Emma trained for a year at Wensum Lodge which led to a fulfilling full time career in massage therapy.
I’m a Forces child, I was born in Swindon and moved around to Gibraltar, then Anglesey. My dad came up to Coltishall but I didn’t. My mum had decided that we should stay in one local area, Bournemouth, so we could finish our O-Levels. I moved up to Norfolk in 1991.
After I got my O-Levels, what I wanted was to finish school at 16 and earn some money. I went into catering (which is a huge business in Bournemouth because it’s very touristy) and there’s an awful lot of work in that area. I did that for a couple of years and decided that’s a lot of hard work for very little pay.
I then went to evening classes to learn typing and word processing skills and worked in offices in Norfolk for a number of years.
The journey to Wensum Lodge
I worked for an Information Technology (IT) company called Foundation Systems Limited and I’d become a project manager in my time there. I was there for 14 years, and while I really enjoyed the work, I just fancied training in something completely different from my project management work, which was really all encompassing, with very long hours and lots of travel.
I wanted to give myself a hobby, so I looked through the adult education brochure at Wensum Lodge and thought, ‘what’s the opposite from what I do?’ It happened to be massage. I did a six week introduction course and I really enjoyed it and thought I’d like to learn to do this professionally.
The courses
The course was in early 2000 at Wensum Lodge, with Christine Way, the instructor. I learnt the basics of massage in that six weeks. You don’t have a professional qualification at the end, it’s more of a taster, doing different types of massage and getting a general feel for it.
After the six weeks, I signed up to start the course from that September, it was a very intensive course with around 16 people on it. In the taster it was mainly women, but when I came to do the course there were two men.
It took place every Wednesday evening with an occasional weekend, over the course of a year, plus an awful lot of homework and case studies.
During classes we would practice on each other, take it in turns, as it were. Outside of that, we had to complete so many hours of case studies, so I selected friends and work colleagues to practice on. I think it was 40 hours we had to do on five different case studies so there was an awful lot of massage, outside of the course itself.
At the time I was also holding down my full time job and funding the course, myself. I don’t believe there were any bursaries or grants but I was in a well-paid job, so I didn’t look or apply. I was quite happy to pay the fees because the quality of the training was really good.
Christine Way was doing the Massage Training Institute (MTI) qualification, which has held me in good stead and I’m still with that professional association.
The Wensum Lodge facilities
During the training at Wensum Lodge, we were in the old bit, the main building, up in a big workspace where we could all put up our tables and it had a kitchen area round the back. Something that MTI promote – as part of their training – is shared lunches, so we’d all take a dish in. We were never allowed to eat or drink within the workspace because you didn’t want to spoil the area and many people on other courses used it too. Lots of courses went on at Wensum Lodge, at the time.
The course was evenings and weekends and there was lots of comings and goings. It was a busy place with a really nice vibe about it, and a lovely atmosphere – though I never managed to go to the bar [Jurnet’s] because I was working full time. I would turn up there, do my training and then go on home.
There was a lot of development in the area at the time.
The course exams and becoming a full-time massage therapist
We had to do two exams, anatomy and physiology. We also did another exam which was a practical, where Christine got members of the public and massage therapists to come in as the body for us to work on.
We would be assessed on the treatment that we provided by the invigilator, as well as the recipient. I passed a year after and for me, that was the last of my training at Wensum Lodge.
Generally, what they prefer you to do with massage is reinforce your skills. If you just bounce from one training to another, and don’t actually put your skills to use, you can soon lose them. Another thing that the course have always promoted and encouraged, is that you also do a little voluntary work that you don’t charge for, which I’ve always done.
I did happen to do reflexology the following year with Pathways School of Reflexology in the City – because I got so much interest in it by then – but reflexology is a totally different technique from the massage.
However, during my training at Wensum Lodge, one of my guinea pigs was a man called Andrea Luchetti, who runs the Wymondham Chiropractor Clinic and happened to be my chiropractor. I treated him a number of times and he was great to have as a guinea pig because he was very constructive with his feedback whereas I found that friends were more likely to say ‘oh yeah, that was lovely’ because they were getting a free massage, but of course you don’t learn anything with that. It’s much better to have someone say, ‘it’s a bit too firm or too light’.
So, I finished the training, I did the reflexology, and then I actually got quite ill. I got Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), because of lots of other things going on in my life at the time. I ended up changing careers at that point.
I came out of the high pressure project management and I took a more sedate office job at a large company – now known as Aviva.
After that, my whole life changed, and I ended up moving to Canada for eight years. I moved with a local man who was offered a job out there, so we went to Canada, initially thinking we’d just be there for two years but we stayed there eight years and had three children.
When we moved back, I was looking at what sort of work I should do. I thought, ‘I could do the project management but if I do, then it’s going to be long hours and take me away from the children, or I could become self-employed and do massage’, which I did.
When I was going through all this thought process, I happened to see my chiropractor, Andrea. He said, ‘I’d like to employ you here because we need massage therapists alongside the chiropractor…and I know you’re good’. I went and worked for him and I’m still there now, every Monday.
Working from home
When I’m not at the clinic on Mondays, I work from my home in Thorpe St. Andrew. In the garden I have a log cabin, which is lovely and I tend to work there in the summer. In the winter, I work in my lounge area because I have a wood burner and my clients absolutely love having a wood burner going in the cold winter.
Thankfully, my clients are mainly recommended to me, so I don’t have to advertise. For self-employed people that can be quite a burden, from a time perspective.
I get an awful lot of recommendations from the clinic because I’m only there one day a week. There’s five chiropractors there who recommend me to their patients, who will travel here, rather than wait for when I’m available at Wymondham Chiropractor Clinic. I’ve got at least a two month wait list there and people who are paying don’t want to wait two months, especially when I’m treating people who are in pain.
What I do is very therapeutic and life-enhancing for my clients. I’m doing lots of remedial massage, soft tissue release, and myofascia release, as-well.
Fascia is a membrane that runs over everything within our body, our organs, bones and muscles. If you look at it under a microscope, it looks a bit like a spider’s web but it’s filled with fluid and it’s designed to lubricate and move around your body, as your body moves. However, if you have an accident, an injury or if you’ve got poor posture, that spider’s web will multiply hundreds and thousands of times and really restrict your movement. So, I do a lot of releasing of that which just frees people up.
As much as I really enjoyed office work, when I was doing it, I wouldn’t want the politics anymore. I really enjoy what I’m doing now, and strangely enough, a lot of my clients like to vent. A number of them will say to me, ‘so and so is going on at the office’, and I think, I’m so glad I’m not involved anymore.
The meaning of Wensum Lodge
Looking back on Wensum Lodge, I now feel really sad that there isn’t that facility out there for people to attend adult education. It’s important, way beyond education – especially socially. A lot of people get very, very lonely and those on their own do courses in order to meet people and interact.
I personally feel that, by not having access to those resources, it’s going to have quite an impact on people’s mental health, I know a lot of them are now online but online just isn’t the same. Call me old fashioned. I do do things online, but it’s just not the same as being in a room with other people. You don’t connect to the same degree but that’s what we need as humans, social beings, so I think it’s a real shame.
I’ve got three children and they’re teenagers now. They are never going to have those options to have that further education for a couple of hours a week, to pick up additional skills and meet new people with similar interests – it’s a shame.
Wensum Lodge is absolutely fantastic. It has not only given me a rich career but lasting friendships too. I went a course recently with MTI and there were two other women there that I had trained with, back in 2000 at Wensum Lodge. Amanda and Sam are both still working in massage and I’m sure there’s others on the course that are too, but these I happened to bump into on the course. Sam has her own business in Norwich, where she’s now employing people, all around massage, because of her training there.
Emma Collins talking to WISEArchive in Norwich on 18th June 2024. © 2024 WISEArchive. All Rights Reserved.
