Dragon-slaying advice

The other day, before yesterday’s post, I spoke to a consistently excellent massage therapist that I go to whenever I can during the family’s yearly X-mas trip to Long Boat Key, FL. His name is Lito Nacua. Lito, who describes himself as “high touch, low tech” does not have a web site, but his business’s name is St. Armands Therapeutic massage, 310 John Ringling Blvd., Sarasota, FL. He was both trained in his native Philippines and also at the prestigious Paul St. John Institute here in the U.S.

Lito talks about the value he’s gleaned from both East and West training and approaches. Between the two he’s created a fantastic style that takes equally into consideration client need and his skills. Lito says that in the Philippines he was trained in the popular technique called Hilot. It employs the traditional (read old, he later came to find ) anatomical sequence chart, and to learn to work intuitively (his instructor was blind).

When he came to the States he enrolled in Paul St. John Institute and, as he said, he not so much forgot what he knew but he learned a lot to add to his toolbox, as it were.

Asian practitioners commonly emphasize visceral massage, something they call surrounding the dragon, which says that if you heal the muscles above the organ, you will heal the organism. It's commonly used in acupuncture as well. Surround the Dragon. Get it? Poetic.

What he loved when he got to St. Paul’s, is that their applied neuromuscular technique, scientifically bore out what he’d learned intuitively by his master teacher. He learned step-by-step protocols for all his actions and between the two now feels his training is complete.

When I asked him how a spa goer could ensure they’re entering a relationship with an adequately trained therapist he responded, “Ask them where they got their training from.”

That’s a good start. Try it. I’m going to.