From the Background Paper for the Future of Bodywork Seminar
"Where Do We Go From Here?" held November 19, 2009
by Jack Blackburn, MTS-SD, LMP
Massage and the Health Care Industry
a. Medical treatment: manipulation, healing, energy medicine
As one limb of medicine has become much more expensive and dependent upon drugs and technology, another wing has opened to more and more hands on care. Bodyworkers stand to benefit greatly because our work can be customized to each patient’s needs. Our hands are very sensitive and we can feel very subtle tissue responses. Also we can make very fine adjustments in what we’re doing, based on those tissue responses. We are opening doors for medicine that more closely resembles the ancient Greeks with hands-on approaches, and can resemble an earlier era in modern medicine when doctors relied on their own palpation skills and had much closer relationships with their clients.
b. Healing approach
Allopathic medicine and clinical psychology shy away form using the term “healing,” but certain forms of bodywork and counseling use the term quite openly. If we refer to healing as a life-long process, asymptotic (never quite completed) to life, we come closer to a way of talking about healing. For instance, a Reiki trained bodyworker may legitimately apply the term healing for the kinds of benefits from energy the client is receiving during the session. Bodyworkers are aware of the body’s ability to heal itself from injury, and many will describe their function as accompanying the body’s own healing processes. The mind is more difficult address in this way because we don’t deal directly with mental issues, nor does anyone understand how the mind heals itself. But bodyworkers of all stripes have witnessed changes in their client’s that can properly be called healing, and seem to be a direct effect of their work. Should healing be a proper investigation for the field of bodywork?
c. Combination with different caregiving skills
What is the place in bodywork for persons, who have learned and licensed themselves in, other caregiving professions? Bodyworkers find themselves in situations where they feel the need to learn ancillary skills, like counseling, psychotherapy, physical therapy, chiropractory, nursing, spiritual direction. The need arises because of what is happening with their client population. Some of these approaches are introduced in continuing education, but those that are so motivated find themselves earning other degrees and licenses. These parallel licensures can confront the affected professions with the need for redefinition. Bodywork boundaries were carefully drawn with input from all other caregiving professions, who were sometimes “jealous of their own turf.” But we now face a situation where all the caregiving professions are moving towards us, for instance combining words and touch e.g. The Association of Bodywork Psychology. How do we become more consciously engaged in the redefinition of our own profession? How much should we encourage practitioners to develop ancillary skills and credentials?
For more information about this event, or biographies of the panelists, please visit the Future of Bodywork.
