Massage and Cancer used to be taboo when I first started out 20 years ago as a massage therapist. Massage school used to tell us that it was strictly forbidden to do massage on anyone with cancer or who had survived cancer thinking that working on tumors would dislodge them and cause cancer to spread.
There are still some places that won’t work on people with cancer or who have had cancer and rightly so without proper training and knowledge.
Today massage is far from becoming a standard part of cancer care but it is on it’s way into cancer patients lives, hospitals, hospices and keeping people healthy.
There isn’t much research on massage and cancer that shows that it can help the immune system. What massage does for people with cancer is to help them deal with the stress, discomfort, symptom relief , help with anxiety, depression, fatigue, nausea and help increase spiritual aspects of dealing with a challenging disease like cancer. The few studies that have been done show that massage looks promising for helping with anxiety and pain.
There are a few pioneers in the field of massage who studied massage and cancer and started making it OK for people with cancer to get massage.
Gayle McDonald is the author of “Medicine Hands: Massage for People Living with Cancer. She also teaches classes by the same name. She also has a class called “Massage in the Oncology Setting: A five-day Hospital Intensive that she offers. The 300 Hour Oncology Massage Certification Program is for people who are serious about doing massage with cancer patients.
Her expertise comes from more than 10 years of work with oncology patients at Oregon Health and Science University. She has also supervised massage students and therapists on the oncology unit, in chemo infusion, radiation oncology, and the bone marrow transplant unit. Her work has made it possible to take cancer off the list of contraindications for massage.
You can find more info on her classes and books on her website at www.medicinehands.com
Cheryl Chapman is another forerunner in the field of massage for cancer. Cheryl is a pioneer in Cancer and Mastectomy Massage. She began teaching Cancer Massage in 1990. She offers classes in breast massage to help keep breast tissue healthy and also deal with massectomies and other surgeries.
She is the author of “The Happy Breast Book” . You can find more information about her classes and work at her website www.cherychapman.com
Tracy Walton is a massage therapist and researcher. Best known for an intensive continuing education course for massage therapists, Caring for Clients with Cancer, Tracy has taught it nationally since 1999. Her course offerings also include an Advanced Seminar and a basic one-day Cancer and Massage Training in safety essentials. Her focus on research is an important step for the massage profession. You can find a list of research papers on her website at www.tracywalton.com along with details of her classes.
An ongoing project of mine has been to collect a list of articles on massage and cancer to have as a resource for massage therapists. You can find it in the massage pathology section at the main website www.thebodyworker.com If you have any resources or information to add on massage and cancer – please share your information here!
See also: Society for Oncology Massage
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