Massage Courses in South Africa

Have you ever had something so amazing, so magical happen to you that you can’t but help wanting to share it? What I experienced recently has moved me to share it with everyone I encounter. What is this thing? It is a massage technique…and it literally changed my life! If you’re asking yourself, how can massage do that, then you have not yet experienced a real holistic massage from an effective and intuitive therapist. How would I know this? Because I experienced it for myself. I am no new age hippie, I am a down to earth practical being. I’m an engineer. I analyse problems and I solve them, either mathematically or philosophically. For me, the difference between believing in something and knowing something is simple – its all about your experience of that thing. It makes the difference between following something with faith, or following it with certainty…

Last year, I found myself working on an Italian boat as a chef (ok – I might be no new age hippie but I am an adventurous and creative soul!). It was an incredible experience. Besides cooking, I was also providing massage – I worked intuitively, but still uncertainly, my basis being an understanding of my own pain, tension and long time suffering of various back, shoulder, ankle and hip injuries (yes, I know, not only an adventurous soul bit a little reckless too!). Having experienced the debilitating effects of pain myself, I have an enormous amount of empathy for fellow sufferers, which led me to explore many massage techniques like shiatsu, deep tissue and thai yoga massage for their therapeutic effects. I eventually started a shiatsu course whilst in Italy, but found it to be somewhat dry (the course and teaching method that is and not necessarily the technique). I landed up browsing the web for alternatives and came across something being offered in Cape Town by the Brandon Raynor School of Natural Therapies. I didn’t have time to really read through the website, but got enough of a sense to understand that it was based on a number of techniques – that got my attention - and as I was going to be back in Cape Town over that period in any case, so I thought “why not”? The fees were on a par with other long-term courses, but as I am not able in this period to commit to being in any one place for 2 or 3 years, 5 days sounded like something infinitely more doable. Besides, they must have been offering something worthwhile to be able to charge that rate and still have put 5000 people through the process. People simply wouldn’t pay if it wasn’t worthwhile!

When the course came around (Jan 2006), I was entirely unprepared for what I experienced. On the second day of the course, the instructor Brett was looking for someone to demo on – willingly I offered. I had this spasm in my left shoulder and down my back that was by then standing out as a notable ridge… the pain was keeping me pretty restless at night and my yoga practice was by then virtually impossible. I had eventually resorted to popping anti inflammatories which weren’t even touching sides! I hopped on the table, desperate for any measure of relief, but I was wholly unprepared for what happened to me that day. Brett started to work on the tension demonstrating to the other students what he was doing and feeling for. He then moved the massage down onto my legs, following the bands of tension all the way into my feet working into tissue and over acupressure meridians. The instruction was clear – I had to participate in the massage. Participate? Yes. Breathe in a deep and rhythmic way. Brett started to breath audibly too…and before long, the most profound things started to happen. I started to feel “something” moving about and over my body! What the heck was that? I was astounded (I now know it to be Chi, or the unseen subtle body energies if you will). Whilst Brett continued working un-relentlessly into bands of tension I never even knew where there, I kept on with the breath…when all of a sudden I felt overcome by an incredible sense of emotion, tears ran unchecked …I was grateful that my head was face down on the massage table! As the massage progressed, so did the movement of this energy and my internal senses…I seemed to be sinking…sinking through veils of consciousness…when…I can’t really put into words what happened next…tones…light…movement…sound…and overwhelming sense of relief and joy flooded through me…

I got off that table changed to the core of my being, but also the ridge was gone, I had more mobility in the shoulder joint…never before had I experienced such a release of tension under therapy! I was astounded. For 5 days we practiced and were practiced on. We honed our skills under the guidance of Brett and then he evaluated us each individually at the end. It was the best R6950 I ever spent! Even though I had to return to my day job, I was so impressed by what I had experienced and learnt in those 5 days, that all I wanted to do was become a massage therapist! I immediately started applying the Raynor Technique on friends, thinking it would take years of practice to facilitate a response like Brett had elicited from most of the course participants…but the responses of my clients were incredible right from the word go! I decided then to write a testimonial to Brandon, and it was only then that I really paid attention to the site content and found Brandon’s own journey (www.brandonraynor.com):

“While I was traveling around the world I have learned massage therapy under different masters of Hawaiian, Indian, Thai, Chinese and Japanese origin, I witnessed various outstanding accounts of people being fixed of serious health problems and physical injuries with a holistic and deep massage that was not being provided very well in the western world. I began to feel a great passion to learn as much as possible about the full healing potential of massage and return to Australia to help introduce this much deeper approach to massage that can fix people of years of built up tension and problems by invoking deep emotional and physical release.

Originally I started my first massage course in 1990 in Australia, but at that time, unfortunately, I had never been taught or could find any one that knew how to massage or teach massage beyond a feel good rub that at best only temporarily eased sore muscles. After 7 years of practicing and receiving massage from practitioners and teachers around Australia and the rest of the world, in 1998 in Sydney I began practicing the unique powerful type of massage I now refer to as the "Raynor Massage". Before long I was heavily booked out and within a year, started the school BRSNT, as many of my patients were eager to know how to learn this massage that they often claimed made them feel the best they'd felt in years. When people asked me where they could learn this style of massage I replied that I wouldn’t waste your time going to one of the big massage schools and that I could teach them more in 5 days than what they would learn in a whole year at a bigger college. So that is how I got started.

From these humble beginnings and only 6 years later almost 5000 graduates are successfully practicing the cutting edge "Raynor Massage Therapy" across the globe in locations as diverse as Auckland to Adelaide, London to Edmonton, Canada, and Toronto, to Sydney, Australia, (and now also Cape Town,!). BRSNT is striving ahead and fast expanding to be one of the worlds leading natural therapy training schools and massage innovators.”

Now I am more massage therapist than engineer! It’s been an incredible journey of exploration and nothing has been more fulfilling than the giving of this massage to others.