The View from There
For many years now I have read with fascination and wonder Ralph Stephens’ column in Massage Today. A basic tenet of journalism is for a newspaper or periodical to have competing views in print, to provide balance, interest, and variety. As I mentioned once before in regard to Stephens’ column, his role is to “stir the pot.” I for one find this entertaining and useful. On occasion our organization has been in Stephens’ crosshairs. In fact, recently. That’s OK; the actions of our organization are not above reproach by any means.
However, another important tenet of responsible journalism is to report facts—or at least do your homework. The two most recent postings by Stephens fail to meet that standard.
In the December 2009 issue of Massage Today, Stephens wrote an article titled, “Year-End Observations of our Profession,” where he rightfully gave praise to the efforts of Janet Kahn and the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium. As we are all aware, the health care debate in this country is as contentious an issue as we have experienced in quite some time; having a voice like IHPC at the table has been a great step forward for our profession. What was not noted in the prior article was that both AMTA and ABMP are supporters of IHPC, recognizing it as an appropriate conduit to represent massage therapy along with other complementary and integrative health care disciplines. In our case, ABMP has been a financial supporter and our Chairman Bob Benson served on the IHPC Steering Committee during its formative years. We are delighted to work with IHPC in this pursuit.
Stephens goes on to extol the virtues of the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB) as the organization with the potential to “salvage the mess made primarily by AMTA, and by ABMP to a lesser degree,” and “raise the standards for our profession, something our associations and massage schools have no financial incentive to do.” We’ll take that comment as some form of thanks; ABMP helped initiate the effort to establish the FSMTB in 2005 and provided a loan to help the organization get off the ground.
In his most recent (January 2010) column, “Heart on the Bottom Line,” Stephens advances the premise that associations and schools are in collusion to limit massage therapy’s scope of practice. It is difficult to rationally rebut an irrational statement. In my 15+ years of involvement in the massage therapy profession through ABMP, 24 states and the District of Columbia have enacted massage regulation laws. During that time, ABMP has been on all sides of the debate, because ABMP’s legislative principles had not changed—we seek to ensure the most favorable climate possible in which to practice. If Stephens had been involved in any one of those state-level efforts, he would have an understanding that there has been an effort (at least on ABMP’s part) to establish a consistent legislative standard, should one be needed. However, those 24 states view our profession through their own lens; the reasons that Alabama and Nevada have different licensing laws have a lot to do with those two states, and nothing to do with liability insurance. We believe raising the standards of our profession happens through better curricula, better instruction, better schools, and more successful graduates and therapists.
Has the regulatory development of the massage profession been disjointed? Absolutely. Could we as a profession have done better? Of course. Will the regulatory environment improve in the future? I believe so, for the same reason Ralph Stephens does—establishing FSMTB will only increase the states’ abilities to work together.
News flash: The massage and bodywork profession is imperfect. As a leader in this profession, we at ABMP understand that the easy path is to blame “the big guys” for things that aren’t the way we want them. We have no illusions about the role of Stephens’ column: it is an opinion piece. However, we do feel that he should do some homework before sharing those opinions.
As an RMT in Colorado, I for one am glad Colorado passed in 2001 regulation of the massage therapy field, rather than leaving it in the hands of the indidivual cities. Regulating the field, to me, makes massage therapy/bodywork more of a health field, rather than just fluff and buff (which isn’t always a bad thing). In Montana, I’ve been told, there is no regulation; anyone can state they are a massage therapist and hang their shingle out. Huh?? Now, if we could further disassociate legitimate therapists/bodyworkers from the “massage parlors,” I would be one really happy camper. Thanks ABMP for all of your hard work and I look forward to renewing my membership in March.
Comment by Susan Clingman — January 26, 2010 @ 12:11 am
I can tell ABMP has had their stamp on California and is the main reason we are the laughing stock of the nation. We have a 250 hour tier due to ABMP fighting for a lower education standard here. This makes it difficult to sell this to cities that have had 1000 hour requirements. I will be glad when it is phased out.
Comment by John — January 26, 2010 @ 9:36 am
John, you too should do your homework. California has a 250 hour tier becuase most of the education in California for present and past members barely exceeds that number. You are not the laughing stock, just the most liberal of all states. Why not give a grandfathering perios that allows therapist who have been practicing for 20+ years an opportunity to get certified on a state level. It had nothing to do with anyone trying to lower any standards.
Comment by Nicole — January 27, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
Grandfathering is a different issue. Lower education level schools are trying to beat the cut off by aggressively promoting the lower level tier. And who insures these folks again?
Comment by John — January 27, 2010 @ 3:03 pm
There are efforts being made to raise the number of educational hours in California but nothing happens overnight. And why shouldn’t people who have been in practice for years and only have 200 hours of education be allowed to be insured. Having 500 or more hours of education doesn’t mean you are a stellar therapist, it’s what you do with your education. I have over 1500 hours of education and that doesn’t mean that I am a better therapist than you or anyone else. I agree that in our field education is important but don’t rule out people because they didn’t take a 500 hour course. No one is trying to down play the improtance of education. It just has to be fair for all until there is unity between states. Everything has to start somewhere and this is only the beginning for California.
Comment by Nicole — January 28, 2010 @ 8:53 am
I am glad you addressed this topic Les. I scratch my head each time I read Ralph Stephens’ column. In my years of working with both AMTA and ABMP I have found that the profession has benefited because of the contributions of these two organizations. As far as ABMP goes, I have always been impressed with the vision and leadership that the organization has demonstrated on several fronts, including the support of FSMTB. Emmanuel
Comment by Emmanuel — January 28, 2010 @ 6:53 pm
The issue is now to increase hours to show competency because hours in the seat are meaningless. Instead we need to certify competency. We don’t even have teacher certification so any yahoo can teach and students do not need to do anything other than keep the seats warm. We need to develop tests that we can prove have a high correlation to performance. It really does not matter how a person gained their skills but rather how they perform.
The second issue is that we need to acknowledge that bodywork is very diverse. I for one had to learn Swedish just to get a license and insurance but do not use any of the skills or training in fact had to spend years unlearning my Swedish training to become proficient in what I do. Holding up a license to do Swedish is a LIE. Even though I trained and can pass the exams I had to make a decision to improve my bodywork skills or do Swedish massage and now I do not claims to be able to do a competent Swedish session. It is not that I don’t use the Swedish techniques that I don’t but that it requires a very different mental approach to the work. If I think like a massage therapist I can’t do may work and the same is true in reverse. In Swedish the therapist is doing something to the person and the interactions is something like a dance. My work is static, the person is doing the work and I cannot take on the person but am feeling for the person themselves.
As a “Muscle Whisper” I would be distracting and work not have the dynamic feel of the strokes. I also work individual muscle of parts of muscles at a time. I also work nerves and bony tissues as well as muscles. It is not what you feel during the session but what you don’t feel afterwards. I find that if there are others out there with my inherent skills, thir talents have probably been squashed by massage trainng.
I joined ABMP because is represents bodyworkers not just the Swedish and Spa industry. I am seeing the push for licensing a way of killing diversity in this industry.
I can see that there are legitimate interests in standardizing massage but we need to change the laws to exclude bodywork that does not claim to be massage and works with clients who are fully clothed.
I think the place to start is with the BOK. We need to develop a real Swedish BOK and acknowledge that it does not apply to other forms of bodywork that required a very different and sometimes contradictory set of skills.
Comment by Carl W. Brown — January 28, 2010 @ 7:04 pm
nice post. thanks.
Comment by pharmacy technician — February 5, 2010 @ 2:49 am
[...] running out of things to say; those who know me know that will happen only when I stop breathing. My post last time wasn’t angry, but was a little more pointed than usual. I questioned what I perceive as unfair [...]
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