Ericka Clinton: good day, everyone. Welcome to another episode of [00:01:00] Collaborative Connections, a space for sharing and learning sponsored by the Society for Oncology Massage and the Society for Oncology Aesthetics. My name is Erica Clinton, and I will be your host for this episode.

Meet Eleanor Oyston: A Pioneer in Oncology Massage

Ericka Clinton: On today’s podcast, we have Eleanor Oyston.

Ericka Clinton: Eleanor has been a massage therapist in Australia for 26 years and an educator who founded S4OM for women. Recognized education provider organization, Oncology Massage Global in 2017. Eleanor has been in the medical field for over 30 years, is an international educator and a developer of in hospital oncology massage programs in both Spain and Argentina.

Ericka Clinton: Welcome Eleanor, and thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Eleanor Oyston: Hi, Erica. [00:02:00] It’s a privilege.

Ericka Clinton: Such a pleasure to have you on. You’re in Australia. We’re here in the US. So I thank you for giving us some time. What time is it there for you, by the way?

Eleanor Oyston: It’s half past eight in the morning.

Ericka Clinton: Okay. All right. Wonderful. I would not be as perky, probably not having had coffee yet. So again, thank you for joining us. It’s such an early, early hour.

Eleanor Oyston: I’m an early bird. That’s fine.

Eleanor’s Journey from Diagnostic Cytologist to Massage Therapist

Ericka Clinton: Well, I’d love to start off by having our folks learn a little bit about you. So why did you decide to focus your work as a massage therapist? in oncology.

Eleanor Oyston: I think it started because I’m actually a diagnostic cytologist and I looked down the microscope diagnosing cancer for about [00:03:00] 30 years before I became a massage therapist. So I left school and I went into pathology laboratories. And when I had my children, I specialized in diagnostic cytology. So that’s looking at sputums and pap smears and fine needle biopsies and things like that. So I have an intimate knowledge of what every cell in the body looks like, whether it’s healthy or not. And I. Came to massage with that kind of background and when I first started massaging I was told I wasn’t allowed to touch people that were sick and that was contrary to everything I knew about cells and all the wonderful chemicals that we create when we relax and we actually feel the benefits of our feel good cells like endorphins in our body feel good chemicals. So I. Was drawn to work at a place called the Quest for Life Foundation, which was [00:04:00] with a woman called Patria King, who ran retreats for people who had cancer or were in cancer treatment, and their partners or their carers. So I, that was my, really my first, experience of working with tactile therapies with people with serious illnesses. And Petria was a wonderful mentor. And then I read about Gail’s work because I was searching for somebody that thought how I did about touching people with illnesses. And, and I found that she was amazing. Gail, I met her at a conference Society for Integrative Oncology Conference in New York. My first ever trip to New York, which was so exciting. And, and there was Gail on the panel. And when the questions came up, everybody looked down the panel and said, what do you think Gail? And and I thought, I think she’s the one I need to come to Australia and give us some teaching. [00:05:00]

Expanding Oncology Massage Globally: The Story of S4OM

Eleanor Oyston: And after the workshop, I went up to her and said, do you want to come to Australia?

Eleanor Oyston: And she said, yes. So I came home and I got some funding from the Cancer Council of Australia. And and that was enough to bring Gail out to Australia for a whole month. And she taught 48 students in the month. She said she’d never been worked so hard in her life. So I dragged her up and down the east coast of Australia, giving lectures and talks and teaching classes.

Eleanor Oyston: And she left with an, left me with a little cohort of inspired. women, there weren’t any men at that stage, inspired women, and we, all I had to do was take it forward from there and write some courses and get them accredited with S4OM, because I really believed in the principles of S4OM, which is to create an international standard. That people can go anywhere in the [00:06:00] world and know that if they have an oncology massage therapist that is accredited by S4OM, they’re going to get treated properly and they will cause no harm.

Ericka Clinton: wonderful.

Eleanor Oyston: I got started.

Ericka Clinton: That’s so wonderful. And it’s such an amazing arc. It’s like your life was totally established in the scientific world.

Eleanor Oyston: Yeah.

Ericka Clinton: and then it moved into what I consider kind of a science and an art, which is massage. And just to get, you know, the best of both worlds. And then to have Gail in your life.

Ericka Clinton: I mean, we are all more blessed because Gail McDonald is, is in our lives and teaching many of us. So let’s

Ericka Clinton: talk a

Eleanor Oyston: beer. So, so that was good.

Ericka Clinton: I didn’t know that about Gail.

Eleanor Oyston: That was a bonus.

Ericka Clinton: There you go.

Eleanor Oyston: Well, Australia has wonderful beer. So there

Ericka Clinton: Good to know. [00:07:00] Great reason to visit as well.

Eleanor Oyston: Yeah.

Ericka Clinton: talk a little bit about your organization, Oncology Massage Global. What is the focus of this organization that you founded? Seven years ago.

Eleanor Oyston: Yep.

The Impact of Cultural Norms on Oncology Massage

Eleanor Oyston: Um well I I founded Oncology Massage Training in 2000 and not long after I’d finished massage school and developed that and I I worked with that and developed quite a large organisation and believe it or not Age does creep up on you and and the world changes a lot in, and a lot of things change like computers and things like that. So I realized that I needed to pass it on to the amazing people that are drawn around me as teachers and administrators. So that became Oncology Massage Limited, which [00:08:00] is a registered charity. In 2013, and then by 2017, I decided I’d take a break, and the organization was going well, and I also had a, a teacher who was Spanish speaking, and she had her own story of losing her mother as a young woman to cancer. And she was passionate about taking oncology massage to Spain. And I was sort of at a bit of a loose end having stepped back from the organisation that I had established prior to this. And I said, take me to Spain and show me, show me what it’s like. So we both went, we went to Spain for a month, I think, three weeks.

Eleanor Oyston: And, and we traveled around and met massage schools and went to, [00:09:00] although mainly in Barcelona, but we, we found, the best schools that we could, that were the best reputation. And we went and met them and had discussions about Us running courses there, and they said, please come, and they offered me a spot to speak at a, an international expo. That was scary. And there was 23, 000 people pass through the expo in three days. It was a complimentary therapies expo, and I’d never come across anything like that in Australia, so I was very inspired, and they gave me speaking spots, you know, an hour long to talk about oncology massage, and, and I ended up teaching 53 students in a one day workshop, just giving them the bones of it through an interpreter, through my colleague who interpreted for me, [00:10:00] so That was like the gates opened, Erica. It was just like so heartwarming because they actually have a culture of touch. They’re very affectionate, the Spanish people, and so it just seemed logical for them. that oncology massage was, was good. So, I came home and we rewrote the program in Spanish and we got it accredited by S4OM and then we took it to Spain and started teaching and I actually only taught one course there. The rest were taught by two of my teachers, one Spanish speaking and one not Spanish speaking, but it was the teacher that had established Oncology Massage in the Olivia Newton John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne. [00:11:00] So, she had tremendous hospital experience and that’s what they needed.

Eleanor Oyston: They needed insights into things like that. So, they went to several, over several times and over, you know, three or four years and they identified two teachers over there and they established a training program in a massage school in Barcelona and it was just the most, it just fell into our laps, literally fell into our laps. And we just went with whatever came our way. So and then out of that, a woman or a man rang me from Argentina and he said, we’ve, we have a woman here that’s teaching oncology massage, but she’s not. She’s left out all the contraindications.

Eleanor Oyston: And I went, oh, well people [00:12:00] take your work and they run with it, you know, especially if you’re a confident Latin American.

Eleanor Oyston: And so he said, can you please come and teach here so that we get a better, a more reputable course. And my Spanish speaking teacher agreed, so we went to, we organized going to Argentina. So we had all our tickets booked and then COVID struck in 2000 and we couldn’t go. We, we took the loss on the chin of not going and we had three full courses there waiting for us to arrive in. Buenos Aires. So, and that was almost, they came to me. They found me. And because we had a Spanish speaking program. So Oncology [00:13:00] Massage Global sort of thing. Was had, there had to be a structure for what was happening in the Spanish speaking for Spanish speaking countries. And so I had to give it a structure and I had to make it accredited to by S4OM because I wanted people to link into that. process, and they have. The, the guy in Argentina apparently is a member of S4OM and he’s come back to me just recently saying, I’m doing all these wonderful things and can you tell me how you are? So we’re still in touch. But there’s, it’s, it’s a very it’s really important to be aware of cultural norms. In other countries because we take so much for granted in our own country that we understand that when I first taught in Germany, which was probably about 10 years ago now, [00:14:00] I did some teaching for the International School of Bowen Therapy. They wanted oncology massage training for Bowen therapists and I developed a program, a weekend program for them. And I went to Germany. to teach. And I said to the students, okay, whoever’s getting on the table, get their gear off, you know, and get ready for the demonstration, working on it, practicing on each other. When I turned around, every student on the table had absolutely nothing on, nothing, not a thing, not a skerrick of clothing. In Australia, you could say that and people would leave their underwear on. You know, they would, they would not go down to absolutely nothing. But in Germany, nudity was fine, you know. And I even went skinny dipping one day when I was in Berlin on that trip, on one of my days off, because I didn’t have a swimming costume.

Eleanor Oyston: So my friend Sue was looking after me there, [00:15:00] said, I’m going to go to the pool. Nobody, nobody wears swimming costumes, just jump in the water and have a swim. And look, the differences in Germany and Barcelona and, you know, it was, it was exciting. And if you could step back from your own prejudices and your own belief systems and allow things to unfold, it, it was, it was a privilege. To, to guide people into being able to work compassionately with people that were really sick.

Ericka Clinton: And I guess, That that’s kind of the whole focus for you is that aspect of working with people with as you call complex medical issues and doing that compassionately, carefully, and with intention. Right, which is so much and why touch is so powerful.

Eleanor Oyston: [00:16:00] Yeah.

Eleanor Oyston: And

Ericka Clinton: Mm

Eleanor Oyston: part of the body that you can touch. You know, sometimes I’ve just held feet. You know, not even rub them. I’ve just held them because that’s the connection with another human being that you’re actually touching the untouchable. People feel like they’re untouchable when they’re, they’re dying or they’re extremely sick or they’re in the middle of chemotherapy or radiation.

Eleanor Oyston: They feel untouchable. And just to, just to be touched is, has a profound effect. Hold a hand. Stroke a leg

Ericka Clinton: hmm.

Eleanor Oyston: makes a big difference.

Ericka Clinton: Huge difference. Huge difference.

The Importance of Research and Education in Oncology Massage

Ericka Clinton: why did you feel that becoming a recognized education provider with S4LM was so important your organization?

Eleanor Oyston: Yeah, well, I think I alluded [00:17:00] to it before. I think what we, what we need to have medical, medical, the medical world needs to know what we do behind closed doors. And the, because the, and the only way to do that is with research. So research capacity building within our industry is really important. We need to get behind organizations that are looking at our techniques and compassion ambience that we create that makes people feel safe and comfortable. We need to look at the research of mindfulness. You know, you can’t do an oncology massage without being mindful. And we, but we don’t record any of the things, you know, we’ve all done, we’ve all worked with people that are really sick and you [00:18:00] notice a variation in their body temperature. Now they’ll have a cold patch or a warm patch or a, not, not, A hot bit. You know, I used to think, Oh, am I ever going to be able to recognize a deep vein thrombosis? You know, I’m sure I’ll miss that. You know, I knew all about how important it was. But you know, when you find one, it’s so hot, you know. That’s

Eleanor Oyston: not the right warm, that’s not what you felt before, and your hands develop an intelligence that you can’t get from a textbook, that you can only get from the experiences of being mindfully connected with somebody else. And that has, I’m sorry, I digress. I’m not really

Ericka Clinton: That’s a good question.

Ericka Clinton: but you’re answering a better question. , I think you’re answering a better question,

Eleanor Oyston: There, no one is untouchable. [00:19:00] No one. We cannot have modern day lepers. We cannot say to someone you are untouchable and I remember I was at the Olivia Newton John Hospital in Melbourne and talking to the haematologist about whether my students were allowed to massage his patients and we were sitting in a little cramped tea room surrounded by all his messy paperwork and he said well show me show me what you what you do so I just held his shoulder and and did some gentle fascial release around his shoulder. And he went, Oh, goodness me, that’d be wonderful. Yeah, he could do that to any of my patients. But on the other side of the room, the RN, the nurse unit manager was saying, Oh how many platelets can I have before they can, they can’t have massage? Like, you know, if their platelets are too low, don’t let these massage therapists near them.

Eleanor Oyston: Well, [00:20:00] if you’re a well trained S4OM standard oncology massage therapist, then you will do naoha to the patient with no platelets.

Eleanor Oyston: You know, so

Eleanor Oyston: it, so it doesn’t, what makes sense is having a really high standard. Having a really, the bottom line is very high and you need to keep the therapists that work in this field very safe and confident and safe for themselves because I haven’t met one massage therapist in thousands that I’ve worked with that has had anything other than the welfare of their client at heart.

Eleanor Oyston: very much.

Ericka Clinton: absolutely.

Eleanor Oyston: It’s the same as doctors and nurses. We all want to keep the people that we’re caring for safe.

Ericka Clinton: Yes.

Eleanor Oyston: that process, you need to keep [00:21:00] the massage therapist safe. You know, that’s as important is that they are confident that they know what to do.

Ericka Clinton: Yes. And how to make good decisions, right? Because

Eleanor Oyston: And along the way, you know, along the way I’ve been doing a massage and said, oops, we’re stopping now and I’m taking you right down to the hospital

Eleanor Oyston: because, you know, this is happening. You’ve got a, you know, you’ve got a deep vein thrombosis in your leg and, and I can’t, can’t work with you, but you need to see a doctor. You

Eleanor Oyston: know, and it’s about that level of confidence and the little local hospital, which was near where I used to work on the retreat programs, they, they, if we rang and said, we need an ambulance, we had one instantly and they, you know, they take us with them in the ambulance with the patient, you know, to make sure they got all the history from us of what we found out.

Eleanor Oyston: And there was a mutual [00:22:00] respect. And and that respect came from common sense and reason

Eleanor Oyston: and understanding all the things that we learn in the courses that are accredited by S4LM.

Ericka Clinton: Wonderful. So you were talking about research a little bit and that just. sparked a question that I had in terms of have you done research in massage? Are you thinking about doing any research in massage?

Eleanor Oyston: Yeah, well, I’m very fortunate at the moment I have a fellowship with the University of Technology in Sydney, which is, three years, but it’s become five because of COVID with an international group that are It’s an International Leaders in Complementary Medicine group and it’s professor distinguished professor John Adams is, has developed this program to increase the, [00:23:00] possibility of writing more papers in complementary medicine. mindfulness, is mindfulness taught in massage schools in Australia and the answer’s no. So we have to teach and, and we have to define mindfulness so that it’s taught, it’s uniformly taught in massage schools, and that, so yeah. We’re we, and we’re, look, we are looking like the research paper that I got involved with, three years ago, but it’s finally. in print is the demographics of people who go into massage and bone therapy, and what kind of people do this work, how old they are, how long they stay. And it’s looking at career paths in the industries. So we don’t, at the moment, have a career path for young people. Young therapists that are coming in and [00:24:00] in Australia, the burnout rate is about three and a half years. People only stay in massage for about three and a half years because they can’t earn enough. It’s, it’s not, it’s mainly women. It’s, it’s, it’s, they just, they go on to physiotherapy or naturopathy. They don’t, we’re not necessarily left, lost from the complimentary therapy industry, but they don’t stay in massage and they certainly don’t stay in, oncology massage or palliative care massage. The average is about three years. So it’s emotionally extremely taxing profession. And physically, if you’re doing sports massage, it’s deep, you know, your hands and your arms can’t cope. Look, I was really lucky. I found massage in my, when I was 50. I’d had a, I’d had a life. I’d had a career and and I had a pension, you know, like [00:25:00] it was, I had, I was funded.

Eleanor Oyston: I was able to fund myself to follow my passion. And oncology massage therapists don’t often have that benefit of that security. So, yeah, I think we need, we as an industry need to do research that looks at, where to now, how do, how we’ve established ourselves. We run fabulous massage schools. We’ve got a lot of community interest.

Eleanor Oyston: The public knows what we can do and they turn up on our doorsteps and we have to lift the bar. We have to be. We have to bridge the gap between people and their doctor. You know, in, in Germany they have people called help practicers and they, you go to the naturopath, which is like a naturopath, and they sort out your diet, your exercise, your supplements. They do all that. And if you don’t get better, they refer you to a [00:26:00] doctor. Right? So you’d look as a public health issue. You get this. First step is public health to exercise, to eat well, to be happy in your job, to you know, have a peace of mind so that you can relax. All of those things get looked at. But if then, if then you’re still sick, there’s pathology there. And that needs to go to pharmaceuticals and it needs to go to surgery and, and, and they, they have like a stream of, of, caring for people. And we fit. Perfectly into that. We fit perfectly and we, because we see it all the time, we see in our clients, we see what we’re treating is the bad back or the sciatica or the frozen shoulder or the headaches, but they’re all consequences of social, social and psychological trauma in people’s lives. So people [00:27:00] don’t have to be diagnosed with a life changing illness. to be to come for massage. They need to have massage as part of their life. And I think that with good research that, that can be, that can happen. And Gail introduced me to some massage that was done in Scotland. It was a scoping study in Scotland where they looked at all the cancer services that they had across Scotland and They, people, and asked them what people wanted from, in their cancer services. And there was a, so many people said they wanted massage. The Iris Foundation, which is like our Cancer Council here, the Iris Foundation pays for every massage therapist in Scotland that wants to do oncology massage.

Eleanor Oyston: They pay for their oncology massage training. And as a charity, that’s what they do. [00:28:00] And that came out of research. So I brought that research back to Australia and went to the University of New South Wales and said, Can we do a scoping study? Because we have similar demographics to Scotland. We have vast areas of wilderness and we have coastal population. So, and, and we’ve got more people than Scotland, but believe it or not. But you know, it’s the same demographic. And and the, We did a scoping study, 93 percent of cancer services complied with that research. 90, it’s unheard of compliance in research. 93 percent and 70 percent of people in that research, the first thing they want from complementary therapies is massage.

Ericka Clinton: That’s amazing.

Eleanor Oyston: I thought every massage, every oncology massage in Australia would be run off their feet. There’d be so many [00:29:00] people saying, you know, we’re going to do, do you know what? Nothing happened because it’s not about the research. It’s about who reads it, who reads the research, who pays attention, but more importantly, who funds it. Like in Scotland, the Iris Foundation said, this is great research. I’m going to fund that. And they funded training for, for massage therapists, and in Australia, nothing, nothing

Ericka Clinton: Mm-Hmm.

Eleanor Oyston: except we had a big bill because we wanted to put money into the research so we crowdfunded. But, you know, it, and even investing as much money as our little organisation could, it didn’t, it was a drop in the ocean compared to what was needed to do that research on a national scale

Eleanor Oyston: in

Eleanor Oyston: Australia. So, you know, research is amazing. It changes all [00:30:00] the time, you know, double blind research studies were the gold standard, you know, for the last 50 years, that’s been the gold standard. Not anymore. A lot of attention is paid to anecdotal research, observational research, you know, they want to know and look, we’ve got a guy who’s our Australian of the Year at the moment, actually, he’s a a cancer surgeon who got his own brain tumor. And it was a really bad brain tumours, a glioblastoma, and he was working with skin cancer, melanoma, which we have a predominance of in Australia, and And they were getting great successes with melanoma, but they hadn’t done the research on the brain tumour cells. But he said, pick me. I want to be the guinea pig.

Eleanor Oyston: I want to try that. And what they’re publicly [00:31:00] telling us now is that they’ve just jumped over probably 10 years of research that would have been the slow progress had they done it by the traditional methods of research. Whereas now. They’ve, they’ve got all this information from one patient. So, you know, whether that will affect how they do any, but he’s, he’s, he’s an Australian of the year.

Eleanor Oyston: Like, he’s a pretty important person at the

Eleanor Oyston: moment.

Ericka Clinton: And he may

Eleanor Oyston: So, he

Ericka Clinton: life.

Eleanor Oyston: may have saved his own life. Certainly doing very well. But, but that, I think we’ve got, we’re, research is, What was always sort of research science was always a bit frightening because we always thought of research or science as what we learned in high school, but what we learned in high school was 50 years ago. What, what happens now in the

Eleanor Oyston: research world is, is completely different.[00:32:00]

Eleanor Oyston: It’s very dynamic and it’s very exciting and we can do it now massage therapists can gather information around what happens behind closed doors and that’s our responsibility is to let the world know what we do and there’s there’s about what we’ve discovered that there are about eight tools for looking at at it. What happens behind closed doors? One of them is as simple as pain scale.

Ericka Clinton: Mm-Hmm.

Eleanor Oyston: your pain scale before the massage and after the massage? You know, have you gone from eight out of ten down to three out of ten at the end of the massage? Well, people will tell you that. You can, that’s a simple question and it’s not, you’re not asking them to tell you whether they liked your work or not. You’re actually

Eleanor Oyston: just, you’re giving them subjective, something subjective to talk about. So. You know, and there’s a lot of those [00:33:00] tools out there that we can have a choice of using and we can decide which one works best for our clinical practice. Because, you know, when we’re not, what I’ve learned over the years, when we’re not working, we’re not earning any money. When we haven’t got our hands on someone, we’re not, a therapist isn’t earning any money. So I’ve done more public speaking than you can poke a stick at in Australia. You know, raising the flag for oncology massage. And I’ve often been the only one in the room or around the boardroom table. who isn’t being paid a salary by a university or a foundation

Eleanor Oyston: or an organization of some sort. I’m there because I bought the plane ticket. I’m there because I’m paying my hotel room. You know, I’m, I’m there because I’m passionate about oncology massage. Now, I don’t think The industry owes me for that. I [00:34:00] just think we as an industry need to acknowledge that we aren’t doing a lot to promote ourselves because we’re not funding or backing the people that are prepared to go out on the limb and say and speak about the work like you are now.

Eleanor Oyston: I mean, I imagine this is a voluntary job for you with

Eleanor Oyston: S4ON. I’m sure they’re

Eleanor Oyston: not lining your pockets with silver. So, you know, We, we,

Eleanor Oyston: we, we need to let the world know that we’re not for free. You know, we really are giving a tremendous service back to the community and that needs to be recognised. We need to be start, we need to start funding this kind of, or finding a way to fund it, find a benefactor. Like they did in Scotland, you know, they, they found a benefactor that in an organisation called the Iris Foundation, bless their heart, but, you know, we, we have got a lot of [00:35:00] potential to create a more, visible, a more visible industry, because we’re often humble, we’re often, therapists are often very humble. And if someone compliments them on their work, they, oh, thank you, yeah, that’s your body doing it. Or, you know, you, you, you’re actually taking really good care of yourself. Instead of saying, yeah, massage makes a really big difference. I’m really glad you’re feeling the benefits. We don’t say that.

Eleanor Oyston: You know, it’s an industry, we’re busy being, yes, you know, very humble.

Eleanor Oyston: So, yeah, I think we’ve got, we’ve got to grow up into the 21st century and put ourselves into the, into the, the appropriate place. You know, there’s a place for everybody. There’s a place for the, for the medical specialists, which are, you know, [00:36:00] they’re amazing people. They have amazingly dedicated lives. They work horrendous hours. They often have terrible family situations because they’re never home, you know, and there’s all these, this forgiving that goes on that we’re aware of from the medical profession. But that, that’s equally balanced from the complementary medicine profession. Because we care about, we’re all caring about people and their discomfort or their lack of compassion, whatever it is, we’re aware of it. A lot of things that lots of people aren’t aware of. And I am rambling now.

Ericka Clinton: But it’s.

Ericka Clinton: it’s.

Eleanor Oyston: we can have Ashley take me out if she needs to.

Ericka Clinton: No, I think this is this is wonderful and this is so inspiring. I have to say, I mean, You know, you, you put so eloquently, I think so much of the [00:37:00] struggle that we all have no matter where you’re practicing is that we may not give our work enough credit. Therefore, we don’t give ourselves enough credit. And in that way, we sometimes diminish our greatness.

Ericka Clinton: And yeah, and, and, and that can be it’s its own major challenge and problem and impediment. to more funding, more success, more access, right? Because when it comes down to it, those benefactors really pay for access for people to have therapeutic touch, which is so important. And, and I think we need to be the defenders of that.

Ericka Clinton: For ourselves, our, our success, our longevity, but also for us to be able to do the thing that we went to school to do, which is to help people. It sounds so simple, but it really is, it really is the way.

The Future of Oncology Massage and International Collaboration

Ericka Clinton: [00:38:00] So I’m going to ask you one last question. being that you are an international partner, truly in that in Australia and Spain and Argentina, where your programs exist, what would you like to see S4OM do on an international level in the next few years?

Ericka Clinton: Yes.

Eleanor Oyston: Well I think we’ve had a bit of trouble getting the Spanish teachers registered with S4OM because of the language barrier. And just this week my Spanish teacher, who’s, who’s no longer teaching actually, she, she’s burnt out. And we all were after, after all that. But, What she said is that she will become the go between between S4OM and Spanish speaking people

Eleanor Oyston: so that they can fill out the forms and they

Eleanor Oyston: can get registered.

Eleanor Oyston: And because these, especially the two teachers in [00:39:00] Spain, they’ve been teaching massage. In the, in the most reputable of massage schools for 15 years. I mean, they know what they’re doing and they just absolutely excelled in our program. They’re brilliant young women and it’s really important that they get registered with S4OM and they can work towards developing their own course. And they, they will own it in their own country. So it’s about bridge, I think, just bridging the gap

Eleanor Oyston: that, which is a language barrier. And the people in Spain have found their way into being registered as, as pro, you know, preferred providers with S4OM, but they need to develop their course as well.

Eleanor Oyston: And, and we can help them with content but the language barrier for S4OM is still going to be there. So we’ve now got Monica Moreno, who’s my Spanish teacher, [00:40:00] has said just this week, please, I will be the, the, the go between between the Spanish speaking people and S4OM so that we can get them registered because we need global conformity. We need the gold standard. We need that trust that the medical world will have if we stand together.

Ericka Clinton: Yes. Absolutely. So please, you have my email. Have her reach out to me that we can start this conversation, and make sure that we get this done. All right. All right.

Eleanor Oyston: Thank you for your work.

Ericka Clinton: Oh, thank, thank you, Eleanor, so, so very much.

Wrapping Up: The Power of Therapeutic Touch

Ericka Clinton: This has been amazing. I so appreciate everything you shared. I know that people will really appreciate the time that you gave, but also the things that you said, which, as I said before, were tremendously inspiring. I thank you. [00:41:00] Thank you. And we’re going to end collaborators.

Ericka Clinton: So have a great day and I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast.