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Its a tremendously exciting time! This Saturday (May 15, 2010) we will be announcing the release of the inaugural Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge (MTBOK) at the "Highlighting Massage Therapy in CIM" conference in Seattle, WA. Its been over a year since I started on the project, and the MTBOK itself took almost 11 months to build after the MTBOK task force began their work.

The task force has done an extraordinary job on this effort, and has spent many, many hours researching, writing, evaluating your comments and achieving consensus on the inaugural MTBOK content.

While there is such a tendency to focus on the end of a project, this whole effort is about beginning a future for massage therapy. That's why I like to call the upcoming release the inaugural MTBOK.

So with the release this Saturday we will be celebrating a beginning far more than the successful project conclusion. Our mission was to put together an MTBOK built by and for the profession. Since eight people can only do so much, we went to lengths to get as much input from all of the stakeholders. We did a quick draft, then opened it up for public comment. We held an open Stakeholder Input Session at the AMTA national convention in Orlando last September which was mostly an interactive dialog in groups. We then did another round of public comments, and we met with several groups including the major schools organizations (we meet with the third one in June) and the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards.

We received over 1,400 formal comments from our stakeholders, and all but about 30 of those were read, reviewed, discussed and in someway became part of the new MTBOK.

All this was to say that I think we did a great job of representing the profession and listening and reacting appropriately to comments and suggestions.

But here is where the important part comes. What happens next is up to you. The MTBOK is a living document, and you should think of it that way. If things need to be tweaked or changed, let people know about it. (The new approach to receiving comments is to ask that you submit them via email to mtbok_comments@mtbok.org) The MTBOK Steward organizations plan to periodically review and update the MTBOK in response to your needs and comments. Its really a mistake to think of the MTBOK as a finished, static product... it really needs to grow with the knowledge of the profession, and to help the whole profession move in a similar direction.

It seems to me that there are two things that need to happen with the MTBOK now in addition to its growth as a living document. First, it needs to stay in the minds of our stakeholders so that any adjustments in its current form can be made. Second, it needs to be adopted and ingrained into the work of each of the massage therapy domains (Practice, Accreditation, Research, Certification, Education and Licensure) so that the profession as a whole is moving in pretty much the same direction.

For those of you who think it needs work... great! That's the nature of a living document, and while you may not get all the changes you want, that' part of building consensus in such a big, wonderful, complex profession.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in this effort. I really think its a great step forward for massage therapy.

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Comment by Julie Onofrio on May 16, 2010 at 9:40am
I have to say I was disappointed in your groups presentation except for Dawn Schmidt who brought up the most essential challenge to the profession - we have to stop fighting about all this! I don't have a clue what Michael Shea was doing up there talking about his own research ideas that I couldn't figure out how it related to the BOK. I thought you could do better at explaining what this whole thing really is about - why you were doing it and how it might be used in the future or how it could apply to the ind. therapists. The biggest problem I saw all weekend is that it was never motivating people to get more involved. MT need to know 'what is in it for them' as Whitney Lowe commented on.

My question is what proof is there that this is needed?

Julie
Comment by Emmanuel Bistas on May 15, 2010 at 4:52pm
A great step forward indeed. I am sure it was not easy defining the parameters of something as diverse as massage therapy. Congratulations to Chip and the team!

The references to 'energy field' and some new items that were included since the last call for comments will probably be controversial, but at a minimum they serve as reminder of the diversity of the viewpoints in our field and the difficulty of bringing all those viewpoints together. Congratulations again!
Comment by ABMP on May 15, 2010 at 3:10pm
The document is available directly at http://www.mtbok.org/downloads/MTBOK_Version_1.pdf.
Comment by Laura Allen on May 14, 2010 at 4:57am
Thank you so much for all your efforts, Chip and the rest of the team involved in this. I am stoked about it! And I agree with Julie, I preach this sermon all the time about the lack of concern and involvement from 95% of our profession. They don't take any action until it's too late.
Comment by Julie Onofrio on May 14, 2010 at 12:29am
Thats nice to know...I know you all worked hard on it but the last version I read did not seem very hopeful to me and with only having 1400 out of how many massage therapists - 300,000 - it just seems appalling but I guess it is a start. I'll be there on Sat to hear.
Comment by Darcy Neibaur on May 13, 2010 at 2:32pm
This is so exciting and wonderful. Thank you all to the TEAM for all your hard and diligent work for the profession. Looking forward to seeing the completed copy. Thanks Chip.

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