It’s a Wrap! 2022 Conference Highlights

The California Chapter’s Annual Massage & Bodywork Educational Conference was held virtually, again, this year over a long 3-day weekend of April 22-24, 2022.  The Chapter offered over 20 hours of continuing education, plus an additional 9 hours of enrichment workshops, all of this for the grand price of $89 (which comes to less than $4 per CE hour!). This was value!

Congratulations to our Chapter Scholarship Recipients.

Each scholarship provided full access to the conference from the comfort of their home. The purpose of our scholarship program:

  • Encourages lifelong continuing education and professional advancement in therapeutic massage and bodywork
  • Motivates members to volunteer
  • Empowers members to nominate deserving grassroots members for a scholarship
  • Fosters participation in the Annual Massage & Bodywork Continuing Education Conference, Annual Meeting, Local In-Person Workshops and Community Outreach Events.

The Judy Dean Continuing Education Scholarship for Professional Members was awarded to
Rowie Lagrimas

The Centa Sprenzel Continuing Education Scholarship for Student Members was awarded to
Morgan Perkins

Our conference also hosted a star-studded lineup of presenters:

Miechelle Juul Hwang and Panel, Elaine Louie, Adrianna Showalter and Michelle Sanderson (Oncology Massage Panel)

Tracey Lee Davis (Simple Recipe for Social Media Success)

Felicia Brown (Creating Lifetime Clients and Ignite: Moving from Burned Out to Shining Bright)

Ruth Werner (Touching the Mind: Mental & Mood Disorders for the Massage Therapist, The Ethics of Client Communications: Talking to Clients About their Health, Anxiety, Breath, and COVID: What is the Role for Massage Therapists? and Chronic Pain and Massage)

Carolyn Tague (Building Healthy Therapeutic Relationships)

Melinda Naye (CranioSacral: An Overview, Part 1 & 2)

Ariel Hubbard (Using Meditation in Your Massage Practice)

If you are interested in the contact information (website and phone number) for each of these speakers, it can be found in the California Currents Conference Issue 2022 (pdf download). You can expect to see some of these presenters again, in person and/or virtually, in the coming year.  We are also looking at doing more in-person, virtual and maybe, hybrid workshops.  Look forward to those announcements in your email, on our Facebook page and website.

Conference Appreciation

Our conference could not come together without the numerous hours of the following people, and Huge Appreciation is extended to each of them for their contributions: 

Education Committee:  Bonni Kelley, Karl Ried-Cramer and Tracy Alburea

Chapter Board: Phil Okazaki, Karl Ried-Cramer, Michael Roberson, Bonni Kelley, and Tracy Albuera

AND to Calma:  Jeff Milde, Trevor Hinkley, and Sara Shippy

Each of you applied countless hours spent in reaching out to you, our members asking what you would like to learn, reaching out to speakers to meet those requests, getting contracts completed, dates/times set, practice with the system, and making it all look like it came together with ease! THANK YOU!

Annual Business Meeting, New Board Members, and the Future

The following week, the Chapter hosted the Annual Business Meeting where we made it through the technical challenges, brought to you our summary of another Covid year, and discussion of what we are planning to do in the coming year.  We also had the results of our elections (see Introduction to the Board) and a presentation of the fiscal health of our Chapter.  Congratulations to our new board members and thank you to those who ran for a role. Wrapping it up, the conference offered a lot of interesting and engaging information from some of our renowned speakers in the industry as well as others who could give us some insight into our businesses.  We, the Chapter Board and the Education Committee, really did listen to you and your requests for what you wanted provided and we did.  Please, continue to let us know what courses, topics, modalities, techniques, and presenters you would like to have.  We want to make sure we are meeting your requests to meet your continuing education needs.   Send your suggestions to info@amta-ca.org.