Why Massage Therapy and Bodywork?

As any health care provider will tell you, deep personal satisfaction comes from helping people feel better. With massage therapy, you are able to focus not just on the physical or mental aspects of healing, but on the whole person.

This integration of the heart, the mind, and the hands in service to people is a special responsibility and privilege. Practicing as a massage therapist is about reclaiming the wisdom and truth of the human body, for you and your clients. Awakening people to their innate healing abilities, educating people in natural health care methods and doing work that has meaning and makes a difference in people's lives are only some of the many rewards of being a massage therapist.

Scope of the Field

If one does a complete review and analysis of all the different forms of massage therapy and bodywork currently practiced in America today, it would not be difficult to discover that there are easily more than one hundred different approaches to hands-on practice which, give or take one or two of them, would fall into one of five broad categories, each with a common core or base of information. The five categories or approaches are:

1. Traditional Massage
2. Contemporary Western Massage and Bodywork
3. Structural/Functional/Movement Integration
4. Asian Bodywork
5. Energetic Bodywork

These range from non-physical contact with the energy field to deep tissue work. One would also find that incorporated in these various hands-on practices are a wide range of activities such as movement, exercise, nutrition and body/mind integration.

Upon further investigation, regardless of what particular form of massage therapy or bodywork a professional is practicing, the scope of that practice falls within one or more of three levels. These three fundamental mutually inclusive, overlapping and interrelated levels are Relaxation, Remediation and Holistic.

1. Relaxation and Stress Reduction - This level of practice views Massage and Bodywork more as a personal service, and based on the well researched need for non-threatening, nurturing touch.

2. Remediation of Pain- This level of practice includes all massage therapy and bodywork approaches seeking the correction of human dysfunction and remediation of pain.

3. Holistic - This level of practice focuses on a more over all approach to enhancing, balancing, and transforming the quality of life of the client. This level requires the most training and years of experience in the field.