One of the biggest controversies in the massage profession has to do with the licensing and regulation of massage therapy. There are 38 states in the US that require massage therapists to have some type of licensing. Each state differs in the amount of education, classes and definitions of massage therapy which makes it very confusing to understand. The non-licensed states also have varying requirement to practice massage with the biggest problem in CA where each city has different requirements.
The groups that advocate licensing state that the reasons for wanting licensing are to protect the public from harm, create more professional standards of education, reduce the number of prostitutes doing massage to name a few. The thing is that there is no proof that massage has caused significant harm to people. Keith Grant has done an initial survey of medline on the cases of harm that are done to massage clients. How much harm can be done in doing massage? What is the definition of harm? Is it harmful to have a massage therapist who says they are doing deep tissue massage when it is really swedish massage? Is it harmful when a client leaves feeling more sore than when they came in? Will any amount of education really influence the massage therapists skills and reduce the ability to do harm?
If there were a high degree of harm being done, wouldn’t our liability insurance rates reflect that? And how much harm do over the counter drugs do? I just recently had a friend who had excruciating back and abdominal pain for over a year and it turns out it was an over the counter drug causing it. Is that harmful?
What list of side effects could be created to inform the public and teach the public to take responsibility for what happens in their massage?
The number of hours of education varies greatly as well as the topics of courses. I for one started in 1987 doing massage after having 250 hours of massage school. I was the last year of students to become a massage therapist at that number of hours. The number of hours of training was going up to 500 hours in a few months and for no reason at all as far as I could see – no testing to see if it was needed… no research…no case studies, no statistics that showed that having more education would help create a more successful massage therapist. The one thing I did notice was that once they did raise the number of hours, the massage schools increased their hours of training to exceed that 500 hours so that they could get more grant and loan funding for students. I would love to see if the number of students/graduates jumped at that exact time! The thing is that we have no information on what it does really take to be a successful massage therapist. It is more than just doing a good massage. You also have to be a business person. But massage can be learned in a basic 100 hour massage class. Keith Grant also has some information on that topic in his white paper “Issues in Massage Governance” (pdf). He also noticed the same coincidental increase in the number of hours and the number of grants/loans. He also talks about how people learn and sites that people learn better in smaller training programs and the preferred method is apprenticeship programs. There are a few states that do allow apprenticeship programs to be counted as massage training – WA State being one of them. It was actually the whole reason I started this website -www.thebodyworker.com but the thing is that you can only teach one student at a time unless you want to make it into a formal school, which doesn’t make it profitable.
This is the only information that I have seen that gives any insight into the issues that we are dealing with. If there are some other studies, information, proof that more hours of education are needed to be a successful massage therapist then I would love to see it.
CA also has the highest number of massage therapists despite them having this licensing problem. I think that most can become a massage therapist with 100 or 250 hours of training – correct me if I am wrong. So is it the number of hours of training that make a successful massage therapist?
The thing is that when people hear that after taking 1000 hour training classes I think that they somehow think it to mean that they didn’t need to take that many hours or that it is implied that they aren’t knowledgable or that more training is not beneficial. It could be beneficial to people who take it but it is not needed to be a successful massage therapist – that is all that it is saying.
The idea that massage therapists need all this medical training etc is really not true. It doesn’t mean that it could help to have extra classes and training. It does not mean that more training can give you more confidence and skills but they are just not needed to do a basic relaxation massage which is also very therapeutic. After 20 years of doing massage and learning structural integration, triggerpoint therapy and many other things I actually am going back to studying the affects of touch on healing. I once thought as an overzealous massage student that if everyone got a massage once a week (now I would say 3 times a week!) there would be world peace and now I would add – a great reduction in the number of diseases and health conditions that are on the rise.
So I actually don’t care much about licensing these days anymore despite this long post. I just write to hopefully inform someone and to inspire others to seek the truth. I am more than open to hearing any more on this topic, but quite frankly – I just want to do massage! (and write about it!) I sometimes get tweaked and think I should join AMTA or get ABMP more involved especially when I think about the state of insurance billing for massage therapists here in WA State – which talk about a mess! That’s a whole other category here.
So do you think you could do a really great massage just having 100 hours of training just on doing massage? I have lots of friends who have that number of hours because it used to be that number a long time ago. They are all still in business but it seems the more recent grads with 1000 hours can’t seem to make it. What does it take to be a successful massage therapist? Is it the number of hours of training? Is it some secret method? Is it just about the person and who they are and what they want in their lives?