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AMTA 2017 School Summit

February 26, 2017 by Tania Leave a Comment

[Written while listening to this.]

This is a fun picture post of the AMTA 2017 School Summit which took place at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel on February 23-24, 2017. It was a blast! My only regret is not getting more pictures of all the fantastic educators I got to mingle with.

Day 1: Here’s the first photo with my road trip buddy, Carla Gaskins-Nathan of Rooted Bodywork. We went to the summit as representatives of the PCOM-NY campus.

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Group shot! Let’s play a version of Where’s Waldo?, but instead of trying to find Waldo, see if you can find me… then Carla.

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Photo credit to AMTA

 

Later that day, the AMTA treated us to a comedy show at Laugh Boston. Here is a photo with a couple of the comedians who performed. Their sets were hilarious! I think stand-up comedy is the ultimate performing art and requires a great deal of bravery and confidence. They were awesome. And tall.

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Day 2: Here I am having a fan girl moment with Susan Salvo of Massage Passport and Whitney Lowe of the Academy of Clinical Massage. These 2 have authored the textbooks I learned from! The coolest thing about them is they continue growing and innovating as educators. I want to be like them when I grow up 🙂

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The next photos are double-selfies with 2 incredible and inspiring educators. Brent Jackson, is the academic program manager of a unique and impressive hospital based massage therapy program in South Carolina (the first of its kind!) and Jill Berkana, is the founder and owner of The Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy in Denver, CO. If I had to do it all over again, I would love to learn at both of these schools. These 2 are on fire and are producing phenomenal manual therapists. They just care so much and are excellent at what they do.

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Selfie by Jill Berkana
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selfie by yours truly 😉

 

Here is Tim Herbert of the Trail Guide Series we all know and love and have dog-eared many pages of. This guy gives THE BEST bear hugs!

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And lastly, here is one more photo with Carla and Susan Salvo, for the road. They are both ridiculously photogenic.

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There were people I didn’t get to snag photos with, but do want to give a shout out to for being wonderful company and getting down with great conversations and presentations: Dr. Jerrilyn Cambron of the NUHS and president of the Massage Therapy Foundation, Angela Austin of Lourdes College in NJ, Sue Passini in Connecticut, Heather Langly from AACC in Maryland, Cindy Moorcroft from the Center of Natural Wellness in Albany, Angie Myer of COMTA, Christopher and Xerlan Deery from PA, and Daniah Craft from the Indiana Massage College.

Thank you to Bon Vital and Biotone for all the goodies!

Looking for to another meet-up soon!

Introducing the 1st Blog Post!

April 19, 2016 by Tania Leave a Comment

[Written while listening to this. Comments are welcome below.]

Pinpoint Bodywork Facebook LaunchYessss! I’m very excited to present Pinpoint Bodywork’s very first blog post. It’s been a little under a week since soft-launching the site on Facebook on April 13, 2016. Since then I’ve been sifting through ideas of how to kick off this posting extravaganza. It finally dawned on me a good starting point would be to explore one very important reason why this site was born in the first place.

Here we go

I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty details of my background (if you want to know more, you can go here). Long story short: I’ve been an LMT since 1994. At that time, there was limited information about the actual effects of massage on the body (there were many fair guesses though) and there was ZERO information on what the real world would be like after I was done with school. I was basically thrust into the world clueless and hungry at a time when the internet was just becoming a thing no one ever dreamed you’d be able to watch TV shows on. So, I’ve really had to dig deep for much of what I’ve learned. And I’m still digging.

You’d think having access to lightning fast internet connections would make digging for information easier for everyone, but it doesn’t. It’s become more challenging and the proof of that is in the puddin’. In this case, the puddin’ is the true state of the profession of massage therapy (particularly in the United States). We have TOO MUCH information, and unfortunately much of it is bogus.

Where are we going?

We were doing well for a while with being considered sorta-kinda-maybe healthcare professionals, but then something slowly began changing. Credibility began slipping through the fingers of our progress (some may disagree with this statement, and that is o.k. but like it or not, there are plenty of sentiments to back it up). Up until the 90s, massage was widely covered by insurance companies and now the ability for MTs to earn a living by receiving reimbursement is dwindling and losing ground as we speak. Do you wonder why that is? No no no, big pharma is not to blame. We are the ones who have been holding ourselves back.

Photo credit: AMTA

Before moving on, it is important to know a brief history of modern massage therapy. It puts our place in the world into perspective and it will make you proud. You can read a fantastic summary of it here (article by Patricia J. Benjamin, Ph.D., L.M.T., and AMTA National Historian).

Now, I’m not sure what happened between the birth of modern massage and where we are today, but massage therapy has yet to realize its full capability. This may be a $12.1 billion industry, but we still have a very long way to go in walking side by side with other healthcare professionals. I won’t get into all of the reasons why right now, because this blog post would turn into a 1,000 page report and ain’t nobody got time for that. But for starters, the profession of massage therapy is stuck in the middle of a huge identity crisis. And it can only move forward if everyone does their part in helping to sort out its identity. The big kick in the pants is much of this sorting out process entails permanently discarding outdated beliefs and myths and stepping onto the concrete evidence available to us as of 2016. This is what I like to call “the separation of church and state” in massage therapy. However, accomplishing this has been a lot more challenging than one may imagine. You’ll see what I mean 😉

Where do YOU want US to go?

“Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.” -Marcia McNutt, geophysicist

digging-PinpointBodyworkThere is a divide in the profession of those that want to move it forward (even if it means simplifying the definition of the service we provide, which is actually a good thing) and those who are settled in the ways of false claims. There are those who remain ever curious and those who never question what they’ve been told to believe. I used to be one to buy into anything that sounded cool, mystical, or mysterious. But as I began digging (initially looking for evidence to support the claims of the cool special things I thought I knew about), I began discovering there was a lot wrong with what I learned- or if not entirely wrong, what I learned was highly inaccurate. And to make matters worse, there was no evidence to support it, or if there was it had since been refuted. My world of knowledge collapsed and it was the best thing that could have ever happened to the way I approached my work as a MT. The truth will set you free, but may hurt just a little at first 😉

To be fair, some of the stuff I was taught was based on the best information available at the time. But today there is better data and new discoveries are being made as I write this. Now it is time for massage therapy to catch up with itself and realize its true purpose so more people may benefit from it, both within and outside of the profession.

I will end this post with a link to this article titled When Will Massage Therapy Believe In Itself? by Dr. Christopher Moyer.

Dr. Moyer is a behavioral scientist and massage researcher whose work has opened my eyes on many levels. He is also co-author of the textbook Massage Therapy: Integrating Research and Practice. His article sums up perfectly one of the most important reasons behind creating this site: separating the facts from the fluff. It also addresses a truth that is hard for some to swallow. We can believe whatever we like, but as healthcare professionals we cannot present personal beliefs as facts and make medical claims based upon them. Doing so is hurting the credibility of our profession.

Let’s get to work.

Leave a comment below or you are welcome to start a discussion in the Pinpoint Bodywork Facebook Forum!

Later alligators!

 

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Blog Roll

  • Employee Misclassification in Massage Therapy: Must read for Independent Contractors
  • Modalites vs. Concepts in Massage Therapy
  • AMTA 2017 School Summit
  • I am a massage therapist, not a “healer”
  • Beware the Hipsterization of Cupping in Massage Therapy

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