Podcast Intro: 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, exploring its evolution, and the stories that have shaped this vital practice.
Today is Sunday, November 17, 2024.
I’m your host, Kirby Clark Ellis, and I’m joined today with Sandy Fritz. Sandy is a licensed massage therapist, Board Certified through the NCBTMB and a Certified Massage and Bodywork Educator by the AFMTE. Sandy has over 45 years of experience as a massage therapist.
You may be most familiar with Sandy through her textbooks, Mosby’s Fundamental of Therapeutic Massage which was first published in 1995 and soon followed by Mosby’s Essential Sciences for Therapeutic Massage- both with multiple updated editions over the last 3 decades. Sandy has also authored other massage therapy related textbooks and articles.
Sandy is an active member on the executive committee for the International Consortium on Manual Therapies, a science-based interdisciplinary research community for practitioners and researchers.
An ongoing passion for Sandy is the evolving future of massage therapy.
A)Background and Journey
1. Can you tell us about your background and what initially drew you to massage therapy? How long have you been a therapist? In what state(s)?
2. Where did you attend massage therapy school? Can you tell us about your instructors? Texts that were used in instruction?
3. Can you recall any local/regional or national big names in the profession from when you started? CE providers, school owners, board members?
4. Have you served on your state regulatory board? How about involvement with professional organizations?
5. Do you (or have you) owned your own massage business? For how long? In what region/city? What did massage therapy and its community look like when you started?
6. Do you (or have you) owned a massage therapy school? For how long? In what region/city? How did the school come into your ownership? What did massage education look like when you started?
7. How has your approach to studying massage evolved since then?
B)Research and Findings
8. What are some of the most surprising or intriguing facts you’ve uncovered about the history of massage?
9. Can you share a specific story or anecdote from your experience that stands out to you?
Impact of Changes
10. How has the perception of massage therapy changed from your entry to today? Practice, Regulation, Research, etc.
11. What significant trends or movements in massage therapy have you observed over the decades?
12. In your opinion, how has the integration of scientific research impacted traditional massage practices?
C)Preservation and Sharing
13. What is the importance of preserving massage history? Do you preserve massage therapy history? Do you have a collection?
14. Do you have any methods of preserving history?
15. Are there any particular resources, books, or archives that you would recommend for those interested in the history of massage?
D)Future of Massage Therapy
16. What do you think the future holds for massage therapy in terms of historical research and practice?
17. How can today’s practitioners benefit from understanding the history of massage?
18. What advice would you give to those who are just starting to explore the history of massage therapy?
E)Personal Insights
19. How has your understanding of massage therapy changed in the context of history?
20. Can you share how the history of massage has influenced your own practice or philosophy as a therapist?
F)Closing Thoughts
21. What legacy do you hope your work on massage history will leave for future generations?
22. Is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
23. Whose account of massage therapy (dead or alive) do you really wish were recorded and preserved?
24. Who would you encourage or challenge to participate in this podcast’s future episodes?
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 Sunday, November 17, 2024. I’m your host Kirby Clark Ellis and I’m joined today with Sandy Fritz.
Sandy is a licensed massage therapist, board certified through the NCBTMB, and a certified massage and bodywork educator by the AFMTE. Sandy has over 45 years of experience as a massage therapist. You may be most familiar with Sandy through her textbooks; Mosby’s fundamentals of therapeutic massage (which was first published in 1995) and soon followed by Mosby’s essential Sciences for therapeutic massage – both with multiple updated editions over the last three decades. Sandy has also authored other textbooks and articles. Sandy is an active member on the executive committee of the International Consortium of Manual Therapies, a science-based interdisciplinary research community and practitioner for practitioners and researchers. An ongoing passion for Sandy is the evolving future of Massage Therapy. Welcome Sandy!
Well done, Kirby!
Thanks! So let’s jump into this discussion today. We’ve got this interview broken up into about six sections – let’s start off… let’s talk about your background and journey if you will. Can you tell us about your background and what initially drew you to massage therapy.
Well I’ve been around for the most you know all of the recent history of massage going back to 1978/79, when I first became interested in a massage. Even before that, as an evolving hippie- I grew up in the 60s and so I was involved with food co-op and that sort of thing and that was an extension that was when the humanistic movement was active. I became interested in massage but people were practicing very eclectic. There wasn’t really any regulation. Maybe a little bit. I’m self-taught -there there wasn’t a school you know way back in the day like that. So my first book that I worked with was Book Of Massage that was really based on the Esalen concept back in the- you know they’re they’re still operating. So starting from 1978/79- The 1980s was the “decade of the guru”. So massage was starting to come into its own, it was starting to try to find a professional footing but it was still very eclectic and there were -oh people like Fritz Pearls and the group that came out of Esalen. And then the groups that came out of the Rolf Institute and AMTA were around and there was another organization called the International Myathetics Federation and there were there were people that were on the road providing workshops and I took those. You know and looking for what was out there I guess. So you name it I’ve taken it kind of a thing. But I soon realized that even though people were calling these things different names that once I got in there and started following through with what was going on that they were not that dissimilar. And so by 1985, so about six years in, I was actually quite disillusioned because it just didn’t feel like there was any cohesiveness and nobody knew what they…nobody was talking the same language and all that! Now there are some people that had an amazing influence on me; one was Dr Leon Chedow, he passed three years ago now. I was privileged to spend many many many years learning from him and and writing books with him and started having him come to the school. Which I started in 1984 which was just the way schools were taught back then; it started in my living room there was no licensing or anything like that- it’s just a group of people that wanted to learn what I had taught myself or what I had learned through workshops going to various work shops. So I found his blue book and reached out and said “I need your grounding I want to work with you” and I did. The other person was -or is, John Barnes so that brought me into the idea of connective tissue approaches and all of that. And then I was fortunate enough to have a physician from Russia who immigrated into the United States on refugee status and was contacted to see if there was a way that the massage therapy school might be able to facilitate his ability to practice Dr David Geich and he was in his 60s when he immigrated and couldn’t bring his medical licenses with him. So I made a place for him at the school and he taught at the school and he didn’t have a lot of English and I had absolutely no Russian but we managed to still communicate. So those three had a really huge impact.
And then there was another the first formal massage class that I found was from Irene Gothier and she was here in Michigan and she was teaching out of her basement and it was a little 100 hour thing. She created or was instrumental in creating the organization International Mylometics Federation and they were kind of going back and forth off of the AMTA. The AMTA was kind of thought of as a Swedish massage idea- classical massage. I don’t know. You know that we struggle with these forms and styles and names and and they wanted massage to be more than that. That was part of the reason why they moved into starting their own organization and so they coined the term “myometics” as opposed to “Swedish” or “classical massage” and Irene was instrumental on that. And I learned from her and still use that foundational approach all these years, all 46 years now I guess. So it’s been a real journey for me of finding people and then trying to pull that together beyond their individual style and approach. And I was around when there were a lot of these people like John Upledger and David Palmer was with the chair massage was active and it was a rich time. I don’t think there’ll be a time like that ever again.
So I am a consolidator. So I reached this epiphany where I went “huh it’s kind of sort of all the same thing with lots of different names” and that’s how I’ve kind of approached my career then with that.
Gotcha, excellent! If we can go back to- I love what you said about starting in the late 70s, could you talk a little bit more about the humanistic movement and kind of those counterculture- I call it counterculture- but how massage fit in with those Sandy?
You know I was on the very edge of it. I mean I graduated in 1971 so my formative years were in the late 60s. Which was the epitome of a counterculture. I don’t know that there will ever be a historical time like the 1960s. Especially ’65 through 1970. People were just wanting to be less constrained, they wanted more autonomy, they wanted a more direct relationship with each other, and food, and healing experiences, and spirituality. I mean I wasn’t you know in the the idea of living in a commune environment or any of that kind of stuff. I was still influenced by that. And coming out of World War II in particular but before that as well, medicine had become very mechanistic. And the doctor was- was God and people were pretty much told what to do and started to feel like we were very disillusioned. Additionally, medical science had evolved so that with antibiotics and with anesthesia, surgery became safer and more robust and thank goodness! I mean I’m alive today because of surgeons and medical doctors with a triple bypass I had on with the heart condition. But it was very disconnected and once those major illnesses were managed…vaccines was a big part of that, people were suffering more from lifestyle issues. That’s where the chronic condition stuff started to show up and that’s not easily treated with a pill or a surgical procedure. People didn’t feel heard and they felt discounted. So healing approaches, I mean massage was all mixed into herbs and spiritual rituals. We brought in a lot of legacy and wisdom from Asian cultures. It was that kind of a conglomerate that was all coming in together. But it was very confusing and a lot of people were put off from it. Because massage therapy was sort of kind of all wrapped up in spirituality too and you know it it came in conflict with some people’s spiritual or religious practices. So they lumped it all together. At that same time we were still dealing with- and still are and I don’t know what the future holds on that, coming out of the war years the idea of the massage parlor being a place for illicit sexual practices. That had has continued to perpetuate. I remember in the 80s. I mean I was actually young I didn’t have gray hair at the time… I explained myself as much that I don’t ring bells, and place crystals, and chant, as I did with I don’t provide sexual services. It was navigating both
sides of that. And many of the proposals- many of the initiatives that have been for brought forward have been trying to separate [massage] from both of those. And bring massage therapy into its own as a health profession. And we still struggle with that.
Right. Yeah definitely. I also like what you said about being self-taught.
Yes!
Can you talk just a little bit more about how you found and how you taught yourself from the book of massage?
I just followed the pictures. I even had somebody build the table that was in there.
Really?
Yeah, I had that table for years. For years I had that table, hauled that table around. It was trial and error. So I got the basic platform out of of the book of massage and then it was expanded with the other books that I read, and what I learned from Irene Gothier, and influences from going to various conferences, and watching continuing education things. From that my basic platform has not changed very much in many years. My understanding of, nuances in assessment, and understanding what the research says about it. But the basic way I have approached massage has not changed very much. So variations, and pressure, and all of that… it’s not that complicated you know? Massage- the act of therapeutic rubbing, the act of touching is innate. We sort of, kind of know how to do that. How do you take that to a more stylized approach that falls into something that people can see as a unifying system or therapy? And I’m still teaching myself! I’m a proponent and I believe in continuing education and all that. But
one of my main tenants is from entry-level education at my school through however we evolve in our professional development, you’ve got to be your own teacher. You learn from every single client, you learn how to look stuff up, you talk to people, you compare and contrast approaches with things, you reach out side of the massage community. I mean I had a lot of influence from Osteopathic Medicine. Where I lived at the time you couldn’t get an MD out there. You know as rural Michigan at the time, but the the DOs the DOs would come out. And they had their own hospitals at the time and that’s integrated. But the main do college is in Lancing, Michigan. So I
had a lot of DOs as clients and they taught me stuff- probably stuff that’s totally outside of scope of practice at the time. And then what I would do (same with Dr Chow and and Dr geich) is I would look look at that and I go “how can I make that be massage? how can I make that look and feel like a massage?” I think we’ve lost the richness of professional development through self-teaching and you’ll see mentoring posts from me every once in a while on that. Here’s how to be your own self teacher.
It’s an art and a skill- to be one’s own teacher. For those who maybe aren’t familiar with the term could you define in your own words the “humanistic movement” and maybe talk a little bit about esalen?
Now I never went to esalen. But I’ve learned from people who did. I think I could sum it up with “people taking back their own control over their own healthcare”. That piece of it but it was much bigger than that. It was reconnecting, it was relooking at a what it is it to be a human being and disillusionment… There was a lot of people were disillusioned about how how societal norms were evolving and developing and they were looking for another way. Now it wasn’t always the best way…
You don’t say!
You know! And it evolved. It evolved. But I can remember some of the very, very early AMTA conventions or the IMF conventions and we were a bunch of hippies just outside of that… you know one step away from being an active kind of person like that. And when we were walking around all dressed up in business suits and that kind of stuff back in the early 80s trying to act… I don’t know what we were trying to do. Trying to act professional and all that until you hit the Dance Floor. All bets are off at that point.
I’ve been to some of those AMTA/Massage Therapy Foundation…
Lord! Crazy, crazy, crazy. But that was the time of the reemergence of our roots. And the 80s… A lot of the 80s was an attempt to move away from that and it kind of coalesced into the 90s- where all of a sudden we wanted to be seen as professionals or equals. I was fine with that because I didn’t like the cult-y type of behavior that evolved around following a particular provider [or] presenter or whatever. I mean that was part of the problem with the humanistic movement is it got very cult-y. and played “I want to regain and re-embrace my own power” and then you turn around give all that power to a a cult leader. It was kind of counterintuitive a little bit.
Yeah. That’s kind of the fall back that you get with lineage education.
Oh yes! Absolutely! And there’s a place for lineage. Absolutely. But we have to- I remember back in the 80s- then the classes were not just massage related, there was neurolinguistic programming and there was stuff around emotional healing and somatic expression. It went all over with that… I was doing a ropes course as part of this. I did the whole NLP neural linguistic thing. I was on a tight rope. And we have an innate fear of falling. So when we’re trying a lot of these experiences- put in situations where we’re taking away our protective mechanisms…putting us in a fear or in uncertainty and supposedly then you can get in touch with another way. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But anyway I was on this ropes course and I was on a tight rope and they had ropes hanging down so you could hold on to one rope and kind of have a false sense of security. You were also in a harness, right? So you’re not going to really fall but you that didn’t matter you know it’s still- you still had the perception of that. And they had those suspending ropes, such that you had to let go of the one in order to actually get enough reach to get to the next one. So there was a period of time where you didn’t have anything to hold on to and that’s kind of what happens with change and that’s kind of what happens with legacy. You know? You respect what you have. You honor what you have. You don’t dismiss it but it’s got to evolve and if you don’t let go of it to a certain extent, you can’t reach for the next thing. And we’re still stuck there. We still have elements of that in our massage education and in our massage practice.
Sure. You think like towards the middle to late 80s, around the 90s, is where we start to see this shift from spiritual roots more towards a scientific…?
Yeah, it was a progression. The 80s were when the new age hit too. That was kind of a relook at… a re-expression of the humanistic stuff that was in the 60s. Just framed a little bit different. It was confusion and concern at that point about wanting to move into a more mainstream idea of Massage Therapy practice, and it was in the 90s that a lot of that was instituted like National Certification and the first test for that was 1992, I think. I sat for that. It was paper and pencil. There was a lot of controversy in the 80s. It was rough.
Tell us, Sandy!
Yeah, it was a rough time. You had factions and people were trying to find ways and we had a lot of splintering and there was the group that wanted massage to evolve all the way to a medical degree, and then there were others that didn’t want anybody telling them what to do. And they didn’t so there there’s fights around licensure. A lot of the problems we have with licensure right now. For example here in Michigan, there are a whole list of things that are exempt in the law. Structural integration is exempt, reflexology is exempt, Asian approaches are exempt, that all happened in the past because those practitioners… The 80s kind of was the decade of the bodyworker, where you had everything in there. And they didn’t want to have to be in compliance. And whether we want to believe it or not; most of the legislation was put forth in an attempt to control prostitution- under the guise of Massage businesses- illegal massage businesses and it’s still that way. If you really look at what it’s about, it’s an attempt to control that unfortunate and degrading association. Bodyworkers- the term “bodywork” was a way to try to get away from that by using different terms and not using the word massage. Same with trying to go very clinical or medical or whatever you want to call it. To the point of really almost encroaching on Physical Therapy scope of practice or Chiropractic scope of practice. And a lot of teachers that were massage therapists were going to see Chaya. Dr Chaya was an osteopath, European osteopath and acupuncturist. John Barnes was- or is a physical therapist, you know? The whole trigger point, neuromuscular therapy… All of that came out of an attempt to get away from either the over spiritualization of massage or the prostitution side of it.
In your estimation, Sandy, would you- looking back to the 80s to now… Would you say that those movements in licensing regulation are they working?
To separate with human trafficking? No. Which is where the illicit sexual stuff is occurring, licensing didn’t do much with that. Whether it’s state licensing or if it’s establishment licensing. And certification didn’t help it either. That was supposed to be a way to bring a credential that would be a separation. But licensing has done some things; the formalization as an occupation, it puts some parameters around practice- in terms of developing scope of practice, it opened up a platform for education and [the] formalizing of schools. It has been a level of differentiation in terms of other health professions or other service professions – being able to say “well, we are licensed therefore that separates us from that sort of thing” but licensing was not. I mean, there was a lot of controversy over licensure and so there was a push to put certification in play. Then that got watered down because all of the other bodywork things that were out there wanted a piece of that. They didn’t want to be included in licensure, but they didn’t want to be excluded from the the idea of being able to obtain a credential. And then the body of knowledge just got way too big; you can’t know everything about this, and then everything about that, and everything about the other thing. It became a nightmare to try to develop tests and stuff for it and we’re still struggling with that. But we’re multicultural! There’s a rich cultural, historical, indigenous, layering of Massage Therapy. And I was involved, you mentioned the International Consortium on Manual Therapies. One of the physical therapists was a historian- that’s what
they did there- a historian for physical therapy and one of the things we did as part of that was to trace our history. Osteopaths can trace it back to a Founder. Physical Therapy can trace it back to a Founder. Chiropractic can trace it back to Founders. Massage therapy has no founder. It’s been a part of caring- forever! It really didn’t get formalized. There was a couple of places in history where it became formalized; one was in the 1800s and then another was when AMTA back in the 40s. So it’s something that is just kind of intrinsic and to professionalize it so that people can feel confident and safe in the providers they use. So that the value can be embraced. We can go, “yes this is a valuable thing to do, it has benefit. Licensure played a part in that. So did research. There was a lot of research. Mostly it started out in acupuncture but there was a lot of research that came out of the late 70s, 80s. And then we started to look at the importance of research. The Massage Therapy Foundation was formed. But they were looking for a mechanism. And the other professionals were doing the research- so Nursing, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic, that sort of thing. Tiffany Field had the research institute, she’s been a huge contributor to that. So the understanding of what we do…that everything we do really works for the same- I don’t care what you call it- works through the same physiological mechanism. How can it not? We all have a body right? It’s a stimulus response. We stimulate the body response. That’s what it is and as we try to formalize it or try to turn it into protocols or try to study it, we try to differentiate exactly how we would adapt to affect fluid movement or relaxation or whatever. And then unfortunately each of those took on their own life with unique names and unique language and we all busted apart again. But the research has been and still has the potential to be a unifier if we would pay attention to it.
And invest in it!
Yeah. Yeah, and we don’t you know? I was discouraged that the massage therapy community did not participate more fully in this gathering of people that use manual therapy across the
globe. And it’s not because they didn’t know. That was discouraging, that there was an opportunity there that was missed. I can go back and I can show you where there were opportunities missed. Because we either couldn’t work together or whatever. The Massage Therapy Body Of Knowledge was an opportunity missed and that was unfortunate. It had to do with people. People mess things up! We’re still dealing with professional identity and ego. You know- “I’m a better massage therapist than you because I do X-Y-Z”, and “I work in this
environment so that makes me more special than you and what you do”. And we can’t move forward if we continue to do that.
Yeah I think personality has stood in the way of this industry and this profession for a long time.
Yeah and I’m a strong personality, and I have been a very vocal person, and I have not
always been nice about it either. Because I’ve gotten very frustrated. What seemed to be so simple to me. I mean we were stalled in the 80s because the ABMP and the AMTA wouldn’t work together. They still don’t! And I can remember standing in a meeting, I forget where it was… it might have been a research meeting when Foundation started to hold them, feels like it was in Vancouver. I remember standing up and saying, “You’ve been talking about talking for the last five years! Why don’t you get into a room and talk!?! You know it’s it’s kind of the same
frustration I had around ergonomics and biomechanics! That’s really legacy there. And it really should be grounded on a solid biomechanical, ergonomical platform. And we just started that through the Massage Therapy Foundation. All these years people have been teaching, “well my way I do it- this is the way you should do it” and it’s obviously not working because people are getting hurt! But you couldn’t get anybody together to talk about it. And everybody had their own idea. And I’m just as culpable as anybody else on all of that. A lot of the leaders of those days have either retired out or passed away or whatever and we’re floundering now for leaders. The torch wasn’t passed. So now, where there’s been- especially in the 2000s and on, Massage is not different, the practice of massage is really different. It hasn’t been embraced very well, but employment is a is a major thing! I can remember being again at an AMTA conference when Massage Envy was being proposed. And I recognized the value of that business platform right away and people still don’t get it. So I remember, I think it was the AMTA attorney at the
Time… lots happens in the halls at these places, and I said to him, “what do you
think about this?” And he says, “it’s the future. I don’t care what anybody body thinks, it’s going to happen and it’s going to end up being to the benefit of people. Now we’ve got the franchise system- which is different than a chain, they are not the same thing. Even though the words are used [interchangeably]. The business models are very different. A chain is like an octopus; everything is in the brain at the head and then there are tentacles of the same thing that go out. So Walmart, Meyers, Kroger… they’re chains. There’s no individual decision making in the individual locations. A franchise isn’t like that. A franchise is a brand that people buy into, but the owners in a franchisee is just using that as a scaffold to build an individual local business. With a tremendous amount of autonomy in terms of pay structures, and scheduling, and all that kind of stuff. It is not controlled from a central office and that makes a big difference on how you negotiate a wage or anything like that. That still not understood and yet it’s continued to grow, and grow, and grow, in spite of us! And provides an extraordinary launch pad and a full life
career for massage therapists. Before that model, it was self-employed and if you were not self-employed that was it you know. And if you weren’t good at that, then you failed! Whether you were a good massage therapist or a great massage therapist or not. You just floundered and you failed. That broke my heart as an educator. I would see these great massage therapists come out of the program but they just were not in a situation where they could navigate the whole self-employed thing.
So you mentioned Irene’s school, was that your first formal massage classroom-type setting?
No I had found some workshops. I learned a little bit of a shiatsu protocol and a couple of other day or two-day so I had some of that. But that was the most extensive, consolidated education. I’d already been practicing for years when I found that and went into that.
Have you always been in Michigan, Sandy?
Yep! I’m a real world traveler; I live, function, work 30 minutes from where I was born!
At least you got out 30 minutes from there…some people don’t.
I’ve traveled a lot. I mean I did, again back in the day, based off of the textbook that you mentioned that came out in ’95. But before that because of my association with John Barnes and Leon Chadow, I had done some workshop training. So I’ve been around the country. I’ve never been a traveler by nature, so I have loved the remote stuff like this because it is much less stressful for me. And I also lost a lot of vision to glaucoma a few years ago. You adapt and you adjust right? You adapt and you adjust. So this this type of a platform still gives me an avenue. And Covid taught us that we could communicate and learn through this. Not everything, but we could so that was one of the upsides that came out of that.
Yes definitely. Let’s see; were there any other texts besides the Book Of Massage that really helped you in your foundational education? Or that really helped you, or that you looked to when writing your own textbooks?
Yeah there was. There was. Because I didn’t want to write textbooks. I really do have raging dyslexia. So spelling, and handwriting, and some of that stuff, that’s really hard for me. And when I started teaching I was looking for books that I could use to develop it. It was really
informal; we’re in my living room. So we had an anatomy book. And then we had a generalized High School type Anatomy book. And then we had the Book Of Massage. And then we had The Wellness Workbook, that was kind of the idea of the psychosocial and all that kind of stuff that went with it. Um Janet- not Janet Oh going to lose the name… I’ll get it had written a book… um Pat Benjamin was instrumental and working with her in the later years but she came out of physical therapy… Oh! Losing my train of thought, we’ll see if we can remember that as
time goes on. But there was also the Travel and Simon’s books that came out that looked at the… Fran Tappen! I knew I would think of it! I had the chance to actually meet Fran Tappen and spend some consolidated time with her. She had written “Healing Massage Techniques”, I think was the name of it, and it came out of her doctoral thesis. But she was instrumental in bringing forth physical therapy- she came out of physical therapy. There was “Beard’s Massage that came out of nursing. But when I first started teaching it, was “the book of massage” and “the wellness workbook” were the the primary parts of it. And there was an issue there, because if you go back to that book[of massage], the illustrations are with people that are nude! Because that was also part of what came out of body awareness and body acceptance. And all that came out of the humanistic movement and the Esalen idea and all of that. So that was that was a little exciting. Anyway I kept bugging the the company, it was Mosby, that I bought the anatomy and physiology book from. I kept bugging them for a massage textbook and finally in let’s see…1995…? 1991 or ’92 they had a branch out company called “Mosby Lifeline” that was looking for innovation. So they asked me to- I kept bugging them, “you need to develop a massage therapy text[book]” and they kept saying, “well why don’t you write one?” Well I didn’t want to write one because of the dyslexia, right? Anyway they went through a lot of renditions. Nobody wanted to write an entry level book! Not one that started with “here’s how you put the sheet on the table” they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to get right into, you know, these advanced methods and approaches and all that kind of stuff. There was an author for… you might want to think of it as CNA: Certified Nursing Assistant or that kind of level or genre… her name was Sheila Sarentino. And she had written a text for that occupation. I used that text as a model for the first draft of the textbook. The way that was laid out was the way I laid out the Massage Therapy book. Because you have to have a place to start and I’m certainly not going to recreate the wheel. She was- she’s a hero in my world. Because she gave me a scaffold to work from to write the first textbook. “Job’s Body”, I think was a landmark book and came out Dean Shwan. There’s David Palmer, although he didn’t really do a book, he- the chair massage stuff came out at that time. “Anatomy Trains” came out then. There was just a lot, but again, it was really just varied. It wasn’t different, it was just variations. Mark Beck did a book. Mark Beck didn’t do a book, Mark took over a book. I think it was called “Theory and Practice of Massage” it had been around forever for cosmetologists. Because massage is partly within scope of practice for cosmetology. So he updated that and it’s still used in schools. He passed away. I knew Mark, he had had a skiing accident- I think it was a skiing accident. And became quadraplegic pretty much after. But he continued to work with the book until he passed away. I don’t think it’s been revised since then, but the last revision embraced ELAP: Entry Level Analysis Project. There there were also Fringe things; now that’s “touch for health”, and “applied Kinesiology”, and “polarity”, and from Randolph Stone. All of that stuff was kind of wandering around under that umbrella of bodywork.
Okay. To step back to your start around the late 70s and 80s, can you recall any local or regional (or even national) big names in the profession of massage therapy? Anything that sticks out to you?
Not in the beginning. Irene Gothier is probably as far as massage is concerned. She was probably the name and that was very isolated. You know it was not like a national thing. It was in the 80s that the big names came out.
Sure. I’m sorry, I’m hung up on this self-taught thing. How did you find other massage therapists? Like how did you build community?
Well I searched around. It was hard it you know? I mean, I had the group- the co-op, a food
co-op. We had some level of community there. But it was really not massage therapy. It was off of this shiatsu class that I took. It was this little weekend that was just “follow the dots” kind of a thing. There was no internet back then. You couldn’t just go into a chat program or an internet search or anything to find stuff. That took me on my search to figure out what was going on. Now my college background is in accounting, part of my college background. So my personality and the precision required for accounting is not a good fit. The other you know, life circumstances. I was in a marriage that was not working; got married real young, you know, I was 19. Remember this was a hundred years ago- not quite. But I was in my you know late
20s and I was trying to figure out something. I needed something and the marriage was falling apart and I needed a way to support myself so I just made it up. I just dove in! And I had a baby, I had a little person you know and yeah. I don’t think those days are available anymore. As far as entry level and getting into the occupation or into massage. As a profession. I don’t think anybody could do that anymore. But you can do the same kinds of things with your self-teaching as part of professional development. For example, I worked with (and still do) professional
athletes. Never sought that [out], got drug into it, and worked with football players and basketball players, worked with teams- worked with individual players, whatever. And every time they came to me with a thing I had to go learn about it. “I’ve dislocated my shoulder”, “I have a blood clot in my carotid artery” (that was an interesting thing to try to figure out how to work around), “I ended up with the cold because my immune system was suppressed because of training camp”… I mean, so every experience I had, just like all the experiences I had with the osteopaths in the first part of my career. All of those were opportunities to gain knowledge. A lot of trial and error- which is kind of scary when I look back on it.
Well I imagine, in the absence of a founder of the profession, and in the absence of a guru to learn from; I imagine trial and error is the only way that you develop.
You kind of ask questions And you go to the library. I mean, I went to the library!
They’re great and we should continue to support them!
Yes we should! We should support libraries. But that’s critical thinking see? Because I had to figure it out on my own. I had to rely on critical thinking and the trial and error sort of a thing. And that’s hard to teach you know? I struggle with that with my own students and when I write textbooks; how do I write a textbook so it’s not a recipe? And some teachers and some students don’t appreciate that I work really, really hard to not write a textbook that is a recipe. Because recipes don’t work. You have to have a platform, like I had a sequence and flow, from the book of massage so… You do have to have a place to start and and how to get your your structure in play. But then you need to to use critical thinking. You say, “well if somebody has diabetes you do this”, or asthma… you just can’t do that. One of the the athletes I worked on for years, and years, and years- a high level professional football player had asthma. So I worked with him. Is that sports massage? But we primarily worked on his breathing yeah. I had to go learn about asthma. And is it a problem with the inhale or is a problem with the exhale? And what are auxiliary breathing muscles? Dr Chedow brought a lot of that in because osteopathy has a rich grounding. My platform for fluid movement is Osteopathic because they did a lot of procedures for thoracic drain and lymph movement and all that kind of stuff. You know the lymphatic pumps and all of that’s where that information came from.
Alright, Sandy, correct me if I’m wrong; but Michigan got their practice act or their licensing their regulation in 2009?
It was enacted in 2009. It had been on the books for a long time before that but it wasn’t actually enacted. That was a bumpy couple of years because it used the National Certification exam as kind of in luei of a license exam. Then it it switched over, then for a period of time, a lot of stuff was if you were a member of AMTA or ABMP or Nationally Certified, you were exempt from the various zoning ordinances and that sort of thing. So then when the MBLEx became available, Michigan switched over to that. There was a whole glob of people that were grandfathered in that 2009/2010 kind of a arena. And it’s been a good thing! We just have all those loopholes in the license; Asian bodywork practices, and energy based practices, and reflexology practices, and structural approaches, and so there’s a lot of ways that people can practice without a license.
Gotcha, have you ever served on Michigan’s regulatory agency?
No I have not served. I have consulted. I’ve been a school owner, a licensed school owner since 1980. By ’85 we were accredited by NCCSCT back in the day, prior to COMTA. Those poor Department of Education and [the] school approval processes, they’ve always been understaffed. Always, always, always. They(MI Board?) would come and say “what do you do about that Sandy? and how?” So I did that. I really admire anybody that will serve on a a regulatory board; like Board of Massage in any state. It’s a thankless job, unfortunately. So anybody who has ever done that has nothing but my appreciation and admiration.
What about professional organizations?
I have been involved in a volunteer status with all of them. I was a founding member of the Alliance For Massage Therapy Education. I have been a volunteer of multiple facets with
the National Certification Board. I have been a member, and an advocate, and a voice, within both the AMTA and the ABMP for years. I was at the meeting where the Federation of State Massage Boards was formed.
How did you first hear about the national organizations?
Well I became aware of it after I found the classes that Irene was teaching in her basement. Irene Gothier because she was a mainstay in the International Myomatics Federation, and the IMF and the AMTA were like oil and water. So I became aware of that, of the AMTA. I can remember getting the side eye when I started to go [to] some AMTA meetings. It seems like there’s always been this kind of push back. And never this move forward. But anyway, AMTA did persist, IMF eventually over the years faded away. So that’s how I got with the AMTA. As understood what was going on with that.
Would that have been before the schism that led to ABMP being founded?
No, that was different. The ABMP has an interesting history too and I’m working off of memory here, but there was a concern that AMTA was becoming a monopoly and taking over everything. So there was a group Sherry Williamson, I think was part of it, but Robert Calvert and Judy were all part of that over there. So they started an organization that was less formal but it morphed quickly into the ABMP, which is a for-profit. It’s a business. They offered insurance and that sort of thing to kind of counteract the AMTAs monopolizing [of] what was going on. And they embraced the idea of bodywork, so Association Of Massage and Bodywork[Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals]. Same with the MBLEx. Even though the Federation is the Federation of State Massage [Therapy] Boards, the exam is Massage and Bodywork[Licensing Exam]. And bodywork. The Advent of the National Certification exam pushed out of the AMTA. The thought was pulled together kind of in an internal circle within the AMTA. And they were promoting it forward. Without really taking a look at what the profession wanted. Granted we probably didn’t know what we wanted at that time. But for me, it made more sense to have
licensure as opposed to this this national program. But that’s not a wrong way to do it! There are a lot of occupations that credential themselves that way. There there was a huge schism [with] what happened with that. And ABMP really came into its own around that issue. It happened anyway. And the National Certification Board developed the National Certification Exam and then, because state licensing was coming into play, the states started to adopt the National Certification Exam as a licensing exam. Then the National Certification group became very busy because there are a lot of people seeking to take this exam now because of the creation of licensure in many states. And they fell apart under the burden of it. They had turned all the operations pretty much over to a management company that were not necessarily directed to massage. There was conflict with “well what’s on the test and what’s not?” [The] way it goes until the states were frustrated because information wasn’t being transferred. It just got too big. It got too big, too quick without the infrastructure to manage it. ABMP and the money and the people behind that back when it was first formed saw an opportunity and pulled together… they would say they didn’t, but they already had the plan in place. They pulled together leaders in the field, I was there and talked about forming another organization. And talking about how other occupations that are licensed have these organizations that are just for the licensing boards and all that. They were going to create a test and ta-da and there it goes. We already had so many organizations that were in-fighting; I didn’t want to see another organization. But I don’t always get my way, right? I wanted there to be support for the National Certification Exam, but it just, it didn’t work. So they came forward and they pulled that exam together. Right, or wrong, or
indifferent, and whether we like it or not; that exam is the scaffold for entry level education, now these days. Boy, was there fighting then between the Federation of State Massage [Therapy] Boards and the National Certification Board. And there finally was an agreement! And there was some resources exchanged that National Certification would not offer a licensing exam anymore but then they would do the continuing education. And then, the Federation said “okay” and then
they started doing continuing education approval type stuff. So actually, the Federation of State Massage [Therapy] Boards and the AMTA have got all the money. ABMP is a private organization; we don’t know how much money they have but they pretty much can do what they want when they want and they almost always do a good job. So here we are. We’re still not talking to each other. We still have fragmentation. We’re in a whole different climate. Our future is not the way it was even 10 years ago, it’s very different.
Tell me a little bit more, Sandy; you self-educated and then you started your own business providing massage?
Yep, yep. Sole provider. My own business. Didn’t ever have a receptionist. Had offices, had little rooms, rented rooms and a chiropractor and in a fitness center. Went to people’s homes. Had a home office. As far as my own private, professional practice; I’ve always been a DBA sole practitioner with no receptionist, I’ve always just done that. Now 10 years ago, under the influence of my daughter, we did buy into a franchise; Massage Green Spa. I did that because I wanted… there’s still so much controversy and misinformation about that business structure. I thought “well, what better way to learn about it than to be part of it?” Now, Massage Green was acquired by Hand & Stone. I got this in my master’s degree in organizational leadership; a concept comes out, a massage therapy franchise- Massage Envy- then people look at that successful and then a whole bunch of them crop up! They’re local, or they’re small,
or whatever- but they’re thriving along and like with Massage Green there was
like 50,60 stores across the United States. So we’ve got a bunch of them now. We’ve got this and we got that, uh there’s Massage Heights, and Elements, and Hand & Stone. Because what happens with all these little startup kinds of things are bigger acquisition companies come in and acquire them. Which is what’s happened now. Massage Envy has changed ownership as its own corporate entity many times and is governed under an acquisition group. Hand & Stone has been acquired by an acquisition group. Then they bought Massage Green and now LaVida in underneath- well, you experienced that- underneath their business model. So we chose not to do that because our demographic just doesn’t support the the brand that Hand & Stone
puts forth; you know we’re still semi-rural. So now we’re almost to the end of transitioning out of the franchise model into a wellness center model, which incorporates with the school. So when you look at all of those different business models, I’ve done them all. I know what it’s like to hire, I know what it’s like to contract, I know all of that kind of stuff because I’ve lived it! And
the business models have not changed substantially over the years, it’s just what has moved into massage therapy and and how we’re accommodating to that. So where I saw a proliferation, now I’m seeing a contraction. The franchise model is is still growing exponentially, it’s fewer systems…
Consolidating?
Yeah, that’s a good word. So how that is going to affect things in the future like brand names and and employee standards. Because all franchises are all individually owned. You know there’s talk about unionizing and that sort of thing. But it’d have to do the micro-unions because you can’t unionize. The corporate doesn’t have the control to do that. Franchises cannot be unionized as a brand it- you can’t do it! But the future demand for massage therapy, I think there will be a shift in how massage is integrated into these larger wellness center concepts. And AI and robotics is going to be something that we’re going to have to take a look at as part of what we offer or what we look at as part of our occupation and what we do. It won’t replace us, but it’s it’s going to be there. That’s the future out there. A bigger company like Hand & Stone can develop a licensing agreement with the robot manufacturer that’s out there and then they can bring it in. Whereas an individual owner could never afford to do that. So those are some of the things that are in the future. But if we put too many obstacles up for massage therapist to move into entry-level practice, you know, it’s going to be real interesting because these bigger conglomerates they’ll find another way. You know they just will. Yeah it’s interesting.
Tell me about how you decided to start your school, Sandy.
I didn’t! Just like with the textbooks. I got busy and I had a couple of people that said “will you teach me how to do what you do?” There wasn’t any regulation, you could just do what you wanted to do. I said “okay I will teach you what I’m doing”. I was working a tremendous amount
of hours, you know? I’ve always worked full-time in massage therapy. It’s just until the eye stuff got me and inhibited my travel that I didn’t have what most people would consider a full-time practice. To me, I had moved back to a halftime practice but I always saw 30-35 clients a week. It was just the way it was. But that’s a relatively low number of people that you need to have to support an individual practice. Back in the early 80s when somebody said “will you teach me?” I
said, “well sure!” Well then they told somebody, which told somebody, which told somebody, so now I got all these people in my living room. I start this class sort of thing and find out I’m pregnant with my son, Luke. So I always know how old the school is because I know how old Luke is. And Luke. who is of my legacy coming, you know? He’s got his own history, his own things, but he truly grew up under a massage table!So it reached a point I taught really informal[ly] for a couple of years and then it reached a point where I was not able to function under the radar so to say. I needed to go through a formal proprietary school licensing process, so I did! During that time, that was in the 80s again, and AMTA had kind of a school approval thing kind of going on, and I sort of kind of did you know looked at that. But that’s what happened; I evolved into it! And at one time, I had 12 regional centers and was graduating 300 and some students a year. No financial aid, all self-employed, all self-selecting. The reason why I went ahead and got the accreditation is because I wanted a pathway for academic degrees. There is a university in Michigan, Seinna Heights University, that has worked, since the 60s, with what they call an inverted major. Where they will take the occupational training and then they will put the academics on it. So they’ve created this Bachelor’s of Applied Science. And I wanted a Bachelor of Applied Science in massage therapy. Originally, it was a one-on-one agreement between my school and Seinna Heights and I had to be accredited in order to meet their criteria to do that. I never took financial aid. Over time, part of the process of National Certification, instead of each individual school having to be improved by Sienna Heights, they were then able to say criteria for the major, massage therapy, is that you’ve graduated from a massage therapy program that you are licensed, and you are board certified, and you have two years of professional practice. That transfers to Sienna Heights University for 45 credits, that’s the major. I saw that as an important step for teachers. That was my motivation. It’s there. Unfortunately, it’s not utilized as much as it should. It’s one of the major advantages of Board Certification. It was my dream way back in the day. I mean, we worked on that for over 25 years to get that through and on that sort of thing. But Allison Mitchenson, within the VA system, worked for 25 years to get a job description for the VA. She’s one of my heroes. You’ll never see her mentioned in a you know a history discussion and yet, she persisted for 20 plus years within the VA system pretty much on her own, and now there’s a job description for the VA and all kinds of stuff happening. One person persisted with that.
All it takes is one.
It is it does.
Sandy, to kind of close out your background, can you tell us; how is your approach to study massage evolved since your self-taught days in the late 70s/ early 80s?
Well, once licensing things kind of all consolidated together. So a bunch of stuff consolidated together. One was the Pell Grant. Initially, when I was first accredited, it was not a pathway through ACCSC, it was not not a pathway for financial aid. That happened later. So accreditation was about school excellence, that sort of thing. But very quickly, during that time frame, it became a pathway to be able to offer financial aid. And then it got very weird. Once you’re gonna provide financial aid, then you’ve got to fit the education into their model of what it is. That combined with licensure and academically published materials put it into a situation where a proprietary vocational school could create a massage therapy program. And that just blew up in the early 2000s. Right, wrong, or indifferent. What broke it up was misuse of financial aid, not with massage in specific, but in general. Some of the big schools that had campuses all over the place fell apart, were closed down, that kind of stuff. Along with them was the massage therapy program. That academically created probably a good educational platform. They know how to deliver- those school conglomerates- know how to deliver vocational education. But massage doesn’t neatly fit in that basket either. That’s still there and that’s still a platform. Community colleges started to come on board, although that did not grow nearly as much as I thought it was going to. That all fell apart in 2007, 08, 09. Schools went out of business, they got set up with fraud for financial aid, they closed down.
You think the recession had anything to do with that?
Oh it was huge! It was a huge part of it! We lost a whole bunch of the schools. I can tell by royalty check, for example. I mean I had royalty checks of XYZ in 2006, and by 2008 it was half of that! That just has to do with enrollment and the viability and not understanding what it takes to run a a smaller private school like what I have. It’s not a money maker and if somebody doesn’t have some other drive for it, it’s like owning a massage business; people think that these owners are making tons of money and they’re not! So there’s got to be something that actually motivates you to work that number of hours and really not get paid for it, you know? It’s not good business, it’s a terrible business model! So here I am. We had the event in 2019, ’20, ’21 with Covid, but it was already happening. Some people, not a lot, but when we started to have employment as a mode of career pathway, the old guard, the old massage guard did not understand the employment model; they only understood the self-employment model. You can’t compare in self-employed- you can’t compare a business gross or what you bring in- to W2 wages. You can’t do that. If you look at it realistically, for a given number of massage hours- volume, same volume- either place; you’re going to make more (people don’t like it when I say this but) you’re going to make more in an employment sector. And [if] you work with a quality employer that handles all the business stuff. If you’re self-employed, you’re everything. You’re your own employer, you know? You got two jobs! You got do all your own laundry and your taxes and the list goes on and on and on! So if I do 20 massage sessions as a (or 30 massage sessions- most people can’t do that) 20 massage sessions as a sole provider. Let’s just say they’re hour sessions for math. All right, you’re not working just 20 hours! You’re working 40 at minimum, right? You can go over and you can work a 25, 30 hour shift in an employment sector and you’re done. That transition, it’s really unfortunate it’s still not honored. So people that go into to their career pathway, in that type of an environment, become disillusioned and they don’t see it as “real” massage. “I can’t be a real massage therapist if I’m working in a franchise.” Well of course you can! And you can do it in a way that serves [the] population, and you work to your strengths, and you have support system around you and all of that. That was a huge paradigm shift when Massage Envy came on and we still haven’t come to grips with it. It’s and the self employed legacy? We can still do it, I will fight forever for autonomy and self-employment with massage therapists. Where they can go, and put up their own shingle, and do that. I will fight for that forever. But it’s really fading away. Because it’s hard work!
It’s grueling.
And people get into it, your generation, younger generations, generations that are coming up; they really want that work-life balance. They don’t want to do it!
Well and there’s no immediacy in it either.
Absolutely not!
Instant gratification and being self-employed [doesn’t exist].
So I would never discount it, but to say to somebody, “you’re not a real massage therapist unless you have your own practice”. That’s just wrong! And full-time wonderful career or a long career where you’re part of a team, with an employer that understands you, and stays ahead of what’s going on… because there’s some crap employers out there. But there’s some crap massage therapists too! As an employer, massage therapists are not good employees as a general rule. So how can you have a solid, progressive team where it’s a win-win for everybody right? When you’ve got massage therapist to say “I’m not going to do laundry that’s not my job”. Well if you’re self-employed, who do you think’s doing the laundry? This is the meeting of the past, the present, and the future happening here. And the employment sector is going to win. But it’s going to evolve and it already has. They’re going to have to come to grips with pay structures and that sort of thing, but so is the massage therapy community. If we just look at it very pragmatically, we make more than an LPN sometimes. We make more than many medical or health technician occupations that have more education than we do. We make more than they do and that’s not taught adequately to the new person coming in so they’re discouraged before they even start. You know I don’t want anybody living in poverty but if you really look at the statistics; massage therapists are doing okay. Economically, they’re doing better than what would be indicated by
the education.
It’s encouraging.
It is encouraging! But we all got to learn to live a little lean these days.
That’s not a bad idea.
No, learning to live on less and be happy about, that’s the future! That’s the other part of it and I think the younger generation embraces that better than mine.
Before we move on Sandy, tell me about MTBOK.
The Massage Therapy Body Of Knowledge? That was an initiative from all of the organizations, the alphabet soup of all the organizations, [they] got sort of kind of finally into the same room together. They came up with an idea that they should try to capture what massage therapy as a profession, practice is .Professional, occupational platforms- whether it’s a physical therapist, or physical therapy assistant, or whatever, they have a practice framework. They have that. We don’t have that. We have all the pieces, they just won’t put them all together. So they did come
together on that [MTBOK] and they they hired a project manager to do that and they brought together experts. Now I was not on that. I was on the periphery of all of that, but they brought a lot of people together and they had a lot of discussions. They looked at the the textbook material at the time, and they looked at the research at the time, and they looked at [how] all the practices were evolving at the time. And they came came up with a document that defined the totality of Massage Therapy. It was not an entry-level document it, but it defined the stages that you can go through with that. The first thing that happened with it is that the bodywork community had a fit. So then they had to come in and then there was problems around we couldn’t, they couldn’t agree on the definitions. And then, bless our hearts. we’re very clique-y. So the one clique didn’t like that the other clique had stuff to do with it. And so this happened and that happened and and so it just got put on a shelf and left. And it is just such, such, such a missed opportunity!
It’s disappeared. Any of the links that you look up, I can’t find it anywhere- the Massage Therapy Body [of Knowledge]
You can find it. I found it recently. You can find it, but boy you have to hunt! I think it is being housed in the Alliance For Massage Therapy Education. But you can still find it, because I had to find it to confirm it for the new textbook editions. So it’s still there. Now, out of that they say “oh let’s just recreate the wheel and do it again but we’ll say that this is for entry level now”, so then they came up with the ELAP: Entry Level Analysis Project. That was an exciting series of events but what came out of it was good! And one of the things that came out of it was approaching the idea of a unifying terminology.
Yeah which we still aren’t quite there yet.
Because you cannot define massage therapy through one lens. Which is Swedish massage. Swedish massage is wonderful, but it’s only one form. You have to back out of it one more step to get a little bit more generic. If the definition of effleurage, which is a French term, if that definition is gliding, then we need to move to the definition terminology and not the unique terminology. And that’s basically what happened.But that took a lot because initially, they wanted to base it off of classical massage (or Swedish massage) and that’s too small for what therapeutic massage is. So we’re still grappling with that. With the idea that Swedish massage is relaxation massage? No it’s not! Swedish massage is basic massage? No it’s not! It’s a very rich, involved form and style. But it doesn’t encompass all of what massage therapy is.
All right, Sandy, let’s transition; let’s talk about preservation and sharing. What do you think is the importance of preserving massage therapy history?
If you don’t know how all of this stuff came down, you’re just going to- we’re still circling in it. We’re still talking about the exact same stuff that we talked about 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And look at what our legacy is coming up from. Massage has been part of a healing tradition. Forever! You know and if we don’t know where have been the pitfalls, where have we fallen apart, when has one cultural system build itself on top of massage therapy? So massage as a healing practice has always been there. The Swedish movement cure of Ling built on that. Just like when the Romans would conquer something, they would build on top of the existing structure, you know? And then it evolved through what happened with Mezker, and the Taylor brothers, and all that kind of stuff. So if we don’t know “well, what is the influence of reflexology?” and “should that be a unique system? does it require its own credentialing or not?” If we don’t know that, we’re still going to just swirl around in this. And there is a faction that wants massage to be medical. Which pushes it into scope of practice infringement. Then you get your turf wars. Back when licensing was starting to become more prevalent there was a lot of conflict between physical therapy and massage therapy. That was at the exact same time that osteopathic physicians, and chiropractors, and some physical therapists- like John Barnes, were teaching massage therapists. So they were going out and practicing kind of like a quasi-physical therapist, but not credentialed with that. I don’t blame the PTs for being frustrated. Well we had a similar thing with dry needling and acupuncture and that’s not totally been resolved yet. So if we don’t do that, we’re never going to get over those humps. We’re always going to come halfway up the hill and we’re going to get stuck. The other thing that’s going to happen is we’re going to continue to think that we’re more different than we are similar.
Yeah.
And if we don’t realize our similarities and work together in cooperation, that’s where the ICMT came in so important. They weren’t trying to push massage therapy aside. Those professions were trying to figure out where it belonged within what they did. And they learned a lot from me and there’s two papers out on that and there’s a whole list of terminology and glossary and all that three-year process we went through. And the history was a huge part of that! So if we don’t tackle this, we’re going to end up continuing to be separated and in silos; the history pulls us together. If we don’t embrace our history, we’re just recreating the wheel over and over and
over. And you never go anywhere.
It’s maddening.
Yeah! But most people, the history that they have access to is the little bit that’s in my textbook or Susan Salvo’s book. Now there is a book, this is called “The Emergence of Massage Therapy Profession in America”. This was done by Pat Benjamin, she was around way back in the day. I can remember her- she came out of physical therapy. I remember her sitting up on a stage, you know back in like 1981 or something like that. She’s done an extraordinary job capturing the history. But nobody else has. We’ve got people that have tried. You talk about Judy Calvert and stuff that she started to do. There was a character (and he was a character too!) back in the late 80s and early 90s, somebody called Richard Van Why. That was somebody who captured a bunch of historical documents that went way back. And I have most of that it, was the foundation I used for the first edition of the textbook. A lot of what we do with massage therapists is manual therapy that is evolved or formalized- formalizes a better term- out of osteopathy. And you know it’s not commonly done in osteopathic medicine here in the United States, so it falls to somebody else to do it. But I mentioned earlier, my lymphatic approaches are osteopathic based. So if we are aware of the history, we can capture stuff that people might think is new. And it’s not new! Yeah, it’s been discussed, it’s been looked at. It might need to be refreshed. It might need to have you know it put through the filter of new research. But it’s probably already been done. And it’s back there someplace. The other thing is that people don’t stay in this occupation long enough sometimes. I’m a rare bird right? And they don’t stay around enough to transfer legacy. To transfer… you know I did whatever Dr Chedow or Dr Gerovich asked me to do. I never questioned it because I wanted their information, right? I don’t see that happening a lot anymore.
Sandy, let’s move into some closing thoughts. Four questions for you. The first one; what legacy do you hope that your work on massage history will leave for future generations?
Unifying terminology. I really hope that I have an important part to play with that. So that we can communicate with each other. The other part of what I hope to leave with legacy is that massage therapy is a unique health service that nobody else provides. You don’t have to be sick to benefit from massage therapy. There’s a wholeness and a totality of it that embraces certainly physiological outcomes and health benefits, but also compassion and connection and relaxation and all that stuff that goes with it. Those are the things I hope. You know? And I’m fortunate. I am really fortunate because I have my son, Luke, my youngest one that I got pregnant with when I started the school. He has moved forward with legacy and is now writing with me because Elsivere required me to have a legacy plan when I reached a certain age. But I also have my students, and I have the the massage therapists that work in our wellness spa now that have exposure to myself and to Luke for years instead of just a weekend… so I think I have a legacy. And I hope that I do due diligence and justice to the legacy of Dr Chaow and the legacy of David Girich. Because they were huge influences, not just on me, but on the massage therapy community as well.
Whose account of massage therapy, whether this person is dead or alive, do you really wish were recorded and preserved?
See, Dr Chayal was not a massage therapist. David Gervich was a medical doctor. I don’t know because most of our leaders were not primary massage therapists. I have always been, that’s what I’ve always been. But if you look at many of the the legacy teachers out of the 80s, they were not primary massage therapists. Benny Vaughn!
Sure.
I would support Benny Vaughn. Even though he also is a physical- an athletic trainer, he embraces and appreciates massage therapy for massage therapy. And he’s still around!
Right. Kind of along those same lines; who would you encourage or challenge to participate in this podcast’s future episodes?
I would like to see you get Benny Vaughn. Yeah, there’s David Lauterstien, who is out of -he’s in Texas. There’s Julie, who’s part of all this she’s been a she’s been around long time, Julie has. There’s Pat Benjamin if she’s still available to interview. A lot of our, a lot of those people have like I say moved on or have passed on… There’s Nancy Dail. I think Nancy Dail would be a wonderful person for you to interview. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind.
All right, excellent! Sandy, is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you would like to share? Or would you like to tell people who’ve been listening to this where they can find out more about you how to connect with you?
Well one of the things that Luke and I have decided to do, you talk about legacy and preserving stuff, we have decided to support and populate the school’s YouTube channel; which is Health Enrichment Center. And that’s the name of the school too, so you can search me that way; Health Enrichment Center. I’m active on Facebook, so you can message me. I’m trying to do Reddit, but I don’t think I’m getting it yet. But the YouTube channel is our way of saying “here it is, as best as we can do it, so that it’s unencumbered by bias and opinion (as much as any one person can do), that it’s easily translatable and transferable into your practice, it’s evidence informed (as much as conceivably possible), it’s based on ergonomic principles and sound, it’s done in a- some of them are more formal- some of them are very relaxed.” We film in the classroom you know and that’s our way of saying “look for free we never intend to charge for or monetize it or anything”. As far as the textbooks are concerned, I go through and for instructors and/or students; I walk them through every single chapter- what’s important, how’s this going to lay out? That is a way that you can gain a lot and it’s absolutely valuable in terms of the self-teaching that we talked about. Those and then through the textbooks too. I take that writing of those textbooks extremely serious and Luke is on with me now as a co-author. I hope to capture what has been, bring it forward to what is now, and lead into the future with those books. And not do it based on a recipe, but do it on a a way of developing a thought process and in a level of self- teaching and professional growth. Those are the things that I can do right now that would have a lasting influence. And I will Zoom into a classroom and talk to students. I don’t put myself out there as I’m not going to develop a curriculum for you or anything like that. But I want to help, and I want to influence, and I want to encourage, and I want to mentor, and I try to do those things through these types of platforms so…
Excellent. Well Sandy I want to thank you for your time and participating in this podcast with us. You’ve been listening to the Society Of Massage Archives’ Hands of History Podcast you can find us more about the Society at Societyofmassagearchives.org we’re also on Facebook and Instagram at Society Of Massage Archives. Thank you so much Sandy.
Summarized Key Points:
1.Background and Journey in Massage Therapy:
The speaker’s journey began in the late 1970s/early 1980s, drawing inspiration from the counterculture and humanistic movements.
Self-taught in massage, using books like The Book of Massage and attending eclectic workshops from various schools.
Early experiences were marked by a lack of regulation in massage therapy, which led to a more informal learning environment.
Influential figures included Dr. Leon Chedow, John Barnes, and Dr. David Geich, who shaped the speaker’s approach to massage.
2.The Humanistic Movement:
The speaker grew up in the 1960s, influenced by the desire for autonomy and disillusionment with mechanistic medical practices.
The 1960s counterculture sought alternative approaches to healing, focusing on spirituality, herbs, and practices like massage.
Massage, at the time, was often intertwined with spiritual practices, which led to a tension between professional health practices and more mystical associations.
3.Evolution of Massage Therapy:
The 1980s marked the “decade of the guru” and a push to find professional footing for massage therapy, which was still eclectic and lacked cohesion.
Over time, the speaker recognized that various massage modalities were essentially similar, though named differently.
The 1980s and 1990s saw attempts to professionalize massage therapy, with movements toward national certification, licensure, and separation from spiritual and illicit associations.
The growth of research in massage therapy, led by figures like Tiffany Field, supported its professionalization and unification.
4.Challenges with Licensing and Regulation:
While licensure and certification helped distinguish massage from illicit practices, it didn’t fully resolve issues like human trafficking or misunderstandings of massage.
There was resistance to licensure from some bodywork communities, leading to the development of alternate terms like “bodywork” to avoid association with illegal activities.
Licensing helped professionalize massage and created a platform for structured education and scope of practice, but the path has been filled with controversy and fragmentation.
5.The Role of Self-Teaching:
The speaker emphasized the importance of continuing education and being one’s own teacher in the evolving practice of massage.
Learning from every client and seeking diverse influences, including osteopathic medicine, was key to developing a personal approach to massage therapy.
6.The Shift from Spiritual to Scientific:
The 1980s saw a shift towards a more scientific approach to massage, driven by research and attempts to mainstream the practice.
The 1990s further formalized massage therapy, with national certification and standardized practices, but also led to conflicts between factions wanting to move toward medical or clinical models.
7.Reflections on Massage’s Role in Health:
The speaker highlights massage’s long history as a healing practice and its ongoing struggle to define itself as a professional, evidence-based therapy.
Research in massage therapy continues to demonstrate its effectiveness, though there remains a tendency to fragment the practice with different names and methods.
The speaker advocates for using research as a unifying force in the massage profession.
8.Disappointment with the Industry:
Sandy expresses frustration that the massage therapy community did not engage more in a global gathering of manual therapy practitioners. She highlights missed opportunities, such as the Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge project, which failed due to ego and professional identity struggles within the community. She points out the divisive attitude of some people in the field who prioritize personal differences over collective progress.
9.Personality and Professionalism:
Sandy criticizes how personality conflicts and egos have hindered the progress of the profession, noting her own frustration and vocal stance on these issues. She recalls the struggle in the 1980s when major organizations like the ABMP and AMTA couldn’t work together, which stalled the development of a unified approach to issues like ergonomics and biomechanics in massage therapy.
10.Changing Landscape of Massage Therapy:
Sandy reflects on the evolution of massage therapy, particularly the growth of Massage Envy. She saw the value of this business model early on, recognizing how it provided massage therapists with career opportunities that were previously unavailable. She contrasts the franchise model, which offers more autonomy to individual therapists, with the more rigid, centralized “chain” model.
11.The Need for Leadership:
Sandy laments the lack of leadership in the massage therapy profession, as many key figures from earlier days have either retired or passed away. She believes this lack of leadership has caused the profession to struggle with identity and progress, particularly in the 2000s.
12.Personal Education and Textbook Development:
Sandy discusses her own education, noting that while her formal training came from Irene Gothier’s school, she had previously attended workshops and studied texts on Shiatsu and other methods. She highlights key books, like the Book of Massage and The Wellness Workbook, that shaped her approach to teaching. Sandy also shares her process for writing textbooks, explaining that due to her dyslexia, she sought existing educational frameworks to model her work. She credits authors like Sheila Sarentino for inspiring her, and mentions several important texts in the field, including Job’s Body and Anatomy Trains.
13.Emergence of Big Names in the 1980s:
Sandy mentions Irene Gothier as one of the earliest influential figures in massage therapy. It wasn’t until the 1980s that other major figures in the profession started to emerge, marking a shift in the field’s national recognition.
14.Self-Taught Journey:
Sandy began her massage career without formal education, learning through self-teaching and trial and error. She faced challenges in finding community and resources, relying on local co-ops, libraries, and her own critical thinking to build her skills. She worked with athletes, learning from each new condition or injury they brought to her.
15.Professional Development:
Sandy’s work with athletes, including football and basketball players, required her to learn about specialized topics like asthma and lymphatic drainage. She values the importance of critical thinking over rigid “recipe” learning in massage therapy, emphasizing problem-solving and adaptability.
16.Michigan Licensing:
Sandy discusses Michigan’s massage therapy practice act, enacted in 2009. She highlights the regulatory challenges and loopholes, noting that some alternative practices can operate without a license. She also touches on her experience as a consultant, rather than a direct participant, in Michigan’s regulatory agencies.
17.Professional Organizations:
Sandy has been deeply involved in various professional organizations, including the AMTA, ABMP, and the National Certification Board. She reflects on the history of these groups, the schism that led to the creation of the ABMP, and the ongoing fragmentation within the massage community.
18.Business Experience:
Sandy shares her experience as a sole practitioner, managing her own massage business without a receptionist. She later invested in a Massage Green Spa franchise, aiming to understand the business structure from within. This franchise model has since been acquired by Hand & Stone. Sandy discusses the growing consolidation in the massage therapy business, with larger companies acquiring smaller franchises.
19.Industry Trends:
Sandy predicts that the massage therapy industry will shift towards integrating into larger wellness centers and adapting to technological advancements, including AI and robotics. She believes that while AI won’t replace massage therapists, it will influence how the industry operates, especially within larger franchises.
20.Challenges and Future Outlook:
Sandy highlights the difficulties of entering the profession today, with fewer opportunities for self-taught individuals. She expresses concern about how these changes may impact the profession, especially in terms of accessibility and the dominance of larger business models.
21.Starting the School:
Sandy didn’t plan to start a school; it evolved informally after people asked her to teach what she was doing. Initially, she taught small classes in her living room while working full-time as a massage therapist. As the demand grew, she formalized the process and eventually became accredited.
22.Accreditation and Financial Aid:
Sandy’s motivation for accreditation was to create a pathway for academic degrees, particularly a Bachelor’s of Applied Science in massage therapy. She worked with Sienna Heights University to achieve this, which required accreditation. The goal was to have a recognized pathway for career advancement in massage therapy, although the use of financial aid led to issues in the education sector, especially with misuse of funds.
23.Employment vs. Self-Employment:
Sandy discussed the shift from self-employment in massage therapy to employment opportunities, like working in franchises such as Massage Envy. She believes that working for a quality employer can lead to better financial stability and work-life balance, although the industry still struggles with the transition. Many massage therapists don’t see franchise work as “real” massage therapy, but Sandy argues that it is a valid career choice.
24.Economic Realities:
Sandy noted that massage therapists are doing relatively well economically, earning more than some other healthcare professionals with more education. She encouraged the newer generation to embrace living with less, as economic realities have changed.
25.MTBOK (Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge):
Sandy mentioned MTBOK as an initiative to define the profession of massage therapy, including its practices and stages. It was created after a lot of discussion between industry leaders and experts but ultimately faced resistance and was shelved due to internal disagreements. She also mentioned the subsequent creation of the ELAP (Entry Level Analysis Project), which sought to establish unified terminology for the profession, a process that is still ongoing.
26.Massage Therapy Terminology:
Sandy emphasized the need for a broader, more inclusive definition of massage therapy beyond just Swedish massage, arguing that it is a rich and diverse field. This has been a challenge, especially with different schools of thought and practices within the industry.
27.Importance of Preserving Massage Therapy History:
Sandy emphasizes the need to understand the history of massage therapy to avoid repeating past mistakes and stagnation. Recognizing historical influences (e.g., Swedish movement, reflexology) is crucial for the profession’s growth. Without historical awareness, the field risks remaining stuck in old conflicts, like the struggles with physical therapy and scope of practice issues.
28.Legacy of Massage Therapy:
Sandy hopes to leave a legacy of unifying terminology in the field and promote the idea that massage therapy is a unique, valuable health service. It’s not just about physical health but also encompasses compassion, connection, and relaxation. The legacy is also carried forward through his son, Luke, and the students they work with.
29.Important Accounts to Preserve:
Sandy mentions that many influential figures in massage therapy, such as Dr. Chaow and David Gervich, were not primary massage therapists but played vital roles in shaping the field. She highlights Benny Vaughn, David Lauterstien, and others as important figures whose perspectives should be preserved.
30.Resources for Learning and Connection:
Sandy and Luke are actively populating their school’s YouTube channel (Health Enrichment Center) with free, evidence-informed educational content. He also mentions his textbooks, where he emphasizes a thought process over mere recipes, encouraging professional growth and self-teaching. Additionally, he offers mentorship through platforms like Zoom to help students and instructors.
Show Notes:
- Humanistic Movement
- Book Of Massage (https://www.amazon.com/Massage-Book-George-Downing/dp/B0017L1AG4)
- Esalen
- Fritz Pearl
- Rolf Institute
- AMTA
- IMF(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Gauthier)
- Dr. Leon Chaitow “Blue Book” : Soft Tissue Manipulation
- John Barnes
- Dr. David Geirvich
- Irene Gothier
- Health Enrichment Center (https://www.healthenrichment.com/, https://www.youtube.com/@healthenrichmentcenterscho2989 )
- John Upledger
- David Palmer
- Osteopathic Medicine (DOs)
- MTF
- NLP Neurolinguistics Programing
- Trigger Point
- Neuromuscular Therapy
- NCBTMB- Certification
- ICMT(https://www.icmtconference.org/)
- Dr. Tiffany Field
- MTBOK (https://www.afmte.org/education/mtbok/)
- ABMP
- MTF’s Ergonomics study (https://massagetherapyfoundation.org/mtf-ergo-project/)
- Massage Envy
- Shiatsu
- Covid-19
- Wellness Workbook
- Janet Travel
- Pat Benjamin
- Fran Tappan Healing Massage Techniques
- Beard’s Massage – Nursing
- Mosby’s/Mosby Lifeline(https://www.elsevier.com/)
- Sheila Santino – Nursing Textbook
- Job’s Body (https://www.jobsbody.com/books/)
- Anatomy Trains
- Mark Beck
- ELAP (https://www.elapmassage.org/)
- Touch For Health
- Applied Kinesiology
- Polarity
- Randolph Stone
- MBLEx
- Michigan Practice Act/Board (https://www.michigan.gov/en/lara/bureau-list/bpl/health/hp-lic-health-prof/massage, https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-368-1978-15-179A.)
- Asian Bodywork
- Reflexology
- NCSCT- Accreditation
- AFMTE
- FSMTB
- Sherry Wiliams
- Robert Calvert
- Judi Calvert
- FSMTB & NCBTMB Agreement (https://www.massagetoday.com/articles/15003/NCBTMB-Explains-Changes-Plans-for-Future,)
- Massage Green
- Hand & Stone
- Massage Heights
- Elements Massage
- LaVida
- AI/Robotics
- Siena Heights University- BAS MT(https://ncbtmb.org/siena-heights-university/)
- Allison Mitcheson
- VA MT Job Description (https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTH/professional-resources/Massage_Therapy.asp)
- Movement Cure- Ling
- Mezger
- Taylor Brothers
- The Emergence of Massage Therapy Profession in North America (https://sutherland-chan.com/curties-overzet-publications/)
- Richard Van Why
- Luke Fritz
- Benny Vaughn
- David Lauterstein
- Julie Onofrio
- Nancy Dail
HEC YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@healthenrichmentcenterscho2989)