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.