Greetings and welcome to the hands of History Podcast: a production of the Society Of Massage Archives, where we delve into the rich tapestry of massage therapy’s past, explore its evolution, and share the stories that have shaped this vital practice. Today is Monday, December 2nd, 2024. I’m your host, Kirby Clark Ellis and I’m joined today with David Lauterstein. David Lauterstein is a distinguished collaborator, instructor, and author in the bodywork profession. Having presented work shops for therapists and teachers since 1982 throughout the US and the UK, with an illustrious background in music composition philosophy and social action, David is a prominent international spokesman for the union of art and science in massage and bodywork. David is co-director of the Lauterstein-Conway massage school in Austin, Texas, author of numerous articles and five books including; co-authoring “The Memory Palace of Bones”, “The Deep Massage Book”, and “Life In The Bones: A Biography of Dr Fritz Smith and Zero Balancing”. He is also a 2011 inductee into the Massage Therapy Hall of Fame with the World Massage Festival, has been honored as AMTA’s Jerome Perlenski Teacher of the Year in 2012, and as the 2013 Educator of The Year by the AFMTE. Welcome, David.
Thank you, thank you.
So we like to get started with a section on our guest’s background and journey. Can you tell me about your background and what initially drew you to massage therapy?
Sure. See, I started with my main interest early on, from 13 years old, was music. So I studied music and art, later philosophy and aesthetics. So the studying of what philosophy can tell us about art and how it becomes meaningful. Those were my initial focuses of my musicianship as well as my studies in philosophy. Through most of college. My music background was focusing on, first of all: folk music at the Oldtown School of Folk Music in Chicago, where I grew up. Chicago area. And then I got into Indian music, I studied Indian music in Berkeley in 1967. The Summer of Love. I was lucky to be there then. And then I got into classical composition. More avant-guard classical and eventually got my degree at University of Illinois in Champagne But then I went to Germany to study with a composer there and during that time I kind of hit a low point psychologically. I was still productive aesthetically, but I was kind of depressed. I think outside of the college atmosphere, I lost some momentum. And I started reading, as I already had, philosophy. Some books on spirituality, meditation, yoga. I was looking for, as I always have- still do, looking for answers to my particular life situations, and emotional balance, and looking at all that. So I read a book, actually a book that also influenced John Lennon, the Beetle, greatly called “The Primal Scream” by Arthur Janov. In which he claimed that you could just get back to healing the trauma of your earliest life by screaming and emoting. I was like “okay I’m going to come back to the States states and I’m going to scream my way back to health!” Luckily, that was too extreme- that scream. And I got into Gestaltz psychotherapy, and in Gestaltz psychotherapy- I was in Evanston, Illinois- they recommended getting bodywork and massage. Because for many people, including myself, our education had been primarily mental and there was very little sophistication with regard to the body-mind connection. Whereas body-centered psychotherapy was coming into its own- as was massage at that time. This would have been beginning in 1973. So I was getting Gestaltz psychotherapy and getting massage. And the massage was kind of opening up awarenesses for me, as well as studying with the Gestaltz. Being aware of my more emotions, my breathing, my body, and so it was opening a new territory. They recommended also then that I get Rolfed and Rolfing, as you may know, was a 10-session format for a more radical physically and sometimes emotionally deeper transformation. So Rolfing was deeply influential both on my own experience of myself as well as on my understanding of how profound the effects of bodywork could be on one’s mind, emotions, and body. So shortly after getting Rolfed, it was with a Rolfer named Allen Davidson- who is still around and who also happened to Rolf at the same time as Gil Headley, who’s a friend and a great anatomist. So with Allen’s work then I decided to form a little group who met on every Monday night for a while. It included Rolfers, martial artists, psychotherapists, myself, and other people just exploring that whole realm of bodywork. A lot of these things emerging at that time from The Esalan Institute which was the the center for body-mind exploration and education in big sur, California. And also the place in which Esalen massage originated. And that was the source of the first kind of modern massage book, called the massage book by George Downing and Anne Kent Rush that came out of the Esalen Institute. So then that group where we met every Monday night to experiment and explore various mind-body things that led me to thinking about starting a club. Actually like a health club but based on these modern therapies. The closer I got to starting that, the I thought “you know I don’t want to manage it; I just want to do it!” so then I signed up for initial massage classes. My first massage class was with Bob King and a skilled body worker, imaginative person named Vicky Dodd. That was at Bob’s house in Hyde Park in Chicago and shortly there afterwards I signed up for the basic course in massage that Bob was teaching. Along with Jim Hackett, who they both then became the co-founders of The Chicago School of Massage Therapy. So I was lucky to study with them both [and] became really good friends with Bob throughout his whole life. [Bob] passed away a few years ago. And so then I studied at the Chicago School of Massage Therapy, which was largely Swedish focused but also [had] some familiarity with shiatsu and sports massage. So that takes me up to about 1979, where should I go from here?
Well, okay. So it was 1979 when you began your studies with Bob King at The Chicago School?
Yeah.
Okay. Chicago and Evanston, especially a lot of the epicenter of massage history there. First thing a lot of people think of course is the AMTA’s headquarters. But also some of the first massage therapists, here where I’m at in Arkansas, would also travel up to Chicago to get their education before there a was formal education and massage therapy here. Tell me, how long have you been a therapist then, David?
So I’ve been a therapist about 45 years. More than half my life and I’m happy about that.
Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about your background in structural bodywork or Rolfing.
Well after my basic massage education, I was aware of the fact-particularly from having been Rolfed- that there was a lot more detailed knowledge of anatomy that felt necessary to me to to do the work that I wanted to do. In the short course at Chicago School massage therapy wasn’t very detailed and so I started devising an anatomy training program. And it had so happened simultaneously that a Rolfer who was teaching his own variant of Rolfing decided to do training at The Chicago School massage therapy and his name was Daniel Blake. So it was very convenient for me to sign up for training with Daniel and he called what he taught “structural bodywork” as opposed to “Rolfing”, but essentially it was it was very much like the Rolfing training. The major difference was that Rolfing training was taught as a series of 10 session. 10 sessions that had very specific biophysical themes for each session, so different regions were covered in more detail in each of the 10 sessions, it was a brilliant thing of Ida Rolf’s.
But Daniel said- well you know he inquired and it was also his inclination; what did Ida Rolf actually do in her practice? Now it turned out when he explored that, that Ida Rolf only did what she thought was needed by the person. She didn’t teach or do the recipe, she only taught the recipe because she felt like that if the Rolfing students do this sequence, they’re going to do no harm and a lot of good. Often times when we teach we want to teach a you know a formula or a sequence. Daniel said “you know, I thought I would teach in the way that Ida Rolf practiced, rather than just what she taught or what she preached”. So he taught us to improvise more so than on the composition of the 10 sessions. So we would do quite a bit of body reading, so looking at what he called “Postural Kinesiology”; looking at what muscle was, what contraction of what muscle gave rise to what posture essentially. So we did a lot of body reading, looking at models who volunteered, and then he also taught a variant of Cranial Sacral work after that. So I studied with Daniel for about 500 hours between the structural bodywork training and a little bit of his integration of cranial sacral work after that. So that really helped me overcome any resistance I had to learning Anatomy, because he had a quiz every day…
Oh boy!
I was like “give up all resistance!” you know they say “abandon all hope all you enter here”; I had to abandon all hope that I could not memorize my origins, insertions, and actions of the muscles. So that was great. Then I really started teaching, and enthusiastically, teaching a little bit at the Chicago school and then in I think it was ‘ 84, I taught my first national workshop at an AMTA convention in Omaha. Then I pretty much was involved with AMTA and also with teaching from then on.
Yeah, definitely. If we can talk a little bit about- I like what you said about through this training or this work that you were doing with Daniel, that he taught you how to improvise. I imagine that must have spoke to your musician background?
Absolutely! Yeah it was only natural to me. At that point I would have rebelled against following a recipe, so it was very congruent with my improvisational background in in music.
Sure. Do you know around what year that might have been, that first workshop with Daniel might have been?
Yeah that was 1982.
Okay gotcha. Tell me a little bit also about your background in Zero Balancing.
Uh huh. Well, I’ll put one thing in the middle of that too.
Of course!
I studied structural body work, and then I was having a drink with a friend of mine who’s an acupuncturist. He was telling me about Cranial Sacral Therapy, he said “you know there are these little lakes inside your brain filled with fluid” and I was like “lakes inside my brain? oh my god! I’ve got to find out about this!” So I pictured these kind of beautiful mountain you know those mountain ponds and little lakes up in the hills. Anyhow, so I decided first to explore cranial sacral therapy and so studying cranial sacral with early, early students of John Upledger was what I did after I studied with Daniel. That would have been also I think in ’82 or ’83. What was surprising and life-changing for me was the awareness that cranial work uses very, very light touch. Like they say just like the pressure of a nickel on your palm is the equivalent of what you use. And yet I was feeling deeply affected, you know, down at the level of the cerebral spinal fluid and so on. I went “oh you don’t need to have a lot of pressure in order to affect a person deeply”. So at that point, I’ve been teaching at The Chicago School massage therapy, I began teaching there in ‘ 82. One of the main things I taught was their deep tissue segment. Personally then I decided to change the name of what I was teaching to “deep massage” as opposed to “deep tissue”. The implication being; that we are so much more than just tissues, that we are mind, body, emotion, spirit and that. In order to affect all that you need to stop defining the body as being just tissue and needing lots of pressure in order to help make changes. In the rolfing there was a lot of pressure and I appreciated it, but I realized it wasn’t always necessary. So that’s why I changed the name of what I was teaching to “deep massage” and later wrote a book called “The Deep Massage Book”. To distinguish it. Which a lot of people don’t quite realize that “deep tissue” and “deep massage” are two very different things. Now deep massage then I was teaching. I also had heard about Zero Balancing. At that time I was also editing the Massage Therapy Journal for the AMTA and so I would solicit articles. I really had fun doing that, editing. And one of the earliest things I did was, I solicited an interview with Dr Fritz Smith, who’s somebody I heard about as the founder of Zero Balancing and someone who was quite well known particularly at Esalen. So I decided “well, let me check this zero balancing thing out” and I read a little bit up on it and then I got him invited to be a speaker at an AMTA convention in Washington, DC. I think this was 1986. And he gave a talk that blew my mind yet on another level. Showing me how depth could be achieved not merely through the cranial sacral system but even more dramatically through the skeletal system. Now in Fritz’s talk he said you know “there’s layers to our anatomy and we’re alive so there’s energy passing through these layers and each of these layers has a different significance and a different function in our lives both physically and energetically”. And he said “the skin is your insulatory layer, you know? It’s your surface tension, so to speak, and they call it the Wei Chi Chinese medicine. And then there is the layer deeper than that that’s the muscles, the fascia, and the organs- that’s addressed by massage/ bodywork/Rolfing, etc. Then there’s the cranial-sacral layer, just a little deeper than that.” He says “and then the deepest layer in your body, which holds the deepest energy currents and the strongest energy currents because it’s the thickest tissue, is your skeleton”. And until then I had felt like you know “I’ve studied all this stuff but there’s something I’m missing”. And when he talked about the energy flowing through the bones, I went “that’s it! I haven’t been addressing the deepest layer of the person and so I’m going to study zero balancing!” So I organized quite quickly then his first course that he taught I believe was in ‘ 86 in Texas. I moved from Chicago to Texas- to Austin, in 1984. I helped bring Fritz down to teach training and I’d been been devoted to that pathway(among others) ever since. So that takes us a little ways ’til about ’86 anyhow, huh?
Yeah, definitely. I also wanted to talk- you’re also involved with the Zero Balancing Association, is that correct?
Sure, yes a member and a so-called a steward. Years ago, Fritz- who by the way, just passed away this May[2024], three days short of his 95th birthday. I was out there, many of us were, for a workshop he was supposed to come to the party on Friday night for him [to] celebrate his 95th birthday and he died on Wednesday morning1 Yeah, so he had a very elegant and smooth transition from being totally with it, to having passed away. It was kind of amazing, a graceful transition- but anyhow to go back let’s see where was I? What were you talking about?
The association.
Oh yeah, the association! So yeah, early on I became associated as a faculty member. I did the faculty training in the early 90s so I began teaching zero balancing in 1996. And Fritz, in his wisdom, had a little bit later- I guess number of years later, basically sold zero balancing association to any faculty members who wanted to become so-called “stewards” of zero balancing. So now, I think it’s about 20 or 30 of us who basically own zero balancing. Well not really organizing it, but being deeply involved and we all care. And one of the nicest things about that is that the Zero Balancing Health Association is basically organized by teachers of zero balancing! Whereas, say AMTA for instance (of course a much larger association), but AMTA eventually became organized by people who were administrators rather than massage therapists. Until- I don’t know what, it was maybe 2000 or something, AMTA was largely staffed by massage school owners. Including Bob King, who for quite a while, was a very influential national president. But then it got big enough that they decided to involve more administrative type people and then it lost a little bit of its humanistic orientation. That just happens when your organization gets run by administrative folks, right. God bless them, we need them! But there can be something lost in these kinds of organizations when it’s more influenced by administration than by education or spirit.
Definitely. Yeah, I think it kind of- I know what you’re saying; I think, for me, it kind of loses its organic spirit.
Right.
Before we move on, can you explain the terms “zero balancing”?
Sure, and I must say, Fritz was never 100% happy with it. Just as I’m not with “deep massage”. Because there it can so easily be confused with “deep tissue”. But with Fritz there was a story; I think it was Betty Fuller, who was one of the main people associated with the Trager Institute, got a zero balancing from Fritz. At that point it had gone through different names; some people wanted to call it “Fritz-ing”, which he definitely didn’t like. People were calling it “structural acupressure”, which wasn’t really accurate. She[Betty] came out, she said, “I feel balanced, I feel balanced to zero. I feel zero balanced.” And they were all in a Volkswagen van I think at that time. And somebody said, “that’s it! Let’s call it “zero balancing!” and said, “yeah, let’s call it zero balancing”. So what she meant, and how I interpret it too, is; number one: of course from the Rolfing model, there is the idea of coming to a postural balance. A functional balance in the body’s relationship to gravity; and so you want to be not leaning way forward, not leaning back- being essentially centered in your body. And so, if you think of plus as being forward, and minus as being back, and zero as being at that center point. That’s one of the meanings of zero. And zero balancing. But also you can transition to looking at it a little more spiritually, and say; if a person’s not totally invested in their ego, then they come more to being a zero point, than being ego-identified. Also being emotionally balanced; so sometimes if you lean too much on other people, or you hold back from your relations to them, you’re kind of in the plus or minus categories of emotion as well. But if you can be at the zero-point of emotional balance, you’re more centered in your relationships to other people and to yourself. So there is that zero thing and I guess you could say that there’s a zero implied in spirituality. In Japanese, (and I guess maybe Chinese) there’s the zero character- okay? Which kind of stands for enlightenment. So it’s like when you become more enlightened, you become more of a zero. That you experience your own ego as being more empty. And so emptiness is also implied by zero, so it’s got a variety of levels of possible meanings. None of which are very clear when you say, “oh I do zero balancing”, people go, “oh what is that?”
Hopefully that prompts more questions, when you say “I do zero balancing”.
Yeah and what I’ll say then is I’ll say, “well have you had massage ever?”, person will say, “yes”. I say, “well can you feel how you relax in your muscles?”, “yes”, “well zero balancing gives you a deeper experience of relaxation- namely all the way in the very core of your body, because zero balancing works- not just with the soft tissues, but also with the densest, deepest place within you. You forget that your skeleton is alive, but the skeleton is alive and therefore has its own story to tell.” Which is very profound and deep, so those are some kinds of things I might say in my elevator speech if I have enough time.
Well, of course! It sounds great to me, sign me up for all of that! I think I can see the progression from an introduction of cranial-sacral to an introduction of zero balancing. Because the thing that I’ve fallen in love with cranial-sacral work myself, is this idea of stillness.
Yeah, which that’s another kind of zero.
Yeah, exactly. And speaking in terms of spirituality, the one that comes to me is “being still and just knowing”. So [I] love everything that you’re saying on this. Makes a lot of sense when you delve into the term “zero balancing”.
Good!
Also, I’m glad that you also brought up; your struggles with explaining “deep tissue” versus “deep massage”. I want to know, when you got started around the early 80s, was the mentality with practitioners (as well as clients) this idea of “deep tissue is the only effective work that can be done”?
Yeah. No, that really wasn’t the case at that time. Thankfully, really. Because at that time, like I say, the bodywork world had many different branches to the tree. And they were all, more or less, considered equal. Although Swedish was the dominant form. Which, of course, was not necessarily deep in the way Americans practiced it. Because Swedish, as practiced in America, owed as much to Esalen massage as to Swedish massage. Which [Swedish Massage] originally, probably was much more deep- kind of like sports massage- in Sweden. But you had polarity, a lot of movement therapies, Aston patterning, cranial-sacral, Rolfing. Although Rolfers said, “we’re not doing massage, we’re doing Rolfing”, they wanted to distinguish it. But the fact is, Rolfing was part of the overall umbrella of what was within the bodywork[umbrella]. Then there was shiatsu… all of them enjoyed, more or less, equal respect. But then over time, particularly later when you had the institution corporations that were selling massage in massage centers, and you had a menu. Then those menus kind of disposed people think, “well I want something deeper than Swedish massage”, so suddenly “deep tissue” was- you know- a highlighted menu item. And I think [it] unfortunately gave rise to some lack of respect for Swedish. And the nurturing aspect of massage, and the bodymind aspect of massage. And substituted, as I say, force for intelligence. I think the field is still laboring under that kind of misconception that’s easy for people to have, yeah.
Definitely. Yeah, I think what I see in that aspect, is clients kind of leading the profession instead of the other way around. Because I’ve always thought of “deep tissue” as a menu item instead of its own modality, so I like this perspective that you have.
Good, I’m glad.
When do you think you started to see like a shift in that mentality? From clients and practitioners?
Oh I guess it was beginning… maybe 2000s, 2010s, somewhere you know. About 20 to 30 years ago. I think that “the deep tissue model” started to become [the] idea “well I don’t want “superficial massage”, I want “deep massage”. So for better or worse, that occurred. You know it resulted in a reductionist approach. But you know, your clients out there are not going to be as (we certainly were in the 60s, 70s, 80s) sophisticated about their understanding of massage and bodywork; what you can get out of it. So it behooves us who are hip to this to do more and more client education, as well as to demonstrate to them the fact that pressure is not what releases tension. What releases tension is the nervous system. If you want to look at it that way, or energy, if you want to look at it that way. So that’s what I say to people, “you know your muscles don’t tense up because the muscles want to tense up, your muscles tense up because the nervous system tells them to for one reason or another”. Ultimately, we’re using the muscles to communicate with the nervous system to say, “you can make a different choice”. But the muscles in that context, and that’s how “deep massage” looks at it, are communication devices. I can touch the muscles, I can touch the skin. I can’t touch the brain in the same way. And so I look at them as you’re communicating through a quality of touch, to the nervous system, about options that can be (and always are) self-generated. Relaxation is something the person does to themselves. I cannot relax somebody.
As hard as we try.
I tell you. It’s rough life!
Yeah, I love that. I love what you’re saying! If we can go back to your initial massage training in Chicago, can you tell me a little bit more about your instructors? Was it just Bob King and the co-director[Jim]?
Yeah, primarily Bob King and Jim Hackett, who were the co-owners and founders of The Chicago School of Massage Therapy. I think my original shiatsu instructor was Gina Bader I don’t know if she’s still practicing. So that was all covered by them; Bob was a little more structural, but he also was a great speaker on the history of massage. I really wish that more of his teachings had been recorded- it’s a shame. He stopped teaching, more or less, before videos became as common and so you’re missing it; he was very entertaining! And he was very nurturing to Patricia Benjamin, who became one of the great chroniclers of the history massage, who was also one of my students at The Chicago School massage therapy in I guess it must have been ’83… something like that. So yeah, Bob was oriented towards- also very much athletic. Bob was a former amateur boxer as well as a former seminarian, so he had those polarities in himself that worked well as the president of AMTA. He was able to come in, you know, with some spirituality and with some spunk and help transform the Association and their educational requirements and so on. He was, so having been athletic, he also was very influential in the early history with sports massage. Along with Benny Vaughn and some other people. So that was [some of] the things that he offered. Jim Hackett, on the other hand, was more holistically oriented. Although Bob was also he was into “yung” and so on. Anyway Jim was a great teacher of anatomy, deep tissue, shiatsu, later became a Rolfer himself. So both very dynamic and charismatic fellows. Good teachers.
Can you remember any specific textbooks that your instructors used?
You know, my memory is that, I don’t think we used a textbook. I don’t think we were bought into any particular texts at that time. The ones that were, were fragmentary or very basic Swedish oriented in a way that had very little imagination. So no, I don’t recall us using any books. Now in the structural bodywork training, we used a number of very good anatomy texts. Okay? So Clemente’s Regional Atlas Of Human Anatomy and Verner Platzer’s book, Local Motor System; both great Anatomy texts! And I think maybe we use the anatomy coloring book now that I’m thinking about it, at Chicago school. That’s a good book. Still is.
How did you get involved to be a a faculty at the school?
I think Jim asked me, because Jim Hackett was also in the structural bodywork training we took with Daniel. So I got to know Jim. I actually took great pride in scoring consistently better on the anatomy quizzes than he did. It was my goal like, “I’m going to do better than Hackett!” Now that he’s passed away I can admit that. So he saw my interest in anatomy, I think at that point I’d also proposed to teach a class called “the Anatomy Training Program through the Chicago school. After I went through Daniel’s thing, I pretty quickly felt enthusiastic about the need for better and more detailed anatomy training. I called it “ATP: the Anatomy Training Program” and I was honored that Bob King actually took my training. Because he, like many therapists at that time, had only a very general notion of anatomy. [They] had really not memorized the origins and insertions and actions. When sports massage started to really catch on, suddenly a lot of therapists felt the necessity to understand anatomy better. So I think it was probably Jim and Bob, seeing me teaching the Anatomy Training Program at their school, said, “hey why don’t you just teach our anatomy? And deep tissue? And so on and so.” That was a pretty smooth transition and I loved it. I didn’t really quite know until I started, how much I loved teaching and I just flipped over teaching! I felt like a Baptist preacher. I would say things and I’d say, “what do you think of that?” and they don’t go, “yeah I love that!” So I really like the “call and response” aspect of teaching. Which I still do and think is super important. Both in teaching and in therapy; that it’s a “call and response”. You “call” for some “response” but it’s the person who must respond on the level of their structure and energy. So whereas say, deep tissue model is “I’m just going to keep calling, and calling, and I’m not necessarily going to pay that much attention to your response; I’m just going to keep on going”. I’m not meaning to be too catty about deep tissue; absolute place for it, it’s absolutely fine. It’s just not the whole story. At least how some people practice it, where they just define it as “more pressure”.
Definitely. No, you’re not getting any arguments here. At the time that you completed your initial training program, did Illinois have licensing?
It had licensing, but the main test was a VD test, to make sure you didn’t have a social- Sexually Transmitted Disease.
Really!?!
So most therapists would- just as a matter of principle, would not become licensed because they didn’t want to subject themselves to getting a VD test.
Wow!
So most of us were not licensed. And then later on down the line, because also at that time, the educational standards weren’t very clear. AMTA, which was the main actor in nationally, in massage; it was the only large massage association early on. They used to require a thousand hours for schools. But it wasn’t really a thousand true hours; they would give credit for homework or whatever. So when Bob came in first as education director, he said “well I want to make this a 500 hour law, but it has to be 500 in-class hours”. It was funny because it was controversial at the time. Because some of the old conservative people, who’ been teaching these so-called “thousand hour programs” said “oh Bob King’s coming in here trying to get us to take our standards in half”. Whereas they were being shifty because some of those schools were only like 250 hours or 300 hours or something like that. So later then, Chicago, along with many states, adopted the law of 500 hours. I don’t the exact date, but they did.
Somewhere in there after the middle 80s somewhere?
Yeah.
Okay, at the time, can you remember any really big like national or local- even more importantly, local: Illinois big names in like schools, providers, CE providers, board members in Illinois?
Well Bob originally was associated with AMTA in Illinois and then he got more involved with national. I was then also president for a while then of the AMTA Illinois chapter… I have a fun picture I could bring it up of me looking- quite a bit younger- as head of the Illinois chapter. There was also a reflexologist named Larry Clemens. There were a number of black therapists, which was great; Eleanor Twilly, who ran a beauty shop and did massage – who was really great, she was part of giving me the Baptist orientation to teaching. Because she would say, she’d say, “now people, you need to get it together here on the massage realm! What’s wrong with you?” and she was great. I loved her. So there was that group of people. Early folks who came into Chicago school to do workshops in continuing education were; Ben Benjamin, fairly early on Benny Vaughn, Carol Osborne and Kate Jordan- who taught pregnancy massage, and a few other key teachers early on came. But pretty much the the only large, influential, and progressive school in Illinois was The Chicago School. And they did have quite a few workshops; some of them taught by faculty members, but many really good ones from people out of state.
And as far as nationally recognizable institutes, besides Esalen, does any come to mind at that point in time?
Yeah. Well, there was the Swedish Institute in New York; and that was probably the oldest and best known. There was a Boulder School of Massage Therapy; that oftentimes, Rolfing at that time required that you already have a massage certificate, so a lot of times people who wanted to do Rolfing would go initially to the Boulder School. At that time, there was The Desert Institute in Tucson, Chicago School, a little later the Utah School of Massage Therapy started by a Rolfer. Oh yeah, there was a thing called The Institute for Psycho-Structural Balancing, I think it was in San Diego; was was an old one run by, again a Rolfer, named Edward Mopin. Those are some of the main schools around that time. I should mention Ben Benjamin’s school, The Muscular Therapy Institute in the Boston area; was also influential, and a number of others.
So have you ever served on your state’s regulatory board, either Illinois or now Texas?
Well, when I left Illinois, there was not yet a regulatory board. So not for Illinois. But then they started the Texas law began in like 1985. And there was no board at that time, but then when the law changed and various state government changes happened, massage transited from the- it was called the Texas Department of- well I can’t remember this name. But it moved to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and then created an Advisory Board. I believe I was the first Precinct chair, I think, of the Texas massage therapy Advisory Board. I did that for about five years, I’m still on the board but I dropped out of being the head of it about a year ago.
Excellent. Let’s see, do you currently or have you in the past owned your own massage business?
Well yeah! For 45 years, you know? I’ve been self-employed basically. Although I was employed by my school once I started it. But I’ve still maintained private practice ever since then. And to this day, I still do private practice. Because I still teach workshops as well as at my school and to me it feels hypocritical to teach and not practice. And it’s fun, it’s still challenging to just practice; and every person is so different, it’s like a whole other world. So it’s fascinating.
Yeah definitely. When you got started with your private practice; what did practice kind of look like then? How many other practitioners were there?
There weren’t- probably there weren’t many more than about a hundred people doing massage in Chicago. Maybe two hundred, I don’t know, back in the you know early 80s. I started in my house. And I quickly discovered that that was not good boundaries. I set up the massage table in my bedroom: oh no, don’t do that. So I got a job, a friend of mine was connected with a racketball club and they were thinking of starting massage there. So it was a place called Layman Courts near north side of Chicago. So luckily, I was able to start doing massage there; where I was basically doing Swedish and deep tissue before I learned structural bodywork. Then once I learned structural bodywork, I then pretty quickly moved into private practice. But I was, for two years, at Layman Courts. Which was a really nice way to get started because I worked on all sorts of people who I wouldn’t have seen in private practice. Because of who was working out there; I worked on gangsters, I worked on theater people, I worked on professional athletes, I worked on bus drivers… I mean it was a really nice mix of peoples and bodies that I got my start on.
All walks of life.
Yeah!
Okay, and then what about your ownership as a massage school education?
Well I came down to Austin at the invitation of a school person, who was about to start a school there, named Sherry Glover. I came down, I taught a workshop in early ’84. And I just was floored by Austin! I was looking forward to getting out of Chicago at that time, but I hadn’t found any place I wanted to move to that just felt right. And when I taught my workshop in Austin, I was like “oh my God- I can’t see any reason not to move here”. And you know; I’d been to Santa Fe, and it was a little bit too hippie dippy, I’ve been to Asheville, and it was a little too sleepy, and a few other places. But Austin was- wow; the music scene, the scenery, the greenness that I didn’t expect in Texas. So anyway, I moved here in ’84 having taught a couple of workshops here at very end of ‘ 84. And I planned to just do advanced trainings, so shortly after moving and settling in- early ’85 I started to do a, I guess it was a deep massage training, at my house in Austin. And as soon as I started doing that, I became aware of the fact that the people who were studying with me did not have a good foundation, they just wanted to learn advanced stuff. So I was like you know, what Texas needs more is a good foundational training than just this advanced thing. So I approached Sherry Glover, who had invited me originally, and asked her if she would be interested in me being on her faculty. And she asked me if I could be Dean of Faculty. And I volunteered to kind of write their curriculum, somewhat based on the curriculum of The Chicago School. So I hired their faculty along with her, you know, advice and wrote the curriculum. And one of the first things I did was hired, as an assistant, a man who had studied with me in Austin- who had taken my advanced class at my house; John Conway. And we’d quickly become good pals. So I hired John as an assistant teacher and he pretty quickly became a full-time teacher at this school, [it]was called the Texas School of Massage Studies. So we worked there for about three years and we felt [that] although we’re teaching and very intoxicated with teaching beautifully in the classroom. The way in which the school was run didn’t feel, to us, as consistent or being run with the same philosophy as the healing philosophy that we were teaching in the classroom. So we decided to feel more integrity…this became our initial mission statement; “to run a school in a manner as healing as the subjects we were teaching”. That was our motivation and we decided to start our own school. We started, then, the Lauterstein Conway Massage School in 1989. And we called it that because we got the initials “TLC”; “The Lauterstein Conway”. Also because we had good enough reputation that we thought some people might say, “well where are Lauterstein and Conway teaching?” So we said “there’ll be no mistaking that by the title of our school”, so we started in ‘ 89 and have been around ever since. Thank God for that man! It’s been a fantastic voyage! I will say that, just a few months ago, we sold it to two of our longest term employees- who had really distinguished themselves as embodying everything that we were doing. Because after about 35 years, John and I felt like, “you know, it’s time for us to step back”. So we did, yeah, but we’re still closely associated and in touch every week with them. And it doesn’t feel like anything big. Except for the fact that it is new ownership and we want them to do really well and and feel confident that they will.
I think it’s probably a little bit smarter to plan ahead like that of, sort of, legacy building and passing that torch on.
You may know that one of the big things that happened in massage, that was not terribly good, was that; as massage got more and more popular and massage education got more and more popular, you found more and more corporate entities who were interested in getting into the business of massage education. So they offered fairly large sums to many of the best schools in the US. So the Desert Institute got sold, the Utah school got sold, Ben Benjamin’s School, the Swedish Institute, the two main schools in Seattle… all got sold out. And as happens, as I said with AMTA also, that when you have people who are more interested in money than in education; the school changes in its character. And pretty quickly, those schools got less and less good reputation for high quality education. Although they were making a lot of money through the student loans, which essentially was how they were looking at as being their cash cow. And eventually, they got fewer registrations because, even with the incentive of the student loans, they didn’t enjoy a good reputation educationally. So most of those schools and corporations particularly the Steiner Corporation and what was it? There’s another one- I can’t remember the name off hand. They basically got out of the business, but in the meantime, that did harm to the profession because they were high-profile and they were lower education quality, that then affected everyone to some extent.
Yeah, I imagine that it kind of, like we said, it kind of loses its organic soul when you have [a] more administrative focus than the heart that comes from educators.
Yes. Yeah, the humanities orientation. Like Aldus Huxley, who was influential in the founding of Esalen, talked about the nonverbal humanities. And that was very important at the Esalen Institute. And I, and many people of my generation, like Bob, considered massage to be as much a non-verbal humanity as a science. That certainly was something that was not appreciated by the corporations; the idea of being non-verbal humanities, you know, didn’t ring any bells with them. It’s not a sales pitch, but it’s got a lot of truth and importance to it.
Yeah, definitely. I’m also wondering if, on a deeper level, it also affected how we view our profession’s history. I imagine that going from lineage, and kind of that reputation, that the schools built naturally. And from a “founder”, an educator, a “Guru”, if you want to call it that. To this progression of being sold out, bought up, and more administratively focused. If that also psychically had its wounds on how we feel about our profession and how we talk about our shared history.
Yes [it] definitely did. Groucho Marx is credited with saying, “when money flies in the window, love flies innuendo”. It became a follow the money and a lot of people started schools. Partly, you know and I understand it. I mean, I helped start my school because I thought “well I can only do so many sessions, so my income is limited and if I start a school, maybe I can make more money”. I was just getting married, so that was part of the motivation, is just not tying your income to the sheer number of hours you can work. So a number of people just transitioned from being [a] therapist to being School owners because they wanted to make more money. Luckily for me- and other good school owners- that wasn’t our primary motivation; education was first. Financial success was a result of that, as far as we were concerned- or we hoped it might be- right? But when money gets to be your first thing, you know they say sometimes in crime shows; “follow the money”, you know? Well you could follow the money to certain schools. Ideally, you follow the education to a truly good school that, like you say, has heart.
Yeah. Gosh, I lost my train of thought there, David. It’ll come back to me though. So what did- when you founded that school- yes, there we go! Okay so, I don’t fail to notice that opening a school in ’89 is kind of right on this cusp of a really huge boom of the popularity of massage in the 1990s. Speak a little bit about that; what did schools look like in Austin, Texas? Or in Texas, around the country at a broader sense, look like at that time when you got started?
Well to speak, first of all, about our school and about Austin. Austin has traditionally been the hip, you know, college town of Texas. And so we got a lot of imaginative, hip, lovely, young people- and some older people too- who were really into the human potential movement. Which was at its height in those days. We had wonderful students and that, you know, inspires us as teachers of course. They say “if you build it, they will come”. I will say “they came, and we built it”, you know? So that was great! And since, as I said, the human potential movement was very alive at that time and had radiated out- if from anyplace, from The Esalen Institute- that affected a lot of good schools at that time. Also there was the Potomac school of massage therapy in the Washington area and others. On the other hand, looking just at Texas, most of the other schools were started by people who… Texas did not have a law until ’85, so some of the people who started schools didn’t have that much education. And if it was anything, it was largely Swedish, so they weren’t necessarily sophisticated educationally. Some dramatically not so. So we were a bit of an island, although there wasn’t a few other schools, and a few were decent, but nobody of our size or orientation. But yeah, Texas was a little low brow and at that point… The other thing about that is that Texas originally had only 250 hours required. Whereas, most states were requiring 500 hours. So it took us quite a few years before we were able to get the law changed to 500 hours, so that’s the other thing; is that Texas schools, most of them, only offered 250 hours. What we did was, when we started, we offered the 250 hours. Later there was a 50 hour internship was tacked onto it, so that the state law required 300 hours. And then I guess it was about 10 years later or so, the additional 200 hours were required. But we started with 250 hours, a 250 hour second semester beyond that, that included deep massage and shiatsu and some orthopedic work, and then we had a third semester. So we had like 750 hours, when only 250 was required statewide. The third semester we had cranial sacral work, orthopedic massage, more advanced shiatsu, zero balancing, and a psychology of bodywork. It was [a] very diverse curriculum and [a] very advanced curriculum for anywhere in the US. And then, as I said, the best schools- in my opinion- were the ones that taught clinical massage with great clarity and expertise, but also taught the body-mind-spirit aspect of massage as an integral part of it. So you had that happening through particularly [the] potomac school. [the] Chicago school to some extent… And so a number of massage schools were very much that. And a lot of the instructors, quite frankly, at the best schools, were very body-mind oriented. At that point, I was already teaching workshops at the Desert Institute in Tucson, for instance. And I would go to teach various AMTA state conventions, and people were at that time quite open to the humanistic, yet clinical, approach. Oftentimes you had people who were either scientifically-oriented or for presenting massage as medical, and then the others who were presenting it more as an art as well as a science; which that’s always been my specialty.
Of course! Yeah. Before we close out this section on your background; looking back to your origins, how has your approach to studying massage evolved since then?
Let’s see, how’s it evolved since then? Well, I did a workshop at Ben’s School, Muscular Therapy Institute, years ago called “teaching with the enlightened body”. So one of my orientations that I tend to emphasize, you know, with our teachers, as well. Is that; teaching is not a mental… is not [merely]purely a mental act. No more than massage is just clinical reasoning. Teaching is something you do with your whole self. Which means, of course, teaching with your heart; so that you care for the students. My favorite essay that I’ve ever read on education is by the great philosopher, Martin Bueber, called :the education of character”. He says “education that’s truly worth the name is education of character”. And meeting the person as a “I, thou”, deeper relationship; meeting the depth of the person, not just teaching them techniques for instance. So my approach to education has become more consciously holistic; you teach with your legs, you have certain functions that your legs perform in your life- not just physically. You can teach with your pelvis, with your excitement, you can teach with your breath. And, indeed, teaching is a vocal art; you need to use and reach people with your diction and with the sound of your voice to inspire them and to convince them of your authenticity. So with heart, you teach with care, again vocal. And, of course, using your head. And also kind of praying a little bit. Because whenever I go in a classroom, I don’t know what I’m really gonna say! When I go in and do a massage, I don’t know what I’m gonna do! So as one guy said, “the fundamental prayer is ‘God please help me’”. So I feel like I hope the fates are with me somehow or another. And it’s important to realize that it’s not all up to you. That, you know, the very least you can say [is] you’re channeling your own influences. My past teachers affect me and sometimes, I’ll be teaching and somebody say, “God, you just made a gesture- it looked like you were Fritz Smith”. So you channel your instructors in many ways. And I honor my ancestors part of the history of massage.
Yes, definitely; I love that! Tell me about, or maybe we can save this for later on, tell me how you got started teaching internationally? And what time period that might have been?
Well, let’s see. I took zero balancing teacher training in, primarily 1995 and ’96. And in our teacher training, two of the two-week meetings that we had, out of four, were at a beautiful resort- now no longer- called Rio Caliente, near Guadalajara, Mexico. And about a dozen people came over from England to also participate in that teacher training. I just- I loved the people from England, I felt like I’d met 12 new best friends; it was kind of incredible! And one of them was excited about the way in which I had applied, at that point, I had applied some zero balancing principles- in theory- to working with soft tissue. And that’s what deep massage had integrated; was the structural bodywork, the cranial [sacral], and also some of the core ideas of zero balancing, showing how it can apply to soft tissue. So this fellow, who was a ZB teacher, along with me in the training, Paul Cone, invited me over to teach in England. To teach deep massage as opposed to zero balancing. Because they had ZB teachers, but they didn’t have anybody who was teaching with my level of insight and experience into deep massage. So traditionally, because there’s a lot of good ZB teachers, I’ve only taught deep massage in England. And I’ve taught [all] over the place; I’ve taught in Wales, I’ve taught in various places, some retreats. And lately, for about the last six years, I’ve taught at the Bristol College of Massage and Bodywork; which is a very nice holistically-oriented school, that did early on reflect that humanistic-orientation and still does.
Do you find a difference in teaching in the states as opposed to internationally?
Well, honestly the main difference, and I don’t mean to put us down, but the people are generally a bit more sophisticated educationally who I teach in England. Not just in massage, and not primarily in massage; but more in their interest in theory and so on. It’s kind of funny; I’ll introduce a topic, that normally would take about 10 minutes to talk about with the US students, and they’ll be like “yes, yes, but what about what about this aspect? And how does that relate to some of the things that Sucha Nodunda says in yoga teaching, and blah, blah, blah.” I’m like, “you guys really want to talk about all this?” Like fantastic! So I can spend, you know, five times the amount of time talking- with their interest- about theory, with the English students as I tend to with the workshop students here in the US. So that’s a big difference, the main difference.
It sounds like it might be a little bit more engagement, maybe? As a polite way to put that? On the part of the student?
Yeah, I mean they are a little bit more interested in ideas than the US students. Who are a little more interested in techniques. But also, they don’t have- for the most part- high quality technical instruction. England is not as organized, or as sophisticated, in some respects as the US. So it’s intriguing to go there and I love the students there. Then I also, more recently, have been invited to teach in Costa Rica, so I’ve been enjoying going down there a great deal! And yeah! And then, this next year, I’m going also to Amsterdam. Because my latest book, “The Memory Palace of Bones”, which I co-authored with a chiropractor friend, Jeff Rockwell. That’s gotten translated into Dutch. So as soon as I found out that they were selling the translation rights to the Netherlands, I looked around and I was able to find a connection to a massage school in Amsterdam. And their interested to have me come. So I’ll be teaching zero balancing there, and in Bristol I’m going to teach zero balancing this year- actually for the first time, as opposed to just deep massage.
Will that be your first time in Amsterdam as well?
Yeah, yeah. So I’m looking forward to that!
I bet. Let’s see, tell me a little bit, to go back to the 80s and 90s, a little bit you were also an instructor for the Midwest Center study of Oriental medicine?
Yeah that was just brief. I taught a little anatomy there. Because I knew the people who had started that, and they wanted somebody to do a little more deep anatomy instruction. But I wasn’t very involved with them. But it was fun, I enjoyed teaching for them, for I guess it was about a year. Right along with the Chicago school. So that was in Illinois.
Gotcha. Let’s see, and if we can explore a little bit; you’ve done quite a few of AMTA’s national conventions. I think you said starting with ’84 in Omaha. Tell me a little bit about that first experience. How did you get involved with that and how did you feel about it?
Well, probably Bob must have recommended me to do a National presentation. Or somebody from Illinois, you know? And again, just like enjoying teaching, I just loved being in front of a national audience. And I recall that something possessed me and while I was teaching, I started dancing at one point. I don’t remember what it was, I must have been demonstrating the liveliness of of Kinesiology or something, but I was doing a Tina Turner impression. I saw people in the audience like “what?” The younger people like “that’s great” and the older people like “what? who the hell is this?” So I had a lot of fun presenting; beginning in Omaha, and then fairly regularly there afterwards. I did an early class at an AMTA convention- I can’t remember where it was, which was called “massage as an art form”, so that was again something that wasn’t a topic that had been directly addressed hardly at all, at that point. So I really enjoyed compiling my ideas from experience with composition, and music, and so on; into looking at…well okay so what is it? A lot of people say “oh massage is an art and a science”, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to define. Okay so, what is it as an art? What makes it an art? And that was has always been intriguing to me.
Definitely. Alright, you also returned to to AMTA’s ’85 convention, which I believe was in New York; how did those two compare to one another?
I don’t remember, exactly; they all kind of blend into each other. ’85, oh we were still alternative-minded people. So there was a lot of fun, partying, and you know; excitement! A lot of this is because, at this time, AMTA had been run by a very devoted but very conservative group of people. AMTA kind of was like a little bit more rural massage, in the feeling. Like the first convention I went to, I can’t remember where it was, but a lot of the people were wearing scrubs. You know, those green medical things and smoking cigarettes. “Come hey, hi, ol’ guy! What do you- what do you do? You do massage? Oh!” So that was kind of the vibe was very unhip; older massage guys, and gals. And in that way, it felt like there was quite a lid on the association. And then Bob King, some other young people like him, and me, kind of broke through. And Bob was the main person who kind of broke through the old guard that had kept AMTA being kind of conservative. So I think it was probably beginning in New York that you started to feel the intensity of that conflict. Which eventually resolved into us younger people basically running the organization. But it was fun times.
Interesting. What about ’87’s convention was in Reno, Nevada?
I must have been having too much fun, because I don’t have that great of memory of Reno, but I remember being there and enjoying it.
Alright, what about ’89 in Fort Worth, Texas; back on your home turf at this point right?
Yeah, cuz then I was already, you know, involved with the schools in Texas. I think that was maybe the first convention I went to when I moved to Texas. That was fun, I remember. These things were all- and I imagine they still are, I don’t go to the conventions like I used to every year- but there’s an intoxication of people from all over the country, and sometimes from the world, getting together and just having chats and sharing ideas and maybe sharing massage in workshops. So that aspect of community, which has been enjoyed by AMTA as well as by ABMP, that’s been fantastic. And in many respects, that’s one of the strongest things that happens from those conventions. Not so much the politics of it. You know? Politics are less interesting. And less essential in terms of people connecting. And the workshops. One dramatic change, which I felt was kind of got me a little less interested, was that at that point, the numbers were such that the workshops were very small and you could have maybe three or four workshops going on simultaneously. And you could go from room to room and you could sample the presenters. So one of the ways in which I got to know good people to bring to our school to teach workshops was; within five minutes, I can tell if an instructor is somebody who I feel is congruent with what we were producing and of that quality. Then some years later, the numbers as well as the administrative- you know administrators- made it where you had to sign up for one workshop and you couldn’t go to another, so I couldn’t sample a variety of instructors. And to me, as a school owner, that was quite a loss.
Gotcha, that makes sense. I like that insight. Speak to me a little bit about your experience as Editor for AMTA’s Massage Therapy Journal.
Yeah. Bob asked me to do that. Bob King was the editor before I was. So yeah, I took over doing that. I don’t know if it was like ’87 or something like, that and I loved doing it. I loved- I had enough credibility in the profession, at that point, that I could solicit articles from really, really good people. Up until then, again like the association, the content of the Massage Therapy Journal was not very imaginative. Though it was fun. It was focused on sports massage, and conventions, and different things like that, a few useful early papers. But I was able to approach people at the Rolf Institute, Ben Benjamin, Mary Bet Sinclair- who wrote an interesting early article called “loneliness and pessimism” about the future in massage therapy. Like very different articles on pregnancy massage, early articles from Upledger. I even called Candace Pert, who is a famous biochemical researcher and she volunteered to let us use an interview with her. So we did a series of interviews with [a]variety [of] people; sometimes I did them, sometimes others. One of the first interviews of Fritz Smith was published in the Massage Therapy Journal. So it was fun for me! Each quarter, I would fly up to where the Journal was printed and assembled in Rockford, Illinois- of all places- and we would literally, almost together, lay out and decide where the articles were going to go and how they were going to be laid out. And, you know, I helped solicit advertisers too! So I would fly to Rockford four times a year and that was fun. I felt like I did a… I wanted to do a very inspired job with the journal, and I felt like I did! And it’s still good, but it’s not it’s not as good as it was at that time. Not to be egotistical about it, but that just happens to be the case, in my opinion.
Do you still the copies of the journals that you were editor on?
I do, I do! I’m a little bit of a hoarder as far as those kinds of things go; I can’t let go of them!
You know what, hoarders of massage history are some of our favorite people here at the Society. So I’m glad to hear that! Tell me about being inducted into the Massage Therapy Hall of Fame.
Yeah, it was kind of funny. This guy calls up and he says “are you David Lauterstein?”, “yes I am”, “we would like to induce you [in]to the Massage Therapy Hall of Fame.” Now, my familiarity with things like that was; I think my first question was, “do I have to pay for this?” Because there are other associations say, “you know- you can be who’s who of America and all you need to do is give us $50 or something”. So he said, “no, no, no, this is legitimate, this is from our group” that was now doing then a year[ly] what’s it called? Festival massage, or? Yeah, World Massage Festival. So he said “no this is its thing and congratulations”. I said, “well thank you very much; that’s great”. It [was] a lovely honor and I think that year, their Festival was in New Bronsfull, Texas. So not far from Austin, so I was able to go for all of that and be inducted! And so on, so that was very nice and then I- yeah, so that was that was that. So I’m in the Hall of Fame. I think I kidded Bob at that time and said, “I’m really waiting for the massage therapy wax museum.”
Yes! I wrote that down, and someone said to you, would that be the hands instead of a bust of someone’s face?
I guess so. So, you know, we can have that, kind of like the hands in Hollywood and the Walk of Fame.
Yeah, I like that! I like those ideas. Maybe someday the Society could take on that project.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe you will, Kirby.
Here’s hoping. Let’s see; I want to get through the rest of your Awards. Tell me about being awarded the school and teacher of the year training by AMTA.
Again, just lovely honors, lovely recognitions of what we’ve done. I would go to whatever convention those were being offered at- uh, given at- and it was thrilling so. And I love those recognitions, they mean a lot.
Of course! In ’95, you received AMTA’s Commission on massage therapy training?
Right.
Was that a precursor to what would eventually become the Commission On Massage Therapy Accreditation, COMTA?
Yes, yeah. And at that point, it was less rigorous, it wasn’t being overseen by the government. And so, our conviction was that the standards that they would apply would be education based and make us an even better school. Which I felt they were then. When they went to COMTA, suddenly you’re also jumping through hoops that are not defined by educators, but defined by the US government. We were like, “you know? We don’t think we want to do this”. Many schools did go for that because it eventually got them access to guaranteed student loans through the government. Luckily, and many people couldn’t believe it, our quality of our school made it such that we never had to resort to that. We gave student’s payment plans, but we never had to go for government money. Which meant we had the freedom, in our case, to do a better job- less hampered by a governmental BS that had nothing to do with quality of education.
Alright. And then also later on, the very next year after, you received the Palanski award. You also were AFMTE’s educator of the year at their 2013 Education Congress.
Again, that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it, and you know to this day I, have those little trophies that I got. So it’s a kick and it’s nice to be recognized for good hard work.
Yes, definitely! In 2013, you received the award from AFMTE. Was that your first introduction to the alliance?
No, I think I’d been associated with them from early on in their history. I don’t remember what year it was founded, but I was excited that they were going to do it. I think people… I don’t know about all educators, but some were disappointed that it didn’t necessarily result in that much benefit for the schools. It didn’t really help much with marketing so and then they also got more administrative, so they proposed standards that people/schools should uniformly follow and many of us were like, “no, not buying into that!” So, The Alliance has been a good thing, but a little didn’t live up to the promise that I think some of us hoped it might have. But it’s good; it’s a good thing to have.
Sure. Following that 2013 award from the Alliance, you also were a Keynote Presenter in Minnesota for their [20]15 Education Congress. And your Keynote intrigued me, because the title really catches my attention from a his[torical vantage point].
What was that? What did it say?
I believe it’s “the Destiny of Massage”.
Yeah well, honestly, that is my version of ever-wishful thinking. Because I was wanting to see that the massage profession would become even more sophisticated by understanding that massage is an art form as well as a science; that energy is as important as structure. So I think really what I was doing was arguing for a deeper sophistication within our field with a hope that that might be our destiny. And I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily been the case. Interestingly enough, one of the things that I’m aware of, that I teach and have learned from another friend who teaches ZB is; he says that, “massage is effective on three levels”. One is the level of dis-ease, which could be physical or emotional disease, but just helping the person relax and help them get rid of pain. The next level is disposition, because oftentimes people will have a problem because of their the disposition; literally of their posture, but also their emotional disposition keeps recreating the problems that they’re having. So [a] more sophisticated approach to massage will look at a disposition as well as disease. And then the last level is destiny; that a person can gain from massage something that will help them fulfill their own self. Fulfill their destiny. So the idea of destiny being part of health is something I think is actually very important. And I emphasized this when I teach, people forget that the- to me, the most vital aspect of human being, is that we can self-evolve. In one lifetime, I can change myself dramatically and no other animal can do this. To me, that’s the biggest point of [being] human. You know, of humanity! Is to take advantage of our capacity to self-evolve and unfortunately we’re faced with a variety of context in which you see that not being prioritized. Greed and money, you know, end up taking having a much larger role in our history. Or as large a role as they unfortunately have had throughout history, but anyhow. So that talk represented a big hope of mine. And it’s still alive, although I’m not as optimistic, somewhat, as I used to be. But you’re inspiring me, Kirby.
Well, gosh! Well thank you, that’s an honor to hear you say that. David, let’s move on to talk a little bit about preservation and sharing [the] history of massage. Let [me] ask; what is the importance of preserving massage history?
Well to me it’s is very obvious. Which is that if you- the saying, “if you don’t know history, you’re doomed to repeat it”. That holds true in our profession as well as in any other aspect of history. So almost everything that’s important has already passed! So how can you not want to be identified [with] and respectful of your ancestors and all of the influences that have flow[ed] into this present moment? To me, in that respect, what’s passed has a greater priority and greater magnitude than what’s happening at this moment. So to me history is fundamental. You can’t change it unless you know it, and you can’t change it unless you imbibe and embody the rivers of influence. Including your own teachers in it, and your family, and your own history. This is the ancestral Chi of massage, we would say. The fact that they took history out of the MBLEx exam, to me, was a scandalous thing! And I understand what they’re saying, but I don’t agree. Which is that in order to do a good massage, you don’t need to know anything about history. That is a very narrow perspective and I think it was a very poor decision on their part to drop history. Just like many schools drop the art. You know, the majority of people are not interested in sophistication, but that doesn’t mean that these deeper values aren’t important. The deeper philosophy, the deeper beauty of art. I mean, it’s all super important and we’ve got to know it!
Yeah definitely, I like what you say. Because I also share the same disappointment in the MBLEx dropping history and more of our what people might consider “energy-based” modalities from the MBLEx. I understand their perspective of “it’s not necessary in order to ensure public protection”, which is the mission and the goal of the regulatory boards, and the Federation itself but-
It’s using too narrow a definition of energy! Because for instance, Susan Salvo, in her excellent book- Sandy Fritz also has the other great book in massage, fundamental[s of] massages. Salvo says, “the most important predictor of therapeutic outcomes is not the modality you choose or the techniques you use. The greatest predictor of positive therapeutic outcomes is the therapeutic relationship of the therapist and the client.” Now, if therapeutic relationship isn’t more in the realm of energy than structure; I don’t know what is! So that’s that’s something very important to consider. The narrow definition of “energy”, that is kind of promulgated by people who are just structural in orientation, is [a] very narrow definition of energy. And they like to cast dispersions on people who do Reiki or whatever, but they don’t consider what really is energy. It’s not just this energetic “woo-hoo” substance that’s out there, taught by stoned people! It’s really- what other than structure do we affect? And that includes the nervous system, it includes the mind, it includes emotions. Not that we’re going to teach how to affect the emotions through touch. But there’s no doubt that people are emotionally affected by touch. So that starts to clarify; well, what do we really mean when we say “energy”? You see, I’m on my high horse there about that.
I love high horses. I think we’re all entitled to our own and our soap boxes. I get on mine, on occasion too. I think… I really liked what you said about therapeutic outcomes being related to therapeutic relation[ships]. I would also say there’s an argument that, being in touch with one’s professional identity and history, would also be a part of that therapeutic relationship. I think that history has a potential to make you a better practitioner; if you can recognize and connect to those who came before you.
We draw strength from our river of influences, and so all these tributaries that lead to us, are [in] some ways more important than us! It strengthens us, it’s our life blood! It’s what passes through history.
To follow up with that; I know you described yourself as a self proclaimed hoarder, do you preserve massage therapy history yourself?
Well, through the journals. Through all of my- I have most of my manuals that I’ve produced. I refer a little bit to it in my book, “the deep massage book”. And then also in my book that’s a biography of Fritz Smith, “life in the bones”, published by Upledger Institute. Old massage therapy journals, old issues of massage magazine. Those are most of what I have, and then I’ve got a lot of old books that refer to either massage or just to holistic view[s] of medicine throughout history.
And I’m sure that your collection is well loved, and cherished, and taken care of well right now.
Oh yeah, absolutely!
Excellent! I think that that’s better than being tossed to the side, tossed out with the trash, or just completely forgotten in a garage or a basement somewhere.
Yeah, my books do not smell of the basement. Nor do my past issues of Massage Therapy Journal. They’re all… half of… We made a new room in our house about almost 20 years ago, and about half the room is books. Books and files. So come down sometime, Kirby, I’ll show you around.
Let me just invite myself. I love that! Do you have any particular methods of preserving this history?
No, no. I just- I hoard it, you know? I hoard it in a clean place. No other methods.
Are there any particular resources, books, or archives that you recommend for those interested in the history of massage?
Yeah. Well of course, there is Patricia Benjamin’s book. I went through my library before. “The Emergence of the Massage Profession” by Patricia Benjamin. That’s the most extensive look at that. And then there’s a lot of books that related at- like I said, my biography of Fritz Smith. Because that covers, to some extent, the history of of Chiropractic, and Osteopathy, and Cranial[Sacral], cuz he went through all those things. Another book; reading “The Massage Book” by George Downing. That’s the first massage book that came out of Esalen, that influenced and educated those of us who got into it. You know, beginning in the ‘70s, George Downey and Illustrated beautifully by Ann Kent Rush, who really was the co-author, that was great. There’s a book on Esalen by an author named Kripal, K-R-I-P-A-L, that looks very interesting. There’s a book called “Other Healers” by Norman Gevitz, that’s about other forms of healing. I definitely see massage as existing within, you know, the broad framework of pre-late 20th century medicine- that included homeopathy, and osteopathy, and Chiropractic, and various things; some of them being more scientifically based… hypnotherapy… You know, and the early history of medicine; I have a series of books by Sigrist, S-I-G-R-I-S-T, which is a history of medicine. Both in the East, like Babylonia and so on, as well as in the west. So I think being aware of the history of medicine. And remember, medicine was- prior to the 20th century- was basically holistic. It was a widely based thing, not just “medicine” in the narrow sense.
Definitely. Okay, shifting gears real quick. In 2007, you appeared as part of a five massage expert panel in a documentary by Castillia Media and detailed a brief history of massage. Tell me about that experience and then I’d also like to share some of my favorite quotes from you, from that documentary and ask you to reflect on them. But first, tell me about that experience; how did you get involved with that documentary?
Now I think it was maybe Susan Salvo who initiated that. Who contacted me. Yeah, I think so. It was fun! I got to be interviewed and there were other esteemed people; particularly, Benny Vaughn, Alex Matthews, I think Susan was in on that- being interviewed. So I liked it. I liked the fact that she was focusing on the history of massage. I think we all said some, you know, useful things and it had a liveliness that sometimes history can seem dry to some people. So it’s a little dated now, but still, not a bad video. And there aren’t that many of that kind.
No there aren’t! It’s one of the main resources that I’ve used in the work of the Society. So some of [my] favorite quotes, that I’d like you to reflect on, from that video were; “history is alive and affects us today”. Yeah, definitely. I’ll mention that this is a little more out of there- out of the massage realm, but a great, great writer named Walter Benjamin wrote a essay called “Thesis on the Philosophy of History”. And he says basically, that the usefulness of history is for it to kind of flash up at a moment of danger, to to guide us like a light. As opposed to the mere chronicling of events. You know; this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened- which is so boring. So history, he said “if a person just looks at the historicist view of history; as just a chronology, then not even the dead will be safe!” Because the we embody the dreams of our ancestors- you know, it’s not just our dream, it’s not just our hope. It’s like, how do we honor and respect the hopes of people who have preceded us, for God’s sakes!?! You know, some many societies practice ancestor worship in a way that can be really, really beautiful. And I think that we shouldn’t go without that. So I want to honor the lifeblood that goes and infuses all of our histories. When Alex Haley came up with the book- with Roots- and people started looking at the origin of the African peoples, and the various horrible and interesting things that happened to them; it sparked a whole new level of interest in like ancestry, and ancestry.com, and so on. You know, where do we come from? We live in a society which is overly preoccupied with just the present and the latest thing. You know, new and improved. Forget new and improved, go for old and revered! That has more power and obviously more longevity. Because many of these important people of the past, their writings are still available to us. We’re living in the richest time of the availability of works, at least in paper, that are available to us. It’s crazy not to live with that level of respect.
Yeah, definitely. Well, and there’s also a call to preserve it and make sure that it remains accessible.
Right.
I really liked what you said about “history should come as a flash in a time of danger”. Do you believe the profession is at a time of danger right now?
As a matter of fact, I would say so. I’m sorry, but the dumbing down of American culture, and throughout the world, it’s a tricky, tricky time. We’re in a [time of] danger from climate. And how people respond to these kinds of emergencies can reduce them to not having much patience for critical thinking. One of the great things that happened through the 20th century, was the development of fantastic ideas through Freud, and Yung, and some of the early pioneers of massage, psychotherapists… Vilhum Reich, Fritz Pearls, and some of the ideas that Fritz Smith brought about through Zero Balancing. So I think we are at a moment of danger. There is the inclination that people may have to relate, thoughtlessly, to difficulties that we’re encountering; in terms of climate, in terms of economy, in terms of food shortages… it’s tough! And just… overpopulation, migrations of people from one place to another. It calls for a whole higher level of thinking and a higher level of humanism. And that’s being challenged by other less holistic ways of looking at what’s going on.
Very reductionist. Another quote that I really latched on to was, “those individuals who’ve been most influential in massage have come from a medical background”. In hindsight, does this quote hold up?
I think it held up in that “medical” used to mean, as I say, something quite a bit more holistic than it now is thought of as. So before 1950, or so, there was more wide definition [of medicine]. When the insurance companies came to regulate and reimburse people, there was a concerted effort to make it so that only MDs, and their form of narrow education, would be recognized by insurance. As you may know, there even was an anti-trust suit poised by the Chiropractic Association. And they won their suit; that there was a systematic conspiracy to block Chiropractic from getting insurance reimbursement. They won that suit. And, you know, the MDs had a slogan early on- Because Chiropractic used to have a fairly good reputation, equal to MDs, back in the early 1900s- “Death to Chiropractic”. That actually became a theme for them; “Death to Chiropractic”. Now, there were some chiropractors who were shady, but there were some MDs who were shady too! Nobody has the copyright for that. So in that sense, pre-1950’s, a lot of people coming into massage had what passed for medical background. Which, in some respects, was quite minimal at that time. Then, in the in about beginning in the ‘70s, many of the people who became a massage[therapist] were primarily liberal arts oriented people. Such as myself, who did not have a medical background at all. So there was a period there, where massage was represented as much by people who were philosophically sophisticated as people who were medically sophisticated; even more so. But then, when sports massage started to kick in- Paul St. John, Ben Benjamin, to some extent (although Ben was also psychologically sophisticated). And then those schools that were not sophisticated with the corporations and so on. Basically, the medical model came to dominate and the holistic model was regarded as being a little bit “beyond the pale”. And that, to me, is a tragedy. But it did happen. So right now, if you look at massage magazines, they’re essentially Physical Therapy magazines. I shouldn’t say that! There’s probably 75% of their content could be in a physical therapy magazine, and the rest of it is still sophisticated. And there’s lovely people writing imaginative articles, but not as many.
To hear that, correct me if I’m misunderstanding; it kind of sounds like a pendulum swing. Of pre-1950s: medical background (or aligned medical background). And then you swing, post ‘70s: kind of to the more holistic approach/liberal arts backgrounds. And then a swing back: with more interest in sports massage therapy.
More clinical problem solving. Yeah.
Do you foresee a swing back in the direction of liberal arts influence?
Well, you know, I’m a purveyor of destiny! But you know, I don’t think so. Honestly. I just think that you have a de-sophistication going on in general. And I think massage is, as is many contexts, being subject to that. It’s just like saying, if you look at colleges; is there going to be a swing back from technology to general liberal arts studies? It’s not going to happen. People say, “you can’t get a job as a philosopher”. Well, I want more than a job in my life. So, you know, that’s another story. But no, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Sorry. But there’ll still be a minority- just like in politics. There’s a minority of people who really, really care, and who have the willingness to think critically, and look, take a wider view of human existence. And of the body, and of the mind, and so on. And so there’s going to continue to be progress in that realm, but I wouldn’t say that it’s going to dominate.
Alright. I really loved this part of the documentary; you tie a direct lineage from the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. and President JFK, to The Esalen Institute, including this blending of Ida Rolf and Fritz Pearls. Also the word “self-evolution” is how you describe that dream, being the core of that lineage from those figures.
Absolutely, and also it occurred to me as you were talking, that Freedom is the unifying element to all of those things that you’ve just talked about. Martin Luther King, Kennedy, and all of these more sophisticated approaches. Human beings have a capacity to be Free. And it’s important that we educate people to take advantage of the freedom that they have. And to support the freedom of people who don’t have quite the level of privilege [that] the majority of people. We see lots of examples of that these days. It’s frightening. You know, the fact that we still have war, is like “are you kidding me?” Just blows me away! So freedom and peace… as they say in that song, “what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?” Yeah, it’s not funny- it’s the depth of what we should be about.
Definitely. Yeah, the inhumanity that we commit against each other and the the predatory natures that we see at work here. Kind of following that, [with the] blending of Ida Rolf and and Fritz Pearls. And how does that fit in to zero balancing?
Well Fritz was one of the first Rolfers. Fritz Smith studied with her. So you know her belief… and she had wonderful sayings. She said, “free the body, nature will organize it”. So again, you come upon Freedom here. And her freedom was viewed as “freeing the fascia” from no longer needed restriction[s] in the body. And to some extent body-mind, though she didn’t emphasize that. Fritz Pearls, on the other hand, emphasized the body-mind aspect for sure! And again, he was looking at: in what ways are you restricting your freedom by tension? In your body? In your mind? In your emotions? So Gestaltz Psychotherapy approached that more through discussion and confrontation, and not quite so much through bodywork. But then Fritz Pearls came along and he said, “you know the freedom that you have is the freedom to be more yourself, and the deepest part of yourself is your bones!” When we say “I just know that in our bones”, so the question is “what do we know in our bones?”. What is our core knowledge that we depend on? What is the core energy that gives us life? That’s a big question. And it then moves into spiritual questions. And one quote that I have, that I love, was Swami Muctanda, who wrote an autobiography of Yogi. He said, “an education, that ignores spirituality as a central fact of our existence, is teaching false knowledge.” So ultimately, you know, as every religion points us to; we’re looking for kind of a more enlightened approach. We’re looking for not only body and mind connections, but also to spirit. In that sense you can just say “spirit” like altruism. To be as interested in the health of the human community as we are in our own health. There tends to be a certain self-centered aspect to healthcare that looks just at one person. It says, “are you healthy?” Well, we’re healthy within a community. And you don’t truly get healthy without the community being healthy.
David, I want to talk to you a little bit about the future of massage therapy. What do you think the future holds for massage therapy, in terms of historical research and practice, or how those two could benefit one another?
Well you know, there has been quite an emphasis on research. And I expect that research is going to spill over into historical research. As well as research into the physical and psychological benefits of massage. So yeah, let’s hope so. You know, massage has become a more established profession. Maybe it’s not as sophisticated in some ways as it once was, but it’s become a part of our culture. When we first were getting into massage, back in the early ‘80s, we didn’t know how much it would grow! We didn’t know how accepted it would be. And now, it’s accepted and that’s why a lot of schools can continue to exist and continue to train massage therapists. In so far as the profession’s established, it’s going to be looking back, to some extent. And people like you and your Society, I think you’re very important and I really encourage you in what you’re doing.
Talk about “embodying the the dreams of the people who came before us!” When you described that you didn’t know what it would look like, how it could grow. I mean that’s just- talk about embodying and respecting the people that came before you. How can today’s practitioners benefit from an understanding of the history of massage?
Well for one thing, you can’t study the history of massage without learning something about all the modalities that have contributed to what’s currently practiced now. So some basic familiarity with at least the ideas behind Rolfing, behind pregnancy massage, behind sports massage. You need to have a familiarity with all of those things in order to be a complete massage therapist, with mind-body stuff. That’s a sense in which I think it’s super important for us to revisit the tree. There were years ago, you may have seen it, there’s a wonderful tree. I think it’s called “the Bodywork tree” that somebody put out. That shows all the branches, and the limbs, as well as the roots. Well you’ve gotta study all that! One funny story I’ll tell you; I started writing Fritz’s biography(Fritz Smith’s biography, the founder of ZB) and I was really intoxicated to show all the rivers of influence. So I started with Paleolithic clay cave healers, like you know, “Clan of the Cave Bear” type stuff, and then I moved through Oracle of Delphi, and the Middle East, and some of the things that developed in the Orient, and then I talked about Mesmer, and then Vilhum Reich. And I sent what I’d written to Fritz as a preliminary, you know, hit of the book and he said, “this is all very interesting, very good,” he said, “but you know, there’s no mention of me until page 50”. Oh, God! So you can relate to being historically obsessed. He said, “you’re writing two different books!” So I haven’t written the history of massage beginning with the Paleolithic times. I don’t know that I ever will, maybe you will Kirby.
Well, let me know if you want a partner on that, maybe.
Yeah, yeah, who knows. I’m actually, my next thing is, I’m gonna be getting a Masters in Fine Arts from Pacific University in Creative Writing, beginning in January. So that’s my next self evolution. Writing more books, including poetry, but that aside, your question was… did I answer your…
Yes. Absolutely, yeah; “how massage therapist can benefit from an understanding of massage history?”
Yeah, you’ve got to have it because that’s the source of our richness.
Yes. I want to be respectful of our time, because I could sit here and continue these conversations- some of these I’m going to have to go back and listen to again and really sit with them. Because you’ve said some really profound things through this last two hours, but moving on to closing thoughts. What legacy do you hope your work on massage history will leave for future generations?
My work on massage history or my work in massage
Both; interpret that as you will.
Okay. Well, of course, when I teach I refer back to my teachers and I try to evoke them as an embodied experience. So I think that at the very least, the insights of Ida Ralf are terribly important, not just for massage and bodywork, but for humanity. Same thing for Fritz. So there’s a fundamental level of knowledge that we’ve got to keep transmitting. And it can happen more easily by honoring the ideas that precede us. Not just marketing “new and improved David Lauterstein method”, you know? So I think that’s the primary way in which I’m conveying massage histories; by being true to our ancestors, and by evoking their knowledge, and by helping people embody the importances of insights that Ida Rolf, and etc. had. Like when she said, “gravity is the therapist”. What does that mean? How is that important? She said, “fascia is the organ of structure.” Wow! That was a powerful, powerful thing to say and still resonates to this day! And you know, you’re inspiring me to look back. Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of osteopathy, had some great things to say. So did Sutherland, the founder of cranial osteopathy. So eventually, if you go further back, you start to get into the history of more than massage because there was a unified field of knowledge that we were all drawing upon. That might be the way to talk about [it], “unified field of knowledge” is a nice term. I think.
Yes, that’s pretty nice! Let me ask you- you were challenged by our first guest on this podcast to participate in this podcast. Who would you encourage or challenge to participate in future episodes of this podcast?
Well, I would say off the top of my head; Nancy Dail, who has been running for many, many years [the] DownEast School of Massage in Maine. I also teach there. Sally Neiman Petersburg, ran the main school in Minnesota for quite a while- very articulate. And there’s a woman named Jan Schwarz, who was associated with massage history and various massage organizations- she’s in Tucson, a very articulate person. And you mentioned a few people like Benny Vaughn, for sure. Ben Benjamin. Judith Aston, who co-taught with Ida Rolf for a while. And she’s still around and she’s certainly in her 80s. It’d be important to talk with Judith, I think. So those are some of the people that come immediately to mind.
Before we get out of here David, do you have anything else coming up? Something you’d like to promote?
Sure. Well, I’m teaching. As I said, I’m teaching zero balancing in Bristol, England and in
Amsterdam. Both of those will be in August [2025], and then I’m going to be teaching at
Nancy Dail’s School in Maine. I’ll be teaching zero balancing: Levels One and Two in Maine, October 6 through 12th. So that’ll be the first time in quite a while that I’ve taught zero balancing as opposed to deep massage in Maine. And it’s a beautiful location, she has a pond and the school is built on the shores of this pond, which she also lives near, and it’s in the fall. I always make sure to come during the colors, so I recommend that Maine zero balancing thing for people in the US. And those will be the main classes that I’m teaching. I would recommend that
people also check out my website, www.david-lauterstein.com, so the dash needs to be in there. David-lauterstein.com, on each of the pages of my website, there’s a blank to subscribe to my newsletter; I do a very provocative newsletter once every month or two. So people might want to subscribe to the newsletter. And also, of course, I mentioned places where I’m teaching or new publications that are coming out of mine. So the newsletter is a lot of fun and I like doing that too.
Who doesn’t love provocative newsletters from time to time?
And I share a lot of other things that people have done, like videos of Gil Hedley, that I think are great or… so it’s not just my stuff.
Beautiful. David, I want to thank you for your time today and of course for participating in this podcast with us. You’ve been listening to the Hands of History Podcast a production of the Society of massage archives you can learn more about the society at Society of massage archives.org. We are also on Facebook and Instagram. Do you know someone whose hands of history have helped shape the practice of massage? If you or someone you know would make a great guest for future episodes of this podcast, please email the society at Society Of Massage Archives (all one word) @gmail.com.
Summarized Key Points:
- Early Interests & Background: David’s early focus was on music, art, philosophy, and aesthetics, particularly in Chicago. They explored folk music, Indian music, and avant-garde classical composition, later studying Indian music in 1967.
- Philosophy & Spirituality: Struggling emotionally in Germany, they turned to philosophy, meditation, yoga, and Gestalt therapy, influenced by works like *The Primal Scream*.
- Introduction to Bodywork: In 1973, they began exploring bodywork, starting with massage and later Rolfing, which deeply impacted their understanding of bodywork’s emotional and physical effects.
- Massage Education & Teaching: In 1979, David studied Swedish massage at the Chicago School of Massage Therapy, later teaching there from 1982 and conducting their first national workshop in 1984.
- Bodywork Approach: They favored an intuitive, improvisational approach to bodywork, aligning with their musical background, and later became involved in Zero Balancing, a form of bodywork focusing on energy in the skeleton.
- Deep Tissue vs. Deep Massage: David differentiated “deep tissue” from “deep massage,” emphasizing the nervous system and body-mind connection rather than just muscle pressure.
- Holistic View: Advocated for a holistic approach to bodywork that integrates mind, body, emotions, and spirit, and emphasized the importance of educating clients about the nervous system’s role in muscle tension and relaxation.
- Influential Instructors: Studied with Bob King and Jim Hackett, both key figures in the field, learning anatomy, Swedish massage, deep tissue, and structural bodywork.
- Anatomy Education: Created the Anatomy Training Program (ATP) at the Chicago School to improve foundational anatomy education and went on to teach full-time.
- Massage Education & Licensing: Played a role in reducing Illinois’ massage licensing hours, which helped standardize massage education. They were critical of the commercialization of massage schools, which led to declining standards.
- Founding Massage Schools: Co-founded *The Lauterstein Conway Massage School* (TLC) in Austin in 1989, emphasizing high-quality, healing-centered education. After 35 years, they sold the school to long-term employees.
- Philosophy & Legacy: Advocated for a non-commercial, humanistic approach to massage education, contrasting this with the rise of corporate-owned schools focused on profit.
- Massage Growth in the 1990s: The growth of massage therapy in the 1990s, particularly in Austin, was influenced by the human potential movement. Their school offered a comprehensive 750-hour curriculum, pushing the envelope in Texas, which had fewer regulations than other states.
- Holistic Teaching Approach: David’s teaching evolved to emphasize a holistic, embodied method, inspired by Martin Buber’s “education of character.” He encourages teachers to connect emotionally and authentically with students, using their whole self—mind, heart, body, and voice.
- International Teaching: After training in Zero Balancing, David began teaching internationally in the UK, Costa Rica, and soon Amsterdam. He notes cultural differences: UK students focus more on theory, while U.S. students are more technique-oriented.
- Teaching at Midwest Center for Oriental Medicine: David taught anatomy at the Midwest Center, adding a technical perspective to the holistic bodywork training at his own school.
- AMTA Involvement: David was involved in AMTA conventions from 1984, witnessing the shift toward technique-driven workshops and larger events. He recalls how the association evolved, and how figures like Bob King influenced its progressive direction.
- Role as Editor of Massage Therapy Journal: In the late 80s, David became editor of *Massage Therapy Journal*, diversifying its content and featuring articles from experts like Fritz Smith and Candace Pert.
- Awards and Recognition: David received multiple recognitions, including induction into the Massage Therapy Hall of Fame, AMTA’s Commission on Massage Therapy Training award, and AFMTE’s Educator of the Year award. These honors reflect his significant contributions to the profession.
- Preserving Massage History: A self-identified “hoarder” of massage history, David emphasizes the importance of preserving the profession’s history to avoid repeating past mistakes and to inform future practices.
- Key Historical Resources: David recommends studying works like *The Emergence of the Massage Profession* by Patricia Benjamin and *The Massage Book* by George Downing to understand massage’s place within the broader history of medicine.
- Documentary on Massage History: In 2007, David participated in a documentary on massage history, providing insights into the evolution of the profession.
- Massage’s Role in Society: David believes the profession faces challenges due to societal issues like climate change and economic instability. He advocates for critical thinking, humanism, and holistic perspectives to address these challenges and guide the profession’s future.
- Massage and Medicine: Reflecting on historical shifts in massage, David laments the move away from holistic approaches in favor of a more medical, technique-driven model but recognizes massage’s growing acceptance as a profession.
- Philosophy of Healing: David ties bodywork to social movements advocating for freedom and self-evolution. He sees bodywork as a pathway to liberation—both personal (through practices like Rolfing and Gestalt therapy) and collective.
- Legacy and Continuing Education: David aims to pass on the knowledge of his teachers, like Ida Rolf and Fritz Smith, and believes that understanding massage’s history enriches the practice and the therapist’s connection to it.
- Future of Massage Research: David encourages further research into the history and modalities of massage, suggesting that understanding the roots of bodywork enhances therapeutic practice.
Show Notes:
- Old Town School of Folk Music
- Berkeley College
- The Primal Scream
- Gestalts Psychotherapy
- Rolfing
- Allen Davidson, Rolfer
- Gil Headley
- Esalen Institute
- The Massage Book
- Bob King
- Vickki Dod
- Jim Hacket
- Chicago School of Massage Therapy
- Shiatsu
- Sports Massage
- AMTA
- Daniel Blake
- Ida Rolf
- Cranial Sacral Therapy
- John Upledger, DO
- 1984 AMTA National Convention, Omaha NB
- Deep Massage/Deep Massage Book
- Massage Therapy Journal
- Fritz Smith
- Zero Balancing
- 1986 AMTA National Convention, Washington DC
- Zero Balancing Health Association
- Betty Fuller
- Trager Institute
- Polarity
- Aston Patterning
- Reductionism
- Jenna Bater
- Patricia Benjamin
- Benny Vaughn
- Clemente’s Regional Atlas of Human Anatomy
- Local Motor System
- The Anatomy Coloring Book
- Illinois Practice Act/Board
- Larry Clemmons
- Reflexology
- Eleanor Twilly
- Ben Benjamin
- Carole Osborne
- Kate Jordan
- Swedish Institute
- Boulder School Of Massage
- Desert Institute
- Utah School of Massage Therapy
- Institute for Psycho Structural Balancing
- Edward Mopin
- Muscular Therapy Institute
- Texas Practice Act/TDLR, MT Advisory Board
- Layman Courts
- Sherry Glover
- John Conway
- Texas School of Massage Studies
- The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School
- Steiner Education Group
- Aldous Huxley
- Human Potential Movement
- Potomac School of Massage
- Martin Boober, “Education of Character”
- Paul Cone
- Bristol College of Massage & Bodywork
- The Memory Palace of Bones
- Jeff Rockwell
- Midwest Center for Study of Oriental Medicine
- Tina Turner, Musician
- 1985 AMTA National Convention, NY
- 1987 AMTA National Convention, Reno NV
- 1989 AMTA National Convention, Fort Worth TX
- Mary Bets Sinclair, “Loneliness & Pessimism”
- Candice Pert, Biochemist Researcher
- Massage Therapy Hall Of Fame
- World Massage Festival
- 2009 WMF, New Braunfels TX
- 2011 WMF, Cullowhee NC
- AMTA’s Commission on Massage Therapy Training
- COMTA
- AMTA’s Jerome Perlanski Award
- AFMTE
- AFMTE Educator of the Year Award
- 2013 AFMTE Education Congress, St. Charles MO
- 2015 AFMTE Education Congress, Minneapolis MN
- The Destiny of Massage
- Susan Salvo, textbook author
- Sandy Fritz, textbook author
- Life In The Bones
- The Emergence of the Massage Therapy Profession in North America
- George Downing
- Anne Kent Rush
- Kripal – Esalen Book
- Other Healers Norman Gevits
- Sigerist History Of Medicine
- Castillia Media’s 2007 History of Massage in US
- Alex Matthews
- Walter Benjamin, “Thesis on the Philosophy of History”
- Sigmund Freud
- Carl Jung
- Wilhelm Reich
- Chiropractic Antitrust Suite
- Paul St. John
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- President John F. Kenedy
- Fritz Perls
- Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
- Prenatal Massage
- Sports Massage
- Bodywork Tree/Massage Family Tree
- Clan of the Cave Bear
- Franz Mesmer
- Pacific University
- Andrew Taylor Still
- William Sutherland
- Nancy Dail
- Sally Neimand Petersberg
- Jan Swartz
- Judith Aston
- david-lauterstein.com, website/newsletter