing daily newborn care and geriatric working dogs.
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Working on stray or feral animals is usually pointless given their distress when handled by humans. The likeliness to sustain bodily injury from scratches or bites is great and the practitioner could be additionally infected with rabies and other disease.
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There are indeed some practitioners who could be more soothing to animals than others. However, it is important to remember that most mammals have an extremely strong flight or fight mechanism that they will engage whenever they are in medical distress. As such, massage and bodywork services may be best administered as prophylactic care and for general wellness and physical performance improvement instead of an attempt to work on strange animals in medical distress.
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To further illustrate how bodywork is not always easily adapted to animals, modalities such as lymphatic drainage would require shaving prior to application. Shaving an animal in medical distress to apply a modality to relieve their swelling is not an option given this will likely cause greater emotional distress to the animal. Applying gentle light-touch lymphatic drainage techniques through animal fur seemed to be ineffective, hence the need for shaving to work directly on the animal's skin.
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Tranquilizers are often administered in veterinary medicine; however, as holistic practitioners engaging in massage and bodywork, we did not feel this was a prudent option given the whole point of administering holistic care was to naturally heal the animal, not chemically drug it.
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We did find that some mammals and birds at any age were more trusting of human care than others. They had different personalities. Some were extremely shy and some were extremely loving, sometimes irregardless to the amount of human attention provided to them throughout their life. However even the most trusting animal in medical distress can become alarmed with the most soothing human techniques given most animal instincts are to run and hide to further protect themselves when they are injured. We noticed that with joint displacement, the animal was less likely to approach or be interested in human care after the displacement regardless of how it was achieved with a stranger/practitioner.
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It is important to keep in mind that when working with animals, there is various zoonotic disease that could be easily transmitted from one animal to the next. Proper hand washing and precautionary measures used for human care should be similarly exercised with animals - although there are veterinary techniques and tricks that are more efficient for animal care when properly trained. Over half the baby goats that were nursed in Spring 2020 had visible effects from the orf virus, and while rare, one of the full time goat caregivers visibly contracted the virus on their hand as well. The caregiver never wore gloves when handling the animals which likely led to the infection.
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The easiest massage or bodywork modality to administer to all healthy mammals seemed to be vigorous sports and circular style massage. Once trust was established, a common response was the animal would lean into the practitioners hand for additional pressure and contact. This action helped verify that the animal enjoyed the therapy and was seeking more.
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The hardest massage and bodywork modalities to administer to animals were services such as thermal or cryotherapy, lymphatic drainage and other techniques to relieve musculoskeletal pain or swelling. While these modalities could likely help the animal, it was fairly pointless to administer if the animal did not have total trust or obedience for the practitioner. Once the animal was injured, regardless of how, the animal was regularly not interested in human intervention unless the practitioner was an already established caretaker. Of course, if the animal was approaching death and motionless, then it could receive practitioner care from a stranger which usually resulted in emotional distress even if the animal could no longer physically move or leave the treatment area. That type of death-on-doorstep therapy is ill advised given further engaging the animal's fight or flight mechanism with seriously elevated heart beat and blood pressure is likely not healthy for an injured animal. At the same time, daily nursed newborn goats with broken legs were more apt to seek human care for their comfort and injuries when that practitioner was also their full-time nurse and primary caretaker.
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In summary, we do feel that massage and bodywork techniques could be very helpful for animal health, and are even found to be enjoyable by most animals when they are friendly and healthy. However, administering massage and bodywork techniques to sick and strange animals as an on-call or independent practitioner may not be the best approach to improve their well being.
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This is an ongoing study which will hopefully span more than a decade of working with various animal species that are not regularly considered for human administered massage and bodywork. We feel that show and race animals could gain a competitive advantage with speed and agility from therapeutic massage and bodywork. We also feel that show animals such as cats may become more friendly with human massage which could be an advantage when handled by a judge for inspection during competition.
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It may be possible that pain relief and orthopedic dysfunction could be improved with overall increased circulation and therapeutic massage modalities. This could possibly improve an animal's quality of life and extend their life expectancy. According to americanpetproducts.org, in 2020, $103.6 billion was spent on our pets in the U.S. For 2021, it estimated that $109.6 billion will be spent on our pets in the U.S. Furthermore, Ibis.com reported the massage industry will be $16.2bn in 2021 which is primarily comprised of services for humans alone. Both the pet care and massage industries continue to rapidly expand and will continue to do so when greater applications are explored and expanded.
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Overall, we feel there is place for human administered massage and bodywork for a variety of animals and purposes that should be further studied and published. Written protocols and techniques for how to treat various animal species at various ages and environments should be developed for further research, education and potential industry use.
Indigenous Peoples' Day should include the native Hawaiians' and their territories that the United States illegally annexed in 1898. While President Clinton publicly recognized and apologized for some of these wrongs without adequate remuneration in 1993, we are hopeful for a better understanding of these wrongs and proper acknowledgements.
Hawaiian Healing Master Harry Jim Uhane recently reposted this excerpt which rings fairly true for peaceful existence:
I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me.
I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.
I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise.
I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.
In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement.
Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.
Our next NCBTMB, FL, SC, GA & TN Boards of Massage approved Live Interactive Webinars will start on Nov 14, 2021. You can continually view the school's live class schedule at: https://ceinstitute.com/apps/bookthatapp/calendar
If you require CE credit, please check with your own state board to ensure you will receive proper credit PRIOR to registering or attending! FL Board of Massage only allows "General" CE credit for live hands-on webinar training as of Sept 1, 2021!
At 9 pm Eastern Time this evening, we'll wrap it up and call it a day - but this day is special. This day ends an entire season for our 2021 Florida Massage Therapists as a Florida based school.
Before we turn off the computers and lights - we just wanted to express our thanks to the wonderful students who were patient with us as we spent our first unbelievable season teaching online live webinars during a pandemic. We spent about 6 months last year getting over 20 years of training materials online with over 250 new board approvals, and we're very pleased with the amount of material, and quality of material we were able to share with these live computer-based trainings.
Overall, we received superior feedback from students with our new, live, interactive hands-on webinars. We didn't know how well the training format would be received by students when we started this program, so we were very pleased to receive so much positive feeback about our new online live training program.
Our temporary approvals to teach our in-person classes as live interactive webinars expires at midnight tonight with the Florida Board of Massage, so if we continue our live online education, we will have to apply for new approvals with the Florida Board which will take some time.
The entire staff is going to take a much needed vacation from teaching CE hours here at CE Institute LLC. We'll be spending some time reviewing this year's operations, plus student feedback to determine how we can continually improve our offerings for both online and in-person classes.
So thanks again to everyone who participated with this new training format which was a forced practice due to COVID-19. Our school specializes with in-person training so it was truly wonderful to share such wonderful hands-on training opportunities in these very trying times.
Please join our social media facebook, twitter and instagram to see announcements for our next training opportunities. We hope to see the students who enjoyed our training again soon! Please continue to take care of yourselves and be safe - and thanks so much for such a wonderful season.
Only 2 weeks remain with our live interactive webinars for FL LMTs prior to the Aug 31, 2021 expiration/renewal! Your only requirement is to login and watch/attend, but you're welcome to practice, have some fun and follow-along with your colleagues if you want to share a webcam: https://ceinstitute.com/collections/webinars
ATTENTION: Massage Therapists! We have Florida Board of Massage Approvals to teach live hands-on/relevant to massage technique CE classes and issue CE credit to CE Broker via live interactive webinar until Aug 31, 2021!
Today, we saw a massage therapy social media post where a massage employer is trying to hire a massage therapist based on a select ethic/national origin decent.
CE Institute LLC does not provide legal advice. We also try to refrain from telling anyone how to operate their business. However, after seeing this today we thought it might be helpful to share these government website links from the US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, especially for those who might face federal prosecution for bad or illegal business practices in the massage employment industry:
FREE Geriatric Bodywork 101 Webinar: 1-hour Live Instruction Event avail on Thurs, June 24, 2021 @ 12 pm at: https://ceinstitute.com/products/geriatric-101
Selena Belisle, the Founder of CE Institute LLC, will teach the following in this FREE Geriatric Bodywork live micro course event:
Why it's important to learn the aging process to provide Geriatric Bodywork
A brief description of over a dozen different geriatric medical conditions and systems to consider when providing services to geriatric clients
A brief overview of a Sweet Session™
Your attendance grants a free certificate sent via email for those who attended the training (no CE credit is provided in this free live event). This free course is only one-hour long and as such, is not considered to be an all-inclusive training in geriatric services or bodywork.
This FREE class is scheduled for Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 12:00 pm EASTERN TIME
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