Searching and Re-Searching pt. 0

My name is Aaron, and I am a research fanatic.  I hold a bachelors in psychology, and the process of getting that degree introduced me to research as a whole.  I have written research proposals, performed research experiments and have presented my findings to my peers.  I spend some (definately not all) of my free time paroosing the internet, looking for new studies, emerging modalities and anything massage related. I honestly think that understanding the research behind this profession can greatly increase your general knowledge of the profession as a whole, and it can cause you to think more critically about your clientele.  Now, research is something that is somewhat controversial in the Massage Therapy field, due to the close connections many massage therapists have with energy based modalities.  Western research practices tend to just disregard these modalities entirely, or even worse, try with all their might to disprove that energy modalities could be effective.

But that's not what I am here to talk about.  Research can be a thing of beauty to an individual such as myself.  The hypothesis, the measurement tools, the analysis that brings it all together, and the conclusion that will doubtlessly lead you to more questions that can cause more and more sophisticated research.

I am constantly looking for individuals like myself who share this passion for learning and exploring, and am planning to set up an ongoing blog here on Massage Professionals.  This is the introduction to that blog.  Each time I find the time, I will link a new research article that I have found about Massage therapy or its related modalities.  I will not bore you to the point of frantically hitting the back button by explaining what they are trying to do in this study, and give my 2 cents about what this means for the individual practitioner, the profession as a whole, and possible future research projects that would come out of this one article.

I hope that this is found entertaining by some, useful by more, and a great learning opportunity by all, myself included.