Archive for Julie Onofrio

The History of Massage leads to the future

The history of massage is one of the most popular pages on my website.  Interestingly enough it is also the website that is most plagiarized by others.  Many people are usually interested in the history of massage to show it’s an acceptable method of treatment or they are looking for info for a massage school project.  While the history of massage is not copyrighted – my version of it is.  For the life of me I can’t figure out why people don’t understand that but this isn’t really what I am planning on writing about.

The real story is that most of what is written on my page on the history of massage was taken from bits and pieces from massage school textbooks.  I gathered it a small piece at a time.  Many of the books said similar things on each step in the time line.  Unfortunately for the massage profession – most of it is wrong and I was corrected a long time ago by the historian for the massage profession -Robert Calvert who now has passed away.  I was able to meet Robert in person a few times and talk about the history of massage.  What is intriguing to me is how massage has been handed down through time and how we have gotten to the point of having so many laws and regulations about massage when in fact is was done for so long without.  Also when I study the various types of massage and the history of each of those I often find that most come about out of need to heal the creator’s pain or someone in their family.  They study what is known and spin it around into their own design finding what works and what doesn’t.

Last weekend I spent a whole afternoon perusing the Google Books section on the history of massage and put together an interesting collection of historical massage books on massage and the movement cure as it was once talked about.  The books were written between 1850-1920 and most had a chapter on the history of massage.  Now we don’t actually know if they actually had accurate info or were they all copying each other like we currently have in many current books.   I would love to take the time to read all of those books and also look for other books to compare what they are saying and come up with more details on the history of massage.

The reason for doing such a project would be to learn more about ourselves and where we have come.  The current trends in the profession seem to be headed toward more hours of education and more legislation.  There is talk of degree programs in massage.   Historically from what I read in the old books was that massage was once a 2-3 year training program and it was mostly done by doctors.  It seems that more hours of training is needed to become more a part of the medical profession and to be accepted by the medical profession but we don’t really know if that is true.   Here in WA State we are able to be contracted providers with insurance companies and doctors refer to us all the time.   It came about mainly because of the work of a savvy insurance commissioner, Deborah Senn, who used to get massaged regularly by one of the massage professions political spokespeople, Lori Belenski who currently works for the Chiropractic association.  We didn’t need any more than our 500 hours of training that is required for licensing.  All we needed was a good insurance commissioner who loved massage and knew what it could do.

The old books also have quite a bit of case studies and research being done.  I would love to know more about that early research because there weren’t any big influences like who is paying for them to be done – or maybe there was at that time – I guess I don’t know for sure.

So back to the history of massage and what it can do for our future.  I believe that in studying our history we can get a clearer sense of ourselves and take a better look at just what we want it to become.   How can we help more people with touch and massage?  Could it be in getting back to having massage be a family activity being taught to sons to help their wives during child birth?  As we gain more research and evidence that massage can help people be more healthy, will it be able to become an everyday event covered by insurance for preventative means?  Could we see more programs like Massage for Peace and Touch to TEACH programs to support our communities?  Does that take more education or just more money to start them?  Could we as Robert Calvert spoke about in his book “The History of Massage” be less likely to repeat our past mistakes?

First up is to make sure that everyone knows that Per Ling was not the father of Swedish Massage! (See also Google Books excerpt from the History of Massage” and also this latest article from Judi Calvert on Massage Today)

Myofascial Release and Fascia

What do you know about myofascial release and fascia?  Well I didn’t know much before this weekend.

Today I am starting a new thing which is posting blogs posts here to share my latest pages that I am creating on my websites.  This weekend was spent researching myofascial release and a new page in the types of massage section at www.massage-career-guides.com .  I have been reading about myofascial release for the last two days perusing books I have and looking online and I have to say it is one of the most confusing things and yes I was even trained in an offshoot of structural integration which can be considered a type of myofascial release.  The problem is that there are so many different types of massage that can really be called myofascial release.  In fact I would gather that any time you touch someone doing massage you are doing myofascial release because the fascia is an integrated part of the muscle.  You can’t separate the two.  So Rolfing, Structural Integration, cranial sacral therapy, effleurage , connective tissue massage are all forms of myofascial release.   More confusing yet is the fact that while John Barnes is the person who is making this type of work so popular and he has called his work specifically “Myofascial Release (MFR)” when in fact there are many type of hands on therapist that can release the myofascial structures.

As I read and learned I decided my background in fascia has long been forgotten or I am not even sure if they taught that in massage school so I followed up with a few pages on connective tissue and fascia. (Like how I use the keywords in the links?  That is one of the steps of good search engine optimization!)

Gore Massage Scandal

The latest talk on Facebook is about the recent Al Gore scandal and his latest alleged actions regarding a massage therapist in OR.

This is from a discussion on linkedin that lists some of the reports coming out about this latest scandal:

Here is the latest police report on ex-Vice President Al Gore, allegedly sexually assaulting a Licensed Massage Therapist in the Hotel Lucia, Portland, Oregon, October 24, 2006.

http://www.kgw.com/home/National-Enquirer-says-Gore-sexually-attacked-Portland-Masseuse-96995344.html
News story ‘Gore implicated in sex assault on Portland masseuse’

http://www.flashalertnewswire.net/images/news/2010-06/3056/36280/Gore_reports.pdf
Updated Interview and Police Report from January 8, 2009, released June 23, 2010 (73 pages).

Police Statement released today, June 23, 2010:
http://www.flashalertnewswire.net/images/news/2010-06/3056/36280/6-23-10_Al_Gore_allegations.pdf
‘PORTLAND POLICE ISSUE STATEMENT REGARDING
ALLEGATIONS AGAINST AL GORE’

There was a good discussion on the event on Megan Holubs Facebook page.  Meagan is the author of a book called “The Magic Touch” where she writes about how to make $100,000 a year as a massage therapist doing travel massage to upscale hotels that cater to elite clients.  She took the time to read and listen to the interview with the massage therapist.  Some of the things the massage therapist was doing just didn’t make sense.  She stayed in the room when Gore was making advancements.

Then The View came out with this little blurb on massage and getting a 3 hour massage and the general view of massage.

While I am appalled at what they said I think it is more of a wake up call for massage therapists to start educating people.   If the panelist on The View think of massage in this way what does the rest of the world think of massage?

The problems we have in the massage profession are many.  We lack a unifying body and are split up into about 3 different professional associations.   We don’t clearly have a definition of what massage is and each state defines it differently.   A long time ago I started collecting the various definitions from state board websites.

More importantly there is such a difference in the things massage therapists are taught about being a profession and acting like a professional.  With only 500 hours of training in most places it isn’t usually enough time to address the ethical challenges that we are faced with.

One of the things that was brought up on one of the FB discussions was the fact that the massage therapist stayed the whole 3 hours even when they were being treated poorly.   I personally do know that being able to handle such challenges in real life as compared to just talking about them in massage school requires ongoing attention.   That is why I think that the answer is requiring supervision to be a part of every massage therapists ongoing Continuing Education.    It also should be started in massage school.

The other thing is how massage therapists present themselves and promote themselves to the public.   There are so many websites out there that are less than ideal and are adding to the negative image.  That is just one place to start with in educating clients.

That is what I am trying to do with my many websites on massage for the massage profession.   www.massagepracticebuilder.com is my membership program to get the help you need in creating a presentation with your website and learning to educate clients through writing and how you talk about what you do.   I also have many articles on this website along with a few new websites that I am just starting - www.massagebusinessjournal.com and www.massageschoolnotes.com

See also: Rick Rosen’s White Paper – On Becoming a Profession on Massage Magazine’s website

Blogging about massage

Last week I was sent an email announcing that my blog on my other site www.thebodyworker.com had just been put on a list of the top 50 blogs in the massage profession and they wanted be to put a banner on my site saying so.  To me that is just spammy really.  Giving an award to a site just so that they will put a banner on their site with a link to that site when the site is not looking like a quality site just hits me the wrong way. The other thing is that there wasn’t much info on the site really and there also wasn’t any info about who the creator or authors were.  They were also missing most of the blogs that I think are worth while in the massage profession. I sent an email back asking and got a reply from a guy who said he was the owner of the blog and that there were a few freelance writers some who were massage therapists and some who were not who were going to be writers for the blog.

To me what makes for a good blog is first off you can find it easily!  Most are actually not found easily.  The second thing is that it is updated regularly – like once or more a week or better yet every day.   The content of the blog is also important.  I hate hearing about what people had for dinner and other use less information.  It has to be informative and worth my time.

Some of the most important blogs to follow are:

Laura Allens – Massagepundit.com at Massage Magazine and her own personal blog  www.lauraallenlmt.com

Felica Browns -www.spalutions.com blog about massage and spa business.

The Massage Body of Knowledge blog – a must read to keep up to date with what is going on in the creation of the BOK for the massage profession.

and of course mine here at www.thebodyworker.com and my new one at www.massagepracticebuilder.com

Massage Practice Builder

Massage Practice Builder (www.massagepracticebuilder.com ) is one of my other sites which I just recently revived.  I had let it go for awhile and took it down for a year or so as I was focusing on the rebuilding of another site.   I had that site up in about 2002 and it was one of the first membership sites in the massage profession helping massage therapists to build their practice.   I have now found better software to continue on with it and am doing so!

The basis of the program will start with a Summer Boot Camp of sorts that will give people a really inexpensive opportunity to join the community and learn how to build your business just using online resources like webstites and social networking along with how to create and implement a plan to build a referral network for your massage business.

These two things really can be all a massage therapist needs to be successful in starting and running a massage business.  But even with that people still run into challenges which is why the two other steps – creating a strong ethical business framework and getting regular support in the form of supervision or participating in a peer supervision group are essential.

So join me for the next 4 months of summer and get your plan in action!  You can learn more at www.massagepracticebuilder.com !