A nationwide massage therapist licensing protest is underway by some who think that licensing is not necessary in the US.

www.thefreedomride.org is a new blog being written by Brandon Raynor, an Australian Naturopath and massage therapists who has moved to the US. He is also the owner of a group of massage schools www.brandonraynor.com that teaches massage therapy in the course of a 5 or 10 day long intensive massage program.

His website states:

Hence you may begin to realize how our massage courses at BRSNT differ to most schools programs. These can focus over 50% of their course time to learning excessive amounts of latin names for muscles (anatomy) and physiological terms, which could have easily and cheaply covered by doing a simple coloring in book at home.

A lot of other schools also dedicate a lot of their practical massage course hours to teaching you repetitive massage routines that are not designed to treat the specific needs of your individual patient. You may also start to understand why at BRSNT we guarantee to teach you better quality massage faster and more cost effectively than most other programs.

You will benefit, not only by saving money on course fees, and upon obtaining your qualifications after our 5 and 10 day intensives you will also be able to start practicing as a professional massage therapist sooner, and earn money at your new exciting career as a massage therapist!”

Finally someone who really can see through all the hoopla of licensing and legislation and provide basic massage training.

There is no proof that 500 hours of education that is required by most State Boards has anything to do with being a successful massage therapist. There is no proof that massage is harmful.

I had the chance to speak to Brandon yesterday about what he is doing. His passion for providing a simple yet profound method of massage comes through in every word he speaks. I will be following his tour and promoting his websites.

I have more written on licensing and legislation issues on my other blog at www.themassage-directory.com and don’t want to get into all of the licensing and political debates here other to say that the reason all of this is important is so that we can really get to the core of what is needed to create successful massage therapists and define our profession accordingly so that legislators and insurance companies will not have control over our profession.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 11:52 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.