It is important for the future of the massage profession to study the history of massage. Most of what we learn and know about the history of massage is inaccurate and misguided. When I first started my website in 1999, I collected from various textbooks information on the history of massage and created a massage time line.

I was informed by the late Robert Calvert who I would call the master of the history of massage (and founder of Massage Magazine), that most of the information there was inaccurate - especially the information about Per Ling being the founder of Swedish Massage!

After I heard Robert Calvert speak a few times on the history of massage, I realized we were really missing out on many things. Historically, massage has been part of cultures and traditions. He talked of early peoples who taught massage to the young boys of the community so that they could do massage on their wives during labor. He talked of blind massage therapist in Japan who would walk the streets selling their services. What impressed me the most is the idea that massage has been done for a very long time with the community and family at the center of focus and how we are making it into a service where we are paid to touch strangers. I often wonder what we have done with touch as a method of healing and what we can do to preserve more of the art of massage. Massage was never regulated as far as I could see until more recently.
Part of the politics of massage is creating a definition of massage which will take us into the future.

For more on the history of massage:

Massage Magazines Pages from History

The History of Massage by Robert Calvert

Massage in cultures from massagenerd.com

Another timeline variation by massagenerd.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 9:37 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.